Hi Kayleigh. First of all I’d like to say how much I love love love your blog! It has been such a valuable resource, thank you for devoting so much time to it. My question is: I’ve been coxing for about 18 months now and I’m feeling comfortable with steering and basic calls. My coach has asked me to start judging each rower’s technique from what his blade is doing and I’m finding this really hard. Other than looking for timing issues and comparing length against other blades, I’m at a bit of a loss. Do you have any tips? Thanks!
Hi! Technique is the hardest thing to talk about when I haven’t got a visual of some kind right in front of me so apologies if this is kinda vague. The easiest and best way to point out how things should look vs. why something doesn’t look right is to just find a video online – almost any video (within reason) of people rowing will work – and email it to me. Then I can sit down, analyze it, and share what I see. I wish there were gifs like that one I posted in the Bend & Snap post but I haven’t been able to find anything. I got lucky with that one because I just happened to scroll past it on Tumblr while I was procrastinating on writing that post.
I’ll try to write a longer post on this soon but for now, other than what you’ve already said here are five things to watch for with the rower’s blades…
Pausing at any point during the stroke, particularly at the finish (usually leads to rush and check in the boat)
Rowing it in (the legs start before the blade is in the water, resulting in a stroke that’s half or 3/4 as long as it should be)
Excessive amounts of water being thrown up at the finish (this means they’re feathering before their blade is out of the water). It’ll probably look something like this (seriously).
Where the blades are in relation to the water on the recovery (this will tell you what their hands are doing)
Blades “bobbing” while they’re in the water (which means they’re not applying the force evenly and smoothly throughout the drive with the push of their feet and the pull with their hands)
