Mastering the Rowing Finish
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A good finish and recovery is a mix of precise movements and subtle timings.
In this video, John coaches Joel through a series of different techniques and exercises to improve the rowing stroke's finish and recovery. |
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Video Transcript
I want you to take note of the puddles that go out the back of the boat Joel just watch it go out now those puddles move away at the speed of your boat going through the water over the water and what you need to try and do is connect your handle speed to the puddle speed
and that will give you some indication a better indication of how fast you should come through the recovery but you first must step out cleanly and get the body length set and then follow the puddles then you feel your knees come up and then you push your legs down
do you understand where the boat is actually going the fastest where the highest velocity is when you're rowing
the boat speed the velocity of the boat where where does it go
about where you've just come into there now so yeah so that's why we've got to look at the puddle speeds because we're going faster or slower then that affects that velocity increase so if you're if you come off and and then you connect to the puddle and then as we if i walked you forward in this boat it would go this way yeah you know and that's what you're doing if you add a little bit to it but that's what i'm saying you know we need to fix up your finishes a little bit more so they're a little bit tidier and you've maximized the power that you've just produced at the end and then we become a little bit more relaxed at the front put the blade in the water you know because that is not a hard that's that shouldn't be hard that should be an easy it'll be a quick movement and sometimes moving quickly is very hard to do but you can only do move quickly if you're relaxed
you can't move quickly if you're under tension everything becomes a little bit more rigid
so um we'll just take off again and just see if you can just pick up that same sort of rhythm Joel
just take the rate down to about 18 strokes a minute if you can
just try just trying to create a bit more contrast between our recovery phase and our drive phase
leaving it right for the leg drive on the front
so the first thing we do around the back turn is press down not turn
so when you draw up you know the blades are square in the water the first thing we do is press down and then roll out
we call it uh somebody who's done the Cook's tour
Cook's tour of the row so captain cook was an explorer who discovered Australia and he went around Australia in and out of every bay you know this is you're doing the Cook's tour of the river in and out of every bay
can you do a roll-up
uh do you know what a roll-up is
yeah you've done a few that's a roll up you've done a few have you done a few have you done a lot of roll-ups
at some point yes so the good thing about a roll-up is it actually teaches you to push down first you can't you can't turn all right so you reduce the amount of force there's no there's no effort required to take the blade out of the water if you're if you're doing effort you're fighting against the water if you're fighting against the water you're pretty much slowing the boat down
so those releases are much better
all right the trick for you now Joel is to be able to increase the speed of the boat and you can do that without affecting the ends of the drive by being more dynamic through the middle of the drive or to the second half of the drive so just push your legs down a little quicker open up your body a little harder and make sure you push first
and then relax
and when you want to increase your boat speed always make sure you increase it through the drive phase
don't rush off the back don't rush off the back you've got to spend a little bit more time thinking about that shape
so you starting to get caught in the water now so you lost the ability to do step out you've increased the tension
so just draw up and step out a little more delay that feather
keep the handles back into the palm of the hands
increase your speed through the leg speed and your lower back muscles
that's better make sure you don't compromise the release
draw up step out you can move up the slide a little bit quicker because the puddles are moving faster and that'll allow the rate to increase but the back turn speed can maintain very close to being the same between 18 20 and 22 it doesn't have to be quicker don't lose the patience around the back
that last one was better
I started to find the idea
yeah so when you want to go faster you don't have to be quicker here yeah i know yeah
that was well demonstrated
yeah if you want to go faster just follow the puddles after you yeah so you can
but i was also playing there i know they said uh or it was when you asked me to be quicker in the drive uh usually always when i've been trying to go faster i've been aiming uh if if i do something in the drive phase i'm like trying to increase scores yeah but now i did it
i didn't increase the work maybe almost at all but then trying to do this quicker the second half drive the acceleration quicker yeah not taking the load with the legs
so the basic philosophy I learned earlier in my day is if you if you have a body and you push your hands right out like this all the muscles around the outer rim are the weakest muscles but they're also the fastest all the muscles in the centre circles are the strongest muscles but they're also the slowest
so why would you want to use one of these muscles to pick the catch up or come off the back if you want to go faster you don't have to come out here quickly you just have to step out and make sure the finish is properly done don't cut it short then you can move your handles away and um
