Catch Drills.

Before I begin explaining the drills I like to use for practicing blade placement, a disclaimer.

Many of these drills are going to involve rowing (at first) with very little boat speed, placing the blades in the water, and then pulling through only when you have determined that the blades are fully in the water.  Because you’ll be rowing slowly and pausing blades buried at the catch, you are going to feel unstable. So don’t do them on your first day out of the week – we all know that when they aren’t being rowed, singles get skinnier and more tippy.  Pick the flattest, most mirrorlike day you can, and bring all your patience with you.  And if you hate me for assigning you these drills, that’s okay.  I can take it. 

Arm circles for blade placement:  Start by working on a good blade trajectory.  Sit with one handle braced against your middriff, blade feathered, and leaning slightly on that blade.  With the other hand, row arm-only or arm-and-back only, square blade.  As you approach the catch on these short strokes, raise your handles so that your blade curves down toward the water and plunks in just at the furthest point in its trajectory.  The bottom edge of the blade should trace out a path like this:

Crucially, the bottom edge shouldn’t travel like this toward the water:

If it does, then you’ve missed water and shortened the arc of your stroke. 

Even if the blades do start to enter the water on the top trajectory, though, you have to be careful not to start the drive until they are completely buried.  If you don’t, you’ll start the stroke with a half-blade of water, which is the rowing equivalent of skidding.  Think about when you ride a bicycle.  If you’re on a sandy patch and you start pedaling, you have to pedal very gently at first, so that your tires stay in contact with the ground and push against it, instead of just spinning in place.  It’s the same thing at the catch.  You have to wait till the blades are enough so that they aren’t going to tear through the water half-buried.  You also have to push just enough right at first to keep a good grip on the water, not so hard that you rip through the water.  –But we can talk more about initiating the drive in a later post. 

The feeling I have when I place the blades is sometimes like I almost just stick them in the water when I’m ready to take the catch, even if it’s a catch at arms-and-back only.  But because my hands, arms, and shoulders aren’t rigid, it’s okay.  I’m all ready to make the turnaround from recovery to drive, I insert the blades into their imaginary slots, and am immediately ready to press spoon side of the blades up against the water. 

When you get good at placing one blade into the water, try doing the same thing with two at the same time, just at arms-and-body.  At first, try it with isolated strokes:  Place the blades in the water, pull through with no effort, and let the boat run until it’s out of speed or check the boat down before trying the next stroke.  When you feel that you’re able to consistently reproduce the top trajectory instead of the bottom one, you can try it with a little boat speed. 

When you add boat speed in the equation things become more complicated because you won’t be able to pause as long as you want with the blades buried unless you want to check the boat down.  And if you were to do this, your hands, arms, and shoulders would have to be rigid – and that’s exactly what we are trying to avoid at the catch. 

So when you practice blade placement at arms-and-body, be ready to sense the back-pressure of the water pushing the handles back at you.  Plunk the blades in the water nice and quick, feel how the shafts of the oars “loosen up” in the oarlocks (or even wiggle them back and forth once or twice), then pull through.  Plunk, wiggle, pull. 

It’s important to be pretty decisive when placing the blades in the water, or you’ll end up dipping the bottom edge of the blade in the water, sensing when it is buried, and then starting your drive with a quarter blade of water.  While that’s better than starting the drive with the blade completely out of the water, it’s not all that much better.  So be sure you’re getting the whole blade in the water before you go.  You don’t have to raise the hands fast or jam the blades in the water, just let the blades plunk in on their own like dropping a rock.  Practicing this at arms-and-body is good because you can more easily look at the blades as you put them in, monitoring their depth and correlating that with the feeling of the handles in your hands, before you initiate your drive.  While it’s possible to do this at a full-slide catch, it’s really hard at first and could result in flipping.  And then you’d really hate me. 

As you get better at sensing when the blades are buried, you can pull through with more and more pressure.  But if you’re new to this drill sequence, try it with zero pressure at first -- just go through the motions, don't really move the boat.  Once you’ve assured yourself that you can do it with little or no boat speed, you can easily move up to a paddle pressure.  But take the time to check first that you really can plunk and wiggle first before you pull. 

