Ever find yourself looking for just one CLAM when coach announces the set your boat is using should have one? If so, then this trick might help at your place: store the CLAMs on the oars themselves, so you always have the ones you need handy. Seem too obvious for hack-worthy tip? Not if you've got your oars and shells rigged so that one or two "oar-stored" CLAMs are all you need to row any shell in the boathouse.

That's right: the real trick here is using the clever CLAM accessory to make sure that when you have folks hopping into different size boats but need to use the same oar set over and over, that you have a simple, and quick system to make the necessary load adjustments. As we head into a part of the year when the smaller boats get some play on training trips and the like, this could be a timely tip.

We caught the guys at the Princeton Training Center using his trick back in the late nineties, when CLAMs really started becoming a a common accessory. Since these guys were frequently switching from pairs to fours and then to the eight--sometimes all in a single day's worth of training rows--every PTC oar had two CLAMs on it at all times, either in front of the button or behind it. As the guys switched from bigger boats to smaller boats, they'd move one, or two, CLAMs from the back of the button to the front. It was a pretty simple formula on those training oars: 2 CLAMs for a row in the pair, one for a row in the fours, and both CLAMs behind the button for a row in the eight. (This was a training trick, in the main, so if any finer load adjustments would needed, they were either taken care of in the rigging or added in as the guys switched to the oars they would actually race with in Europe).

The beauty of the system is that it saves a lot of time: the same oars can be used no matter what sort of boats you are headed out in, and no one has to go hunting through the boat bay for one stray CLAM. It is not just an elite rower trick either: we've seen it in action at a few club programs that are doing much the same kind of training in the run-up to Club Nationals and Canadian Henley. Sure, you might need a few extra CLAMs on hand, but you lose a lot fewer this way--and you get to worry a bit less about whether everyone has the right number of CLAMs out on the water before the seat-racing starts.

Got a slick system that makes things run smoothly at your place? Share your tips--and hacks--in the comments below.

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