2 Key Elements of a Clean Rowing Finish

In this video, Lachlan Davey demonstrates the two elements which combine to produce a clean finish. The way a rower releases the blade after the drive has a significant impact on boat speed and crew harmony. 

A clean finish is an efficient finish and indicates that the rower is wasting very little energy around the back-turn. If a rower is throwing water backward at the finish, it means they are no longer holding the water and driving the boat toward the end of the drive phase. If athletes get their blades caught in the water at the finish, this will also slow the boat and interrupt the rhythm. 

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Video Transcript

​a lot of coaches will talk about uh rowing with square blades and especially tapping out square so what they're talking about you come all the way to the finish and the first movement you do is you push the arms down like this pivoting from the elbow and the blade comes out square so basically like that and the thinking behind this is that you stay locked on and effective throughout the stroke until you get to the finish the main thing you want to do is be able to get a full effective stroke all the way to the finish and then as you tap out you start to feather so blade comes through square get to the finish and as you tap out of the water you feather at the same time because once you get there's not much difference in the stroke whether you start feathering here or once you've feathered here in actual fact when you if you tap out square and then feather you're really making it a segmented sort of uh non-flowing motion you want to make it continuous as you tap out your feather so tap feather roll the handle out tap feather come through to the catch making sure you hold the weight through and the handles all the way to the finish so you want to have finish in a strong position and be picking the boat up at the catch sure pushing with the legs but carrying it all the way to the finish when i'm rowing i have a tendency to start cutting it off a bit early so dropping the power about here and tapping out and that's not ideal what i really want to be doing is power all the way through to the tap out it'll actually make it easier to tap out because the you're moving the water a bit more it's easier to slide the blade out so if you're not very good at rowing with square blades or you don't like it that much it's not the biggest problem in the world but you do need to make sure that you're getting all the way to the finish before you tap down there's a reason why we race with feathered blades not square blades and because the movement's a lot easier a lot faster and it flows a lot better so think about drawing all the way through tapping down gliding forward as you tap down your feather you don't want to be lifting the water up you don't want to be holding it in too far and then sort of trying to tap it out getting stuck and like banging your oars on the water you have to anticipate the finish come through tap down feather at the same time and then flow out forward nice and flowing motion you shouldn't be getting caught on the water it shouldn't be too difficult to do once you get the hang of it