You can stay at arms-and-back while practicing the plunk-and-wiggle or plunk-then-pull until you get to full pressure if you want.  I like to do this because it’s so much easier to watch the blades and correlate the splash pattern, trajectory, and the feel with each other.  But some people prefer to move right to the slide portion of the recovery, and I think this has a merit as well.  Recalling my friend Kate’s “catch with your butt” dictum, it will be important to be able to create the correct placement timing and drive-initiation timing with the slide, not just the arms and hands. 

But once you introduce the slide into the equation, it does make things more difficult.  First of all, you’ll be in a tippier position, and that makes it SO much more tempting to jam the drive right away in an effort to relieve that tippiness.  If you have the opportunity to practice blade placement on the slide in a double with someone sitting out and balancing the boat for you, or to practice it in a learn-to-row single, take it.  You won’t regret it.  The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll discover you did really know how to do this after all, and then you can feel superior.  And if people tease you for rowing a tubby single, you can smile calmly as you row easily past th, watching them hack at the water. 

Regardless of in which boat you begin to practice blade placement on the slide, though, check the boat down almost to a stop between strokes at first.  Practice putting the blades in, waiting for the back-pressure of the water to signal “blades buried”, and then pushing.  That feeling, that patience, is the crux of what you’re working to develop here.  It’s a hard skill – I think perhaps the hardest one of the stroke – but it results in a big payoff.  When I get my catches right, I see an immediate 3- to 5-second improvement in my 500m splits.  That’s nothing to sneeze at. 

To recap a little:  start by practicing blade placement one arm at a time.  Then move to arms-and-body, checking it down between each stroke at first, then moving to zero pressure continuous arms-and-back rowing.  Keep hands, arms, and shoulders relaxed as you place the blades so that you can feel the water gently pushing the handles to you.  You can even use your lats to lock the blade in the water and press the shaft up against the pin.  This will have the effect of lowering your shoulders and rotating your elbows slightly down and to the sides.  It’s okay to take the catch like this, even though you might think your arms are bent and that’s a no-no.  It’s okay because your arms will stay like that through the first part of the drive; they won’t straighten out and make you lose connection. 

When blade has the right trajectory and you know what it feels like to place then pull, move to arms and body.  Plunk blade, wait for back-pressure, pull.  Check down.  Repeat.  As you become more practiced, don’t check down, but do use very little pressure.  Increase pressure as you become more used to the correct timing and waiting for the blades to tell you they are buried before you initiate the drive. 

Then move to quarter-slide or half-slide, using very little pressure at first and checking the boat down between strokes.  Leave out checking down the boat after you achieve the right drive timing, but still use zero pressure.  Take the pressure up gradually, but keep a very low rating to keep the boat speed low.  Always make sure the blades are fully buried before you press, by waiting for that back-pressure signal in your relaxed hands and shoulders. 

When your timing is stable, you can work up to doing this drill at full slide.  All the same caveats apply, but the one about increasing pressure exceptionally slowly is even more important here.  That’s because as you start imitating normal rowing, you’re going to more easily fall into your old motor habits.  So make sure that you are conscious of performing the motion correctly, even if it’s so deliberate that it’s awkward at first.  It will get better, but you don’t want to compress the amount of time you have to test that the blades are buried too much at first.  You can play with the rating later on; for now just increase boat speed with pressure and keep the rating below a 15. 

If you’re sitting waiting for someone to show up for pieces, you can try the drill my friend Aleks does.  He sits at three-quarter slide, squares his blades as he comes into the catch, and places his blades in the water right as his seat stops -- or stops his seat by putting the blades in the water.  Then he takes them right out again and goes back to three-quarter slide.  He does that over and over again, just practicing the placement and seat timing.  It’s an advanced drill, so maybe you want to wait until a hot day when you might not mind tipping over anyway. 

