In the inaugural issue of my periodic contribution to writing about sculling, I’d like to talk about grip. As important an issue as it is, I used to be very reluctant to change a person’s way of holding the oar, because even for very skilled scullers a change like this can feel very disorienting for a time. However, I believe the end results are worth the effort it will take to make the adjustment.
First of all, let’s talk about why a proper grip is important. Because the muscles in the forearms and hands are smaller than, say, your quads, these muscles fatigue much more quickly than larger ones. They are thus the weakest link in the chain from you to the water. But they are also how your body connects with your work. Careful attention to how and how much these muscles are working is crucial for attaining relaxed, graceful rowing and for ensuring that as much as possible of your force transfers to the blades.
When I run my indoor “Grip Clinic” using an erg, two oar stands, and a pair of sculling oars, the first thing I do is to put a piece of packing tape on the handle of one oar and color it with a water-soluble marker. Then I take hold of the handle. As you’d expect, the wet ink stains my hand slightly. I use this to illustrate where the pressure points of the handle are on my hand. If you look at your palm, you will see that there is a region of soft flesh between the roots of your fingers and the two roughly horizontal lines going across your palm. This part of your palm is directly across from where your big knuckles are on the back of your hand. It is this region that is most closely in contact with the top of the handle.
When you hold your handles correctly, the main weight of your arm rests on the part of your hand I just described. The index finger should be close enough to the end of the handle that none of the grip is visible between your hand and thumb. This way, you ensure that you are using the maximum leverage of your oar. The thumb touches the end of the handle, pressing slightly outward to keep the oar’s collar butted up against the oarlock. The fingers curl under the handle, but do not grip it tightly.
On the drive, the part of your fingers where a wedding ring would be should face directly forward. Your big knuckles should face forward, not up. If they do face up, you will need to grip with your forearm to control the handle. On the other hand, if your wedding ring faces forward, it is the weight of your arm that controls the handle. This concept is the key to an efficient grip. We’ll talk about this more in a bit.
Here is a good way to attain this grip. Sit at arms-away with blades squared and buried. Adjust your hands so that your wedding ring is facing forward and the back of your hand, not your knuckles, is facing up. There should be a slight diagonal line down from your shoulder to your wrist to your knuckles. The wrist should be flat, as flat as if you had taped a tongue depressor to the back of your wrist.
On the recovery, the fingers should not have to grip the oar handle, though they will generally be touching it. Their job on the recovery is only to stabilize the oar so that it doesn’t twist or rotate in your hand. Your fingers should be relaxed enough (at least when it is flat out) so that you could lift them off the handle entirely on the hands-away. This is because you are connected with the handle by the roots of your fingers (exerting downward pressure) and by your thumbs (exerting outward pressure). Wrists should be flat, so that the heel of your hand does not touch the handle.
On the drive, the fingers are curled under the handle and hanging on but not squeezing. It is as if the fingers are cupping, rather than clenching, the handle. As you bring the handles toward the body, elbows go out to the sides as they do when you stand with your hands on your hips. Shoulders are low and relaxed. Because the handles go around in an arc, so will your hands – and they should naturally rotate slightly on the handles to accommodate.
Now we come to one of the magic parts of the stroke: the release. We will talk in more detail about the release in a future post, but for right know what you need to know is that you do not need to adjust your grip to release the blades from the water and feather them for the recovery. There are three events that happen, in very quick succession, to accomplish the change from drive to recovery. First, the hands reach the body. Optimally, they are about 4”-6” apart, with your thumb knuckles grazing your shirt approximately at the level of a heart rate monitor strap. The blades are fully underwater at this point. Second, when the hands sense that they are out of room to continue the stroke, the arms relax from the elbow down so that the weight of the hands quickly pops the blades out of the water. Finally, the wrists or thumbs begin the feathering motion.
