So easy, in fact, that I’ve been remiss in getting some new content out to you all. I can only hope that you, too, have been enjoying warm weather and time with good friends. Because the livin’ is easy, this post will concern the recovery.
The recovery begins as soon as you take your blades out of the water, because that is be beginning of the portion of the stroke where you are no longer propelling the boat. Instead, the boat is gliding of its own accord, and your job is to interfere with this as little as possible. Moreover, since your blades are no longer in the water, what you do becomes more separated from what the boat does.
To illustrate this, imagine that you’ve been rowing on a body of water that you share with motorized pleasure craft, and one of them has waked you and swamped your boat. Your cockpit is filled with water, and you want to get it out. You don’t want to use your water bottle as a bailer, because you might want to drink from the bottle. You might not have a sponge with you. What to do? [I highly recommend keeping an inexpensive kitchen sponge in your boat as a permanent habit. The sponge is lightweight when dry and soaks up the last little bit of water. It is inexpensive, and you can wedge it between your foot stretcher and the hull while you are rowing so that you’ll always have it at the ready].
Of course you could stop at a neighboring boathouse’s dock, take your oars out, and pour the water out of your boat. But if you’re on a body of water where there are no other boathouses, you might want to try The Kick. With your blades flat on the water, come up to the catch position and thrust your legs sternward all of a sudden. (You may need to do this more than once). If you’ve done it well, then the water that’s in your cockpit will surge to the stern and wash up and out of the boat.
The reason this maneuver is relevant to the recovery has to do with momentum. In classical mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and the velocity of an object. This means that even a large (massive) object can have relatively low momentum if it is moving very slowly. Likewise, even a small object can have relatively high momentum if it has a high velocity. When one object collides with another, some of its momentum can transfer to the other object. And if the other object’s mass does not change, then its speed will.
When your oars are not in the water, you and your boat are free to move separately. You’ve probably done this once or twice after a piece or if you’re cold: you sit with your blades flat on the water and just roll back and forth on your wheels. The center of gravity of you-plus-your-boat stays put, but your personal center of gravity and your boat’s center of gravity change places. When you do The Kick, you’re taking advantage of this transfer of momentum from you to the boat, and from the boat to the water inside it. You rapidly exert a force against your foot stretchers, which has the effect of sliding your boat’s center of gravity toward your feet (and the water with it). Since your feet are tied into the foot stretchers, your boat stops moving relative to you as soon as your feet pull on the tops of the shoes. But the water isn’t attached to the boat and shoots sternward (and, it is hoped, out of the boat).
Now imagine what happens when you come zooming into the stern on the recovery, especially if you make the turnaround before your blades are buried. You’ve imparted a large sternward force to the boat – precisely the opposite direction from where you want the boat to go!
This is “rushing.” Luckily, there is a cure for it.
There are a lot of ways to think about how not to rush, but first let’s review the canonical order of the movements on the recovery. For simplicity, let’s assume that we’re rowing square blades, so we don’t have to worry about when to square. We can cover that in another post.
Canonically, your handles move away from your body as the first action on the recovery. When your arms are almost all the way outstretched, your body rotates over from the hips (it doesn’t bend at the waist). When it is in its forward position, your seat moves toward your foot stretcher, and when you’re almost all the way in your catch position, your oars drop into the water.
That’s it. That’s the recovery.
As we said, though, mostly the recovery is about how not to disturb the boat. So here are some ways to let the boat glide out as much as possible.
First, move the handles away from your body at about the same speed as they moved in to the body. It may help to imagine that the handles are on an oval-shaped conveyer belt, so that they come in, move down, and move away smoothly and all at the same speed. Once you’ve started the handles on their path for the recovery, keep them roughly at the same speed. That is, DON’T speed them up, and only slightly slow them before the end of the recovery – more about this in a second or two.