But if you row on a body of water you don’t want to fall into, you can try what I think are called “rustys”.  (I usually just call them "finish-to-catch drills").  You start at the finish, blades squared and buried.  Release the blades, feather, come up to the slide using your perfect recovery technique, and place the blades in the water just as your seat stops.  Wait a split second, then press your feet to the footboards and row through, letting the boat run afterward.  Check it down and repeat.  Again, the issue is going to be to practice the timing of placing the blades into their slots on the water just as the seat stops in the stern, and letting the blades slot completely into the water before starting the drive. 

Happy catching!

Comments

[Eugene]

Karen, I continue to find your blog instructive and helpful. This past weekend I focused as best I could on the release, aiming to achieve the release by simply relaxing my forearms. I think I experienced what you describe in your early blogs. Unfortunately, I failed in my next assignment regarding the grip: I had a hard time focusing on the grip because I still feel so unstable. I told myself that it's like a bicycle - with time and practice my body will learn how to maintain balance (called the set?) so it will become automatic - as it was when I was 5 and learned to ride my first bicycle. Without that hope I might well dispair at this new hobby. Reading today's post regarding catch drills, I'm reminded of this weekend's row: first one oar, arms only; then the other; then both, arms only; then arms and back; then 1/4 slide. All the while struggling with balance. In offering catch drills, I see that you warn about instability. Do you have any suggestions or drills for how to learn stability - is it just that I have to do it enough so that my body will learn, as in learning to ride a bike? I have pontoons. It's so hard to launch and land with them that I've taken them off, hoping that I can achieve proficiency without them through practice. Thanks.

[Karen Chenausky]

Hello, Eugene,

I'm glad to hear that the information I've been putting out there is useful! As the author of my favorite knitting blog says, all these tips "want out of my head, and into yours." You ask yet another excellent question, and you're not even a shill.

The question of how to achieve good balance (yes, also called "set") is a fairly complex one and really deserves its own entry. But I can give you a few pointers here. I know you're not going to want to hear the first one: miles. What I mean is that it takes a lot of miles to develop one's sense of balance in a shell. So, in that sense, you are right that it's like riding a bike: it will come, over time. Some things you can do right now to help, though, are to attend to the finish and the release, since they most directly affect the set of the boat.

If your blades are "washing out" before you take them out of the water, you may find that it is an effort to take them out. You can correct this by ensuring that the blades stay buried until the release -- until you decide to release the water -- and by accelerating the handles toward you as you finish off the stroke. On the other hand, the blades might be a little slow coming out of the water, in which case the water might be sort of sucking the blade down. What I mean is that there might be equal pressure on both faces of the blade, or there might be slightly higher pressure on the back of the blade than on the front. You would prefer there to be a region of high water pressure on the front of the blade, as a consequence of your piling all that water up there by accelerating the blade. If you do this then there will be a corresponding region of low pressure on the back side of the blade, which makes it easier to extract the blade. (Actually, it makes them feel like they just slip out of their own accord).

Make sure, too, that the handles are coming to the same height on the body and that the blades come out of the water together. It's easy to have the right hand come to a lower point on your shirt than the left, just because of how boats are usually rigged. But remember that after the crossover on the drive your thumb knuckles should *both* come to about heart-rate monitor level. Liz O'Leary, the women's coach at Harvard University, coached me once at Bill Miller's summer camp. She told me that the right hand has to remember to come in high, or to pull up just a little, for both the hands. She meant that, metaphorically speaking, it's the right hand's job to make sure both blades are buried all the way to the finish by feeling like it is pulling up slightly as it comes into the release. To make sure both blades come out of the water together, it's the left hand's responsibility to remember to push down for both the hands. This motion or division of labor need not be exaggerated, but it's been a useful mnemonic for me since she gave it to me to think about pulling up slightly with the right hand before the release and to think about pushing down fully with the left hand after the release.

Of course, there are many factors which can affect the balance of the boat. Some of them come from other parts of the stroke, though, and it's often the case that working on one aspect of the stroke has effects which ripple out and affect other parts that you didn't intend. But if you can be more specific about where in the recovery (or drive, for that matter) you're bobbling, perhaps we can problem-solve a little and help get you feeling more stable.