yeah and that's already like uh that's tension that's tension trying to get it out you see i'm gonna try and get down but you shouldn't have to get it out it should pop out yeah so if you're if you've created a bend in the oar through the force and you're accelerating the boat that bend stays in but towards the end when your handles are starting to slow down a little bit that bend comes out and at that point is when you release immediately
the longer you can hold the bend but what happens what happens when people start turning their handle before they get to the finish the bend comes out pushes the blades under the water and you can't get them out they get stuck
so you need to create you need to create the vacuum behind the blade so when you release that'll just pop out and you can do that if you accelerate the handle properly which is what you're doing much better now than when you first started rowing
there's an exercise we do there's an exercise we do and it's called lazy feather i don't know if you've done it or you've read about it or heard about it on my videos
so if you take a stroke if you take a stroke and leave your handles here and let go with the hands take you got to take a stroke so it moves the boat just take a little bit more power just draw it up and leave the blades in the water and what happens there the blades turn
you don't have to turn them they'll turn
all right
you just draw them up and release the grip no turn you don't have to turn the wrist now we do lazy better we carry the blade all the way to the catch because i don't know if you understand the term sculling sculling sculling is was called in the early days when they were rowing their you know their work boats they just had round shafts they didn't have square blades and flat surfaces so how they found the water was they would just run the blade on the back of the thing and then they would release their grip a little bit and pull hard and the blade would just come up and lock up against the water
yeah but if you if you take that blades forward and just just initiate the drive a little bit just give it a quick pull with one arm just it'll square up
yeah just turn it forward just a whisker you just got to just now it'll square up all right you don't have to do much just a little bit so these blades are a little more difficult because they're a hatchet blade you have to come over you know the other ones were just ordinary macon blades and they were thin
so when we row lazy feather this is what we try to achieve
you want to try that just as a lazy feather just full slide leave the blades on the water all the time take a stroke release yep come forward as far as you can the blade's on the water you can roll out right as far as you can around into the front turn
just keep rowing uh Joel all the way roll it hit the blade now keep the blades on the water don't square them up just roll them just a little the blades on the water don't turn them down don't turn your wrist
full strokes, full strokes
just make it square so you catch the blade that's it go forward just a little bit but you've got to relax the grip and push your hip push your hips and then they'll lock off
yep
that's good
so draw up and relax let the blades be turned by the water
now the trick for you here is to increase the power through the second half and once once you've once you've locked up
just don't square up don't drop down to square up to square up don't push your handles down to square up just just roll your fingers under a little bit
you got to push it quickly for it to lock up
and you just gotta draw up and relax on around the back let the blades flow along top of the water
let's see those you've got the hang of it just push your legs open up your body a little quicker
good
let's be careful around the back turn you don't want to turn the wrist here
so what we're trying to do is break your natural cycle here
well it's it's a big it's a big picture thing at the end of the day but i thought you was doing that okay but what happens when when you start to pull hard when you start i mean and after time it gets a lot better obviously when you start to pull hard you tend to want to then go back to what you want to do so for us from for me to change your technique to where i want it to be i want you to be able to pull and relax here and minimize this movement but because you normally when you start pulling hard you just want to do this so this exercise allows you to do that without being worried about making a big mistake really at the end of the day you know so what i found with this exercise when we do it with crews and things like that everybody just sort of gets in and it takes a while to get going but everybody's been pulling really hard pulling really hard what happens is the blades start popping out because they're minimizing the movement they're getting a bit more better feel and the blades just start to come out and that's the finish we're after because we've carried the force all the way to the end and then they've just come out they just pop out but you can't
Maybe i was just doing the wrong thing i was not doing it right in here i was just
You were just trying to relax
the front turn has to be done with a bit of finesse in terms of just a little turn with the handle and a real sharp push with the legs because you need to you actually need to actually not that one no not that so you actually need where's my oar handle here
so what you end up doing is when you pull that there like that and lock on it just comes off so you can do it easy with these but you have to with those ones you just turn it and then you push and it locks up so if you if you turn it first if you go up here and turn it you end up going down but if you come here like that you're actually in the water very quickly
you're doing it earlier on you just turned you just got to turn your fingers underneath the handle a little bit and that's it and then just make sure it's square enough to pull in
i mean i think for tonight not to worry about that you just do the minimum amount of squaring up you need to take the catch uh and we'll get sort that other piece out a little bit later i think if we can work on the finish i think it's probably the key thing for tonight so just take off lazy feather see if we can work a bit more pressure and just see if we can learn to pull hard and relax and let the blade just be turned by the water on the release