Once your arms are almost all the way outstretched, you can rotate your body over from the hips. Don’t lock your elbows out, but have them in balance with biceps and triceps. To get the feeling of this, point to something out your window. Your arm will be outstretched and almost straight, but you won’t be forcing the elbow open with your triceps. That taut-but-not-tight feeling is what you’ll want on the recovery. Keeping your shoulders low and your lats a little taut will also help rotate the elbows down and keep them from locking out or hyperextending.
As you rotate your body over, ensure that you are doing so from the hips, not from the waist. Your lower back should feel straight, not relaxed and curved. Some people actually feel as though they are slightly arching their backs when they do this, because of the difference between what they had been doing and what they are doing when it’s correct. If you can’t tell by feel, find a mirror at a gym and stand with it to your right or left. Then, bend from the hips, keeping your back flat. Look in the mirror and see how flat your back really is. If it’s arched slightly up or down, correct it and then memorize the feeling. If you have access to an erg next to a mirror, even better. Sit at the finish, so that your back feels straight and is angled bow-ward. Then rock over, keeping the back feeling straight, and stop in the body angle position. Your lower back should now be angled sternward. Just get as much body angle as you can without feeling too much of a pull behind your knees – it’s okay if you can’t get too much forward body angle. I don’t think there is a rule about how much is needed, and plan to discuss this in a future post.
As you achieve your desired body angle, relax your legs. Once you’ve achieved as much body angle as you want, think about how your heels rest in the heel cups of the shoes. Use just the gentle pressure of your heels to pull your seat up to the foot stretchers.
Many coaches tell their scullers to move up the slide slower than the speed at which the boat moves through the water. Others will tell their rowers to feel the boat move underneath them. Both of these suggestions help you choose an overall speed for your recovery which does not disturb the boat’s run, and allows you to alight gently in the stern without imparting too much sternward velocity to the boat. You can even imagine that your body is staying in the same position relative to a landmark on shore, while the boat moves forward under you.
Once the handles have been started on the recovery portion of their conveyer belt, let them stay at the same velocity. Instead of feeling as though you are falling into the catch (which means that your seat is speeding up as it approaches the stern) , feel as though you are rolling your wheels uphill slightly. This will help you actually slow down as you approach the catch position, and that will allow you enough time to bury your blades before starting the next drive.
In terms of momentum, the idea is to have it remain constant on the recovery. (This isn’t a literal interpretation, but an intuitive one). Here’s how the metaphor works: Your hands and arms are little, comparatively, so they can move relatively quickly. Your upper body is larger, so it will feel like it is moving more slowly than the hands. And when you begin to move your whole body, you have to feel as though it is moving more slowly still, because it is that much heavier than the previous parts you were moving.
Sometimes scullers feel as though a quicker hands-away movement right after the release is rushing. I can’t deny how it feels to them, but I can say that because your hands will be moving relatively quickly, it will leave more time for your seat to move. Thus, your body will be able to move more slowly. And that prevents rushing. It does that by keeping your body’s momentum low, so that less sternward velocity will be transferred to the shell.
Other times, scullers feel as though they are not rushing because they start their hands out at a good velocity, then slow down as they approach the body angle position. But then they speed up when their bodies approach the catch position. This is rushing, because it makes you feel as though you’re “landing” at the catch instead of alighting there. The idea is to actively bring your heels to your seat – actively not as in quickly, but as in a controlled manner, being aware of every inch your wheels traverse as you compress.
One coach I met recently, Martin Schwartz of Riverside Boat Club in Cambridge MA, told his scullers to “let the boat breathe” on the recovery. I loved this way of thinking. Really, I suppose it’s me who’s breathing, but consciously allowing time for myself to almost sigh on the recovery is an effective way of not only taking my time but also of relaxing my body as I recompress.
I’ve resisted mentioning Pick Drill until now, but it’s also relevant to the recovery. I like to think about my body achieving each and every station of Pick Drill as I move through the recovery. My college coach, Mayrene Earle, used to tell us to “move through the pauses”, and I often remember her words on the recovery as well.
Next time, I’ll give you some drills and sensory cues that can help you self-monitor your way to a relaxed and low-momentum recovery. As always, comments are welcome.