Catch and Finish Rowing Drill - Improve Accuracy Improve Speed

​The Catch and Finish are the main pressure points of the rowing stroke. Many rowers can manage a pretty good catch and finish during training but often struggle to translate their skills when racing. 

In this video, Lachlan demonstrates a drill for improving the speed and accuracy of the catch and finish. The exercise can be done as a part of any training session and bridges the technique gap between low rate paddling and all-out race pace. 

Video Transcript

​when you're first teaching beginners how to row it's often useful to slow the rowing stroke down so it gets them to do exercises when they're tapping down you know slow hands away maybe a pause pause with the body over uh likewise at the catch it's him you know slowing the movement down this is really useful when you're teaching beginners how to row but when you someone gets the basic movements right it really becomes about a speed of movement and so most people can be relatively precise when they're rowing at you know 16 20 strokes a minute they'll tap down get the body over come through the catch get a relatively good catch but when it comes to a race scenario you're moving a lot quicker you have to be the water's moving a lot quicker as well so you have to pick it up quickly you have to get rid of it quickly it's almost like having something running on a conveyor belt that's moving slowly you have to pick it up put it down pick it up put it down the conveyor belt is moving two times as fast or three times as fast you have to be much quicker with your movement and the same is with rowing so you're gonna row along you have to be tapping out quickly and it's very complicated feathering feathering down and away as well as the squaring up so squaring the blade up and placing you have to be doing that very quickly so a good exercise when you're trying to improve both the finish and the catch is just to speed it up get the athlete to do it as quickly as possible so you don't have to push really hard through the water it doesn't have to be like a race pace sort of thing but you want to make sure that they're doing it quickly so cut down hands out as quick as possible come forward to the catch square up square up as quick as possible place the blade and you'll find it's very difficult for them to do this initially without tensing all their muscles up and becoming really rigid and that's a skill that you have to learn and it's a bit of a bit of patterning and a bit of practice but that's what you're going to have to do in a race you have to be able to rate quite highly you know at least over 30 maybe if you're more competitive up around 35 36 and in a crew boat maybe up around 40. so you have to get used to the really quick movement really precise and quick and clean at the finish letting go of the water letting it letting go of the water and at the catch so picking up the water you have to be quick you can't be grabbing in the shoulders you have to be really precise and so when the athlete's rowing along and doing this exercise doing the really quick hands away and then body over try and think about getting them to do extremely quick hands away tap down hands away and then the body over can maybe be you know half as quick and then as you come into the catch you can just go back to your rating 20 strokes a minute sort of pace so sort of let there be a bit of a tailing off period so quick quick relatively quick slow place and same with the catch so come into the catch you'll start speeding up around half slide out really quickly place push the first little bit quickly and then slow it down for the recovery back to the that 20 strokes a minute sort of pace and if you do either of these exercises for maybe a minute or two minutes you probably find like the athletes have quite sore muscles they're feeling muscles that they don't normally use because they're just not stressed enough to become uncomfortable when they're rowing along slowly so you don't really want to be pulling hard through the water you still want to be keeping it as part of your training session obviously if you're doing race pieces that's fine but you can't do race pieces long race pieces every session you can't train those muscles every session because it's too fatiguing on the body whereas if you think about instead of loading up with the legs and you know put driving really hard to get the you know the boat moving part of it's also about being clean so tap out come forward the athletes will also find it a lot easier to tap tap out and monitor how they're going because at the finish you can see the blades so you can look at your blade you can see if it comes out cleanly you can see if you're like dragging it out you can see if you're throwing water up so when they go tap out quick hands away they can instantly see instantly get that feedback if they've done it right at the catch it's a lot harder the coach will have to be be right on to them making sure that they're getting the right placement not missing water and so it's really about trying to get that precision with the speed of movement because that's what you're going to need at race pace