Karen

[mary]

Karen, your information and instruction is phenomenal. I love the way you use metaphor which greatly deepens my learning. As I work to improve my stroke by incorporating your technique instruction I find my big challenge now is consistency at full power since so many of these techniques require relaxation and light hands.

btw - Aleks' 3/4 slide drill that you mentioned was taught to me post-race season last year. It was the best drill for improving my catch timing, although I was prone to jamming just to sure I wasn't missing.

Thank you for your fantastic blog!

[Karen Chenausky]

Mary,

Your compliments make me fairly blush. (Not that that should stop you!) Again, I am very happy that my information is useful. If it weren't, there would be no point putting it up.

Just a suggestion on how not to jam the blades in the water backward when you catch, as an overcompensation for not rowing the blades in. First of all, this may be Stage Two of the catch -- that is, if you think if rowing the blades in as Stage One, then the overcompensation of rigidly backing the blades in the water as you begin to learn how not to miss water is sometimes Stage Two. People often get over this stage fairly quickly because it's kind of uncomfortable. But if you think about keeping your arms and shoulders relaxed, this often helps you get through Stage Two more quickly.

Here's how you do that: First, keep your shoulders low by tautening your lats just a little, even at the catch when your arms are extended in front of you. You'll find that this maneuver (I think of it as The Hulk because when the Hulk gets mad he does that body building pose where he squeezes his lats really hard) makes your elbows rotate from pointing directly out to the sides to bending slightly and pointing more diagonally down (slightly). Then the biceps and triceps are in balance with each other, but the elbow isn't rigid. Since your muscles keep the same angle with the elbow as you catch, you won't be straightening the elbow when you feel the load on the blades and thus missing the connection.

Now that your arms and shoulders are more relaxed it's possible to feel the blades grab the water more easily. Now, you can start to work on the timing between your blades and your seat. If you're rigid the oars will go "ker-chunk" in the oarlocks when you place the blades in the water and the water pushes the handles back at you. But if you're relaxed as I describe then you'll be able to feel the "ker-" and them immediately be able to start pressing with your feet to start the drive. (Almost *you* take the place of the "chunk").

I hope that helps.

[mary]

That's excellent! I've been meaning to tell you how helpful your "use the elbows as shock absorbers" advice was when you coached me last month. I can build upon that as the Hulk training over the weekend.

I have an old elbow weight-lifting injury which has been flaring up. Jamming, or going down to port really hurts. So this is particularly helpful. I also noticed today that the handle too far out in my fingers, vs at the top of the palm (i.e. your Get A Grip paper) aggravates my elbow tendonitis. It seems to run right up the arm from the middle finger to the outside elbow. I was rowing a 3-stay mid-weight that's rigged high, so my elbows were way out to keep the oars in the water.

Learning these fine points not only helps the rowing and staying injury free - but also gives me a lot more data about what I want and need when I buy my next boat. Thank you!

And what you described was exactly my progression. To learn how to not miss I had to learn how to jam at first. That went on for quite a long time and I'm still tempted to do it in the larger boats when I start feeling check. I did not realize how much I was slowing the boat(s) until Malcolm Gefter straightened me out on that. Under every bridge he insisted on no noise: no oarlocks clunking, no hard catch, no big backsplash.

At one of Mayrene Earle's first masters camps from MIT, she coached us on the catch to aim the bottom corner of the blade downward, and when you feel it touch, lock in. I loved that but never had the timing from out of bow to 3/4 slide to be consistent at it. Malcolm worked with me initially on nothing more than getting to the 3/4 balance point. I also like your "uphill recovery" metaphor.

Its a great blog tagline, Karen - consumed!!

[Jonathan Harman]

Hi Karen, just wanted to say how helpfull I'm finding your blog. I'm self coaching all of my single outings so having detailed instructions of the stroke and drills gives me some structure. Now I just need the stream to die down a bit so I can get back out on the Thames and keep practising, as frustrating as it may be!