Rowing as “One”

Yes a 24 person boat the Stämpfli Express.

The best crews are the ones that move together as “one”. In a scull you can do whatever you want (if you have a good level of technique) but crew boats must be moved together. A fraction of a difference in timing and body positions between crew members can be the difference between winning and losing.

The blades must go in and out perfectly together in time. If the athletes are out of time then they are not sharing the load catch and not driving together of as long as they should be. The phrase many hands make light work really come into play here.

By catching together the load is distributed amongst the crew and the boat will have less disruptions. The same is true of the finish. By having a single finish and tapping the blades out together at the exact same time the boat will not be dragged to one side by a person leaving their blade in a second too late.

On either side of the boat the blades must be perfectly parallel and all hand heights the same, again, on the recovery, the importance of minimizing the disturbance on the boat is often overlooked but it is here that a lot of the boat speed can be found. The boat wants to glide, so leave it do its thing.  A crew that is together will get more of a response from their boat than a crew that is constantly fighting it and each other, by doing slightly different movements. 

Crews can be amazingly together and yet everyone in that crew can have their own individual technical flaws. Obviously rowing together for a period of time as a crew is important as it gives the crew time to blend their movements and become one.

In my opinion this means that crews that are together for longer, often (but not always) do better than crews that have not been together as long. This is especially true of athletes that have a certain level of technical ability as those without a solid technical base will never be truly together as a crew until they can negate their technical flaws.


Being together as a crew also means that you learn what everyone in your boat is capable of, if you can rely on them or not, what motivates them and their strengths and weaknesses are.  

Here's a video of a crew who have their own individual flaws but do the boat moving together as one which results in great, effortless looking rowing . Try pausing the video to catch them out of time.