Lazy Feather Rowing Exercise
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In this video, John introduces his Number 1 exercise for improving balance in the boat. John's work in quads has seen his crews to two World Cup Golds in 2016 and a silver medal at the Rio Olympics as well as a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
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Video Transcript
Instead of getting them to row square blades
let them come out and let the blade come back onto the water straight onto the feather that maintains their confidence so if you've got one blade locked here feathered and they're here they can come forward they can put the blade in the water put along and then feather the blade all right so at this point they're actually learning how to square they're learning how to square they are learning how to pull
and they're learning how to feather at that higher point
it doesn't come off the water it stays on the water all right so you do that a few times with one blade that you change then you do it with the other blade all right and then when they go to row with both blades they just run the blade across the top of the water square it up put it in draw it through and roll it out and they're happy to go rowing all right
so i have it i mean this is what i call a lazy feather all right if you think about when a boat is moving along the water and the blade is sitting below the water level or half the blade is sitting below the water level what do you think that blade wants to do
slow the boat down or roll onto its back
all right so
now just i mean it'll it'll come out it'll naturally come out but i mean it this is a little bit of a skill but you could actually you could actually achieve this by um what you want them to do is to actually initiate the roll just like that you know that you want them to initiate the roll and leave the blade on the water because what happens when they take both blades off the water certainly they rock around they grab hold of the blade and you've got no chance you've got no chance so if you could get 2 000 of these done before their first race there's a good chance they could actually row the race lazy feather now how many when you see a rower rowing a race for its first time what's actually slowing them down the mistakes they make every fifth stroke every second stroke every third stroke how much do you think keeping the blade running across the top of the water will slow the boat down unless it's you know just really rough not a great idea but if they could actually come forward and be relaxed put the blade in pull hard just then come forward relax pull the blade hard it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as somebody coming forward missing the first part of the stroke dragging it out getting caught sitting back up
does that make sense here and and what we're actually doing there is we're actually teaching them we're actually teaching him how to feather properly
you know we're actually teaching him so they actually go in the race don't worry about winning just want you to do this if you do this you'll have won the race in your own mind you'll have done a great job then when they come to me i won't have to worry about you know
um it's very minimal we um i mean my quad my my quads do lazy feather they love it they love it because it teaches them the relaxation they they they improve their catches and improves their finishes and we we see very minimal distance difference i mean and the touching of the water is actually the difficult for a person who's never done lazy feather is to keep the blade on the water it's the hardest thing i do actually have a little bit of video there i took some video of a few of our rowers the other morning and this is this this is not an experienced rower it's just what about
school athletes moved into club rowing
now i took i took a video of this bloke i have videos of others but they couldn't do it
because i mean they've never been taught
he's only just managing to keep the blade on water and you don't know how hard it is for that bloke to do that it's quite a big effort you know to actually be able to uh
now i had the luxury of coaching uh the Hutchins open eight boys in pairs for sessions
this season so they don't generally race small boats so they come down they jump in the pair and none of them could square none of them would feather when they rowed they were rocking around and all this sort of stuff they couldn't do a roll up together all of this sort of stuff and so what are we going to do with this lot so i taught him how to row lazy feather and instantly from there they're actually rowing balanced and actually could row you know uh 10 5 to 10 k's and not bang bash but what we found after a time when they actually relax into the exercise the blades actually just start coming off the water now before what had happened before what was happening before the bow man was doing this the stroke man was doing this the blade was the boat was doing this that lazy feather what were they doing oh i've got to keep the blade on the water push it away gotta put the blade on the wall and push it away and then what happens oh yeah just a little bit of pressure blade comes off the water and we're starting to get some balance and some coaching all right so you can persist as long as you like with oh you've got to push down harder you've got to pull up harder you've got to learn to feather properly all of these sort of things you can spend times on techniques but this actually improves the blokes out of sight and the boys actually enjoyed it at the end of the day i mean they struggled there were still some people that always had to push a little bit and then let the blade come back up because that was his natural tendency so some people are going to take longer than others you know so this bloke he's probably never done this exercise before but he's he's managed the best of it