follow the puddles when you when you take off just follow the puddle speed to gauge and as you increase in speed
and that will give you some indication a better indication of how fast you should come through the recovery but you first must step out cleanly and get the body length set and then follow the puddles then you feel your knees come up and then you push your legs down
do you understand where the boat is actually going the fastest where the highest velocity is when you're rowing
the boat speed the velocity of the boat where where does it go
about where you've just come into there now so yeah so that's why we've got to look at the puddle speeds because we're going faster or slower then that affects that velocity increase so if you're if you come off and and then you connect to the puddle and then as we if i walked you forward in this boat it would go this way yeah you know and that's what you're doing if you add a little bit to it but that's what i'm saying you know we need to fix up your finishes a little bit more so they're a little bit tidier and you've maximized the power that you've just produced at the end and then we become a little bit more relaxed at the front put the blade in the water you know because that is not a hard that's that shouldn't be hard that should be an easy it'll be a quick movement and sometimes moving quickly is very hard to do but you can only do move quickly if you're relaxed
you can't move quickly if you're under tension everything becomes a little bit more rigid
so um we'll just take off again and just see if you can just pick up that same sort of rhythm Joel
just take the rate down to about 18 strokes a minute if you can
just try just trying to create a bit more contrast between our recovery phase and our drive phase
leaving it right for the leg drive on the front
so the first thing we do around the back turn is press down not turn
so when you draw up you know the blades are square in the water the first thing we do is press down and then roll out
we call it uh somebody who's done the Cook's tour
Cook's tour of the row so captain cook was an explorer who discovered Australia and he went around Australia in and out of every bay you know this is you're doing the Cook's tour of the river in and out of every bay
can you do a roll-up
uh do you know what a roll-up is
yeah you've done a few that's a roll up you've done a few have you done a few have you done a lot of roll-ups
at some point yes so the good thing about a roll-up is it actually teaches you to push down first you can't you can't turn all right so you reduce the amount of force there's no there's no effort required to take the blade out of the water if you're if you're doing effort you're fighting against the water if you're fighting against the water you're pretty much slowing the boat down
so those releases are much better
all right the trick for you now Joel is to be able to increase the speed of the boat and you can do that without affecting the ends of the drive by being more dynamic through the middle of the drive or to the second half of the drive so just push your legs down a little quicker open up your body a little harder and make sure you push first
and then relax
and when you want to increase your boat speed always make sure you increase it through the drive phase
don't rush off the back don't rush off the back you've got to spend a little bit more time thinking about that shape
so you starting to get caught in the water now so you lost the ability to do step out you've increased the tension
so just draw up and step out a little more delay that feather
keep the handles back into the palm of the hands
increase your speed through the leg speed and your lower back muscles
that's better make sure you don't compromise the release
draw up step out you can move up the slide a little bit quicker because the puddles are moving faster and that'll allow the rate to increase but the back turn speed can maintain very close to being the same between 18 20 and 22 it doesn't have to be quicker don't lose the patience around the back
that last one was better
I started to find the idea
yeah so when you want to go faster you don't have to be quicker here yeah i know yeah
that was well demonstrated
yeah if you want to go faster just follow the puddles after you yeah so you can
but i was also playing there i know they said uh or it was when you asked me to be quicker in the drive uh usually always when i've been trying to go faster i've been aiming uh if if i do something in the drive phase i'm like trying to increase scores yeah but now i did it
i didn't increase the work maybe almost at all but then trying to do this quicker the second half drive the acceleration quicker yeah not taking the load with the legs
so the basic philosophy I learned earlier in my day is if you if you have a body and you push your hands right out like this all the muscles around the outer rim are the weakest muscles but they're also the fastest all the muscles in the centre circles are the strongest muscles but they're also the slowest
so why would you want to use one of these muscles to pick the catch up or come off the back if you want to go faster you don't have to come out here quickly you just have to step out and make sure the finish is properly done don't cut it short then you can move your handles away and um
yeah and that's already like uh that's tension that's tension trying to get it out you see i'm gonna try and get down but you shouldn't have to get it out it should pop out yeah so if you're if you've created a bend in the oar through the force and you're accelerating the boat that bend stays in but towards the end when your handles are starting to slow down a little bit that bend comes out and at that point is when you release immediately
