Rowing Sequence Drill

In this video, John and Joel demonstrate a great drill to help athletes improve their rowing sequence. This drill improves the sequence of movements on the recovery and during the drive phase. As a result, the rower's sequence on the recovery closely matches their sequence on the drive.

Video Transcript

I wouldn't mind you taking off arms only square blades now one of the things we like to do when we row square blades you don't row square blades too badly but what we do a the end of the stroke is we just open up our fingers so we are actually just feeling the handle pressure down you can feel the grip pushing up into the palm of your hand you need to feel that all the way out to the front alright so we will just start off arms only with square blades just at the end of the stroke just drop your fingers off the bottom of the grip like this? Yes exactly like this so the first arms only exercise is where you keep your body nice and still just like if you were up against a brick wall just your arms go out and away see if you watch your wrists when you when you go around the backturn your wrists turn down we don't want the wrists to turn down we don't want the wrists to turn down we want you to push the palm of the hand down alright push the palm of the hand down that's it yes lets go to body swing so you can reach out a little further just make sure you only reach when your arm is straight just push away open up yep just press down and open up your fingers yep probably just need to come to your stroke side a little bit yep that s good lets go to quarter slide when you are reaching you should be able to feel your hamstrings stretch a little on the back of that hamstring stretch is when we release the knees now the thing about this part of the exercise is the knees are the last thing that comes up joel it is the first thing that goes down so you have got to really push and you won't feel connected because its a really sensitive timing thing here you being able to drop the blade in and lock on at the same time just open up drop the blade push the legs lean back it will feel funny out of sequence but it will all fall together that's it jus tpush that seat and fire up those leg muscles lets go out to half slide joel that's it handles away body over knees up knees down body on try and relax the arms just open up the palms and make sure we are pressing down evenly on both sides lets roll out to three quarter slide Joel now head out to full slide a little bit to your bow side Joel bow side joel alright holding good sequence there that's good the good thing about that for me is I bet you it feels different a lot I haven't found pressure in that way in that legs only exercise I mean now when I was reaching that full slide I had that feeling that I still have that pressure there even though I was working a bit less
yep the pressure is there but if your seat is not accelerating to the bow you are not going as fast as you possibly can yeah alright.