row2k Features
Body Out of Bow
July 15, 2015
Charlotte Hollings

Early body prep out of bow is important

The more I coach, the more I appreciate the importance of early body preparation out of bow. Most coaches will agree that early body prep is important, but in the next breath many emphasize hands out of bow, and the faster the better. Many problems arise when we focus on hands, instead of body, out of bow.

  1. The body doesn’t get positioned early enough, which leads to diving at the catch. Diving leads to skying, skying leads to a late catch. Diving also causes us to put more weight on the foot stretchers before we plant the blade which increases our check.

  2. When forcing hands out of bow quickly, the arms tend to get stiff, some coaches even tell their rowers to lock their elbows, but stiff arms make it very difficult to catch without lifting the entire body. We want to be subtle at the catch but using the body can create too much movement, often causing the blade to go deep.

  3. With hands out of bow, our forearms remain at a 90 degree angle to the oar throughout the recovery. I feel this makes it more difficult to square the blade.

  4. Leaving the body in bow while the hands come away causes us to spend too much time with our bodies at the finish, in turn making it difficult to increase the rating.

  5. If we leave the body in bow while waiting for the hands, we lose some of the acceleration around the release.

Quite a few years ago we noticed the Olympic and World Championship rowers getting their bodies out of bow with their hands, sometimes with the shoulders moving to the stern almost before the hands have finished the feather. Instead of hands then body, it was very much body and hands together out of bow. This allowed them to be very efficient at the finish, spending no wasted time there and getting the rating up while making it look as if they had lots of time on the slide. This emphasis on body out of bow, rather than just hands, is full of advantages.

  1. The body gets set early which keep us from diving at the catch. Without the dive, there’s less chance of skying, less chance of being late, less digging, less checking.

  2. Body out of bow with the arms keeps the elbows relaxed so that we can catch with the forearms rather than the entire body, minimizing motion at the catch and helping us to stay horizontal and the blade level.

  3. Body out of bow and relaxed arms allows our hands to pivot slightly on the oar handle so that instead of hands and forearms at 90 degrees to the oar, we are closer to 45 degrees. The blade can then be squared using the outside heel of our hand as well as the pinkie, ring finger and middle finger.

  4. Less time in bow makes it easier to increase the rating or, keep the rating the same but spend more time on the slide.

  5. The motion of the arms and hands has very little effect on the boat, ie. very little mass is being moved. If we can get the body to move toward the stern as the weight comes off the oar at the release, we will keep the boat accelerating to bow.

A couple videos of the 2012 GB Men's Lightweight 2x show this concept very nicely.

First, see this video from the 2012 Olympics (sorry, the video is not embeddable); at about 42 minutes in, there's a nice shot from the side. Also, at around 41' in, there a good stern shot though easier to see how quickly the bodies move out of bow with the side angle.

Another video of the crew in training in 2010:

So how to do this? It’s not easy or maybe I’m just a slow learner but after 10 years, I still can’t seem to do it anywhere near as well as the Olympians. It takes core strength, focus on using your lower abs to draw your body out of bow. If you’ve ever done pilates, one basic movement is rolling up and down from a lying position one vertebra at a time. That’s the movement we’re trying to mimic both rolling into the finish and rolling out. Think nose and chin out of bow and if you look at your arms, try to form your elbows in a diamond shape (for scullers) or inside arm at a 90 degree angle (for sweep rowers).

The timing is difficult so one drill I came up with is to say to yourself “when” or “now” when you begin to feather the oar and as soon as you say that word, start working on moving the body out of bow.

If you watch the Olympians closely, you’ll see this movement from most every one of them, but the Great Britain Men’s Lightweight 2x from the 2012 Olympics do this exceptionally well.

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