the longer you can hold the bend but what happens what happens when people start turning their handle before they get to the finish the bend comes out pushes the blades under the water and you can't get them out they get stuck
so you need to create you need to create the vacuum behind the blade so when you release that'll just pop out and you can do that if you accelerate the handle properly which is what you're doing much better now than when you first started rowing
there's an exercise we do there's an exercise we do and it's called lazy feather i don't know if you've done it or you've read about it or heard about it on my videos
so if you take a stroke if you take a stroke and leave your handles here and let go with the hands take you got to take a stroke so it moves the boat just take a little bit more power just draw it up and leave the blades in the water and what happens there the blades turn
you don't have to turn them they'll turn
all right
you just draw them up and release the grip no turn you don't have to turn the wrist now we do lazy better we carry the blade all the way to the catch because i don't know if you understand the term sculling sculling sculling is was called in the early days when they were rowing their you know their work boats they just had round shafts they didn't have square blades and flat surfaces so how they found the water was they would just run the blade on the back of the thing and then they would release their grip a little bit and pull hard and the blade would just come up and lock up against the water
yeah but if you if you take that blades forward and just just initiate the drive a little bit just give it a quick pull with one arm just it'll square up
yeah just turn it forward just a whisker you just got to just now it'll square up all right you don't have to do much just a little bit so these blades are a little more difficult because they're a hatchet blade you have to come over you know the other ones were just ordinary macon blades and they were thin
so when we row lazy feather this is what we try to achieve
you want to try that just as a lazy feather just full slide leave the blades on the water all the time take a stroke release yep come forward as far as you can the blade's on the water you can roll out right as far as you can around into the front turn
just keep rowing uh Joel all the way roll it hit the blade now keep the blades on the water don't square them up just roll them just a little the blades on the water don't turn them down don't turn your wrist
full strokes, full strokes
just make it square so you catch the blade that's it go forward just a little bit but you've got to relax the grip and push your hip push your hips and then they'll lock off
yep
that's good
so draw up and relax let the blades be turned by the water
now the trick for you here is to increase the power through the second half and once once you've once you've locked up
just don't square up don't drop down to square up to square up don't push your handles down to square up just just roll your fingers under a little bit
you got to push it quickly for it to lock up
and you just gotta draw up and relax on around the back let the blades flow along top of the water
let's see those you've got the hang of it just push your legs open up your body a little quicker
good
let's be careful around the back turn you don't want to turn the wrist here
so what we're trying to do is break your natural cycle here
well it's it's a big it's a big picture thing at the end of the day but i thought you was doing that okay but what happens when when you start to pull hard when you start i mean and after time it gets a lot better obviously when you start to pull hard you tend to want to then go back to what you want to do so for us from for me to change your technique to where i want it to be i want you to be able to pull and relax here and minimize this movement but because you normally when you start pulling hard you just want to do this so this exercise allows you to do that without being worried about making a big mistake really at the end of the day you know so what i found with this exercise when we do it with crews and things like that everybody just sort of gets in and it takes a while to get going but everybody's been pulling really hard pulling really hard what happens is the blades start popping out because they're minimizing the movement they're getting a bit more better feel and the blades just start to come out and that's the finish we're after because we've carried the force all the way to the end and then they've just come out they just pop out but you can't
Maybe i was just doing the wrong thing i was not doing it right in here i was just
You were just trying to relax
the front turn has to be done with a bit of finesse in terms of just a little turn with the handle and a real sharp push with the legs because you need to you actually need to actually not that one no not that so you actually need where's my oar handle here
so what you end up doing is when you pull that there like that and lock on it just comes off so you can do it easy with these but you have to with those ones you just turn it and then you push and it locks up so if you if you turn it first if you go up here and turn it you end up going down but if you come here like that you're actually in the water very quickly
you're doing it earlier on you just turned you just got to turn your fingers underneath the handle a little bit and that's it and then just make sure it's square enough to pull in
i mean i think for tonight not to worry about that you just do the minimum amount of squaring up you need to take the catch uh and we'll get sort that other piece out a little bit later i think if we can work on the finish i think it's probably the key thing for tonight so just take off lazy feather see if we can work a bit more pressure and just see if we can learn to pull hard and relax and let the blade just be turned by the water on the release
follow the puddles when you when you take off just follow the puddle speed to gauge and as you increase in speed