let them come out and let the blade come back onto the water straight onto the feather that maintains their confidence so if you've got one blade locked here feathered and they're here they can come forward they can put the blade in the water put along and then feather the blade all right so at this point they're actually learning how to square they're learning how to square they are learning how to pull
and they're learning how to feather at that higher point
it doesn't come off the water it stays on the water all right so you do that a few times with one blade that you change then you do it with the other blade all right and then when they go to row with both blades they just run the blade across the top of the water square it up put it in draw it through and roll it out and they're happy to go rowing all right
so i have it i mean this is what i call a lazy feather all right if you think about when a boat is moving along the water and the blade is sitting below the water level or half the blade is sitting below the water level what do you think that blade wants to do
slow the boat down or roll onto its back
all right so
now just i mean it'll it'll come out it'll naturally come out but i mean it this is a little bit of a skill but you could actually you could actually achieve this by um what you want them to do is to actually initiate the roll just like that you know that you want them to initiate the roll and leave the blade on the water because what happens when they take both blades off the water certainly they rock around they grab hold of the blade and you've got no chance you've got no chance so if you could get 2 000 of these done before their first race there's a good chance they could actually row the race lazy feather now how many when you see a rower rowing a race for its first time what's actually slowing them down the mistakes they make every fifth stroke every second stroke every third stroke how much do you think keeping the blade running across the top of the water will slow the boat down unless it's you know just really rough not a great idea but if they could actually come forward and be relaxed put the blade in pull hard just then come forward relax pull the blade hard it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as somebody coming forward missing the first part of the stroke dragging it out getting caught sitting back up
does that make sense here and and what we're actually doing there is we're actually teaching them we're actually teaching him how to feather properly
you know we're actually teaching him so they actually go in the race don't worry about winning just want you to do this if you do this you'll have won the race in your own mind you'll have done a great job then when they come to me i won't have to worry about you know
um it's very minimal we um i mean my quad my my quads do lazy feather they love it they love it because it teaches them the relaxation they they they improve their catches and improves their finishes and we we see very minimal distance difference i mean and the touching of the water is actually the difficult for a person who's never done lazy feather is to keep the blade on the water it's the hardest thing i do actually have a little bit of video there i took some video of a few of our rowers the other morning and this is this this is not an experienced rower it's just what about
school athletes moved into club rowing
now i took i took a video of this bloke i have videos of others but they couldn't do it
because i mean they've never been taught
he's only just managing to keep the blade on water and you don't know how hard it is for that bloke to do that it's quite a big effort you know to actually be able to uh
now i had the luxury of coaching uh the Hutchins open eight boys in pairs for sessions
this season so they don't generally race small boats so they come down they jump in the pair and none of them could square none of them would feather when they rowed they were rocking around and all this sort of stuff they couldn't do a roll up together all of this sort of stuff and so what are we going to do with this lot so i taught him how to row lazy feather and instantly from there they're actually rowing balanced and actually could row you know uh 10 5 to 10 k's and not bang bash but what we found after a time when they actually relax into the exercise the blades actually just start coming off the water now before what had happened before what was happening before the bow man was doing this the stroke man was doing this the blade was the boat was doing this that lazy feather what were they doing oh i've got to keep the blade on the water push it away gotta put the blade on the wall and push it away and then what happens oh yeah just a little bit of pressure blade comes off the water and we're starting to get some balance and some coaching all right so you can persist as long as you like with oh you've got to push down harder you've got to pull up harder you've got to learn to feather properly all of these sort of things you can spend times on techniques but this actually improves the blokes out of sight and the boys actually enjoyed it at the end of the day i mean they struggled there were still some people that always had to push a little bit and then let the blade come back up because that was his natural tendency so some people are going to take longer than others you know so this bloke he's probably never done this exercise before but he's he's managed the best of it