The second of these events is most important to understand. Because the wrists are flat and the elbows are out from, not behind, the body; and because the main point of contact between you and the oar is the pad near the roots of your fingers, you do not need to do anything active to take the blades from the water. Instead, you just need to relax. Think of it not as pushing the handles down, but as letting your hands weigh more heavily on the handles. You are simply allowing the weight of your hands and forearms to deflect the path of the handles from horizontal to vertical.
Once your blades are about three quarters of the way extracted, you can start the feathering process. We'll discuss this more soon, but for right realize that after feathering, the wrists immediately flatten out – while your hands are still very close to your body – so that you gain control of the handles again using the weight of your arms and not the muscles of your forearms. The hand flexes, the heel of the hand pops up from the handle, and the wrists flatten. Then the hands begin their trajectory away from the body, and we’re on the recovery again, with perfectly flat wrists.
Next time, we’ll learn about some cues for you to look at to make sure you’re doing all this correctly, and for some drills to help you learn the right motions.
Generally, a good description of how to hold the blade - too many times have I seen rowers (Even good ones) who choose to try to line up the knuckles with the oar handle, even though this is not a relaxed nor instinctual grip!.
However, one thing you seem to have glanced over is the release - in reality, it is definitely possible, and directly observable, to see the oar feather just slightly while still fully buried. The reason is because as the oar face turns in the water, less force is applied to keep it square (since both the rower cannot pull as hard with just the arms, and because the face of the blade is now at an angle to the direction of intended motion). As a result, since the hands are pulling the handle in while resting on the top of the hangle, a slight torque is now proportionately larger than before (due to reduced force of water keeping the blade square). End result, a slight tilt of the blade while still buried. Advantage? A smoother and cleaner release than a purely square "drop & go" finish.
Posted by: caustic | May 12, 2008 at 08:27 PM
Generally, a good description of how to hold the blade - too many times have I seen rowers (Even good ones) who choose to try to line up the knuckles with the oar handle, even though this is not a relaxed nor instinctual grip!.
However, one thing you seem to have glanced over is the release - in reality, it is definitely possible, and directly observable, to see the oar feather just slightly while still fully buried. The reason is because as the oar face turns in the water, less force is applied to keep it square (since both the rower cannot pull as hard with just the arms, and because the face of the blade is now at an angle to the direction of intended motion). As a result, since the hands are pulling the handle in while resting on the top of the hangle, a slight torque is now proportionately larger than before (due to reduced force of water keeping the blade square). End result, a slight tilt of the blade while still buried. Advantage? A smoother and cleaner release than a purely square "drop & go" finish.
Posted by: caustic | May 12, 2008 at 08:28 PM
Caustic, you are absolutely right about glancing over the finish. It is the subject of an upcoming post. I like your explanation of how the blade tends to feather slightly underwater, though I think this is still a fairly complex issue. If it is all right with you, I may quote you in my post about the finish.
Posted by: Karen Chenausky | May 13, 2008 at 04:41 AM
No need to quote me! Frank Cunningham was the first one to tell (and show) me that feather finish. All credit goes to him for that one. Once you see it happen, it's definitely an "ah ha!" moment for the finish.
Posted by: caustic | May 13, 2008 at 10:38 AM
Karen:
First, I wanted to thank you for your comments and your advice, general and specific. Both are very helpful. Iit’s too bad we are stuck with words to suggest the intensity of the help you give, so let’s just say, Thanks.
But the last few days I have been playing around with a comment that is in a post of yours, that is someone catches with her butt. I have been doing all of this much more slowly, that is squaring up, slowing down the slide, then dropping in the blades, and (of course I now realize) sort of hanging at the catch.
So, I started trying to stop the wheels and catch with my rear end, if that makes any sense, and somehow, I guess because my hands are so light and shoulders so loose, the blades just go in and I am driving, with no check. The reason I know this is that I have a little Android app that gives speed, and the speed for 500 meters falls fifteen seconds even at light pressure by catching this way.
Well, all of this is sent to say thanks...Craig
Posted by: Craig Nova | September 12, 2011 at 03:48 PM