Rowing Technique - The Blades and body.

Both blade work and bodywork must be properly mastered to make a boat move as efficiently as possible. In my opinion much more emphases these days is placed on bladework and body work is left(to some coaches) as an afterthought. This can be seen by doing a slow motion analysis of some of the top crews at the Olympics. Every crew racing has perfected balance and use of the blades and to an outside eye they all look amazing traveling at speed.

AP Photo/Keystone/Sigi Tischler

 Its only while analysing the crews in slow motion that you can see they are still far from perfect when it comes to the position of the bodies and the movement of body weight around the boat. Light weights generally row better than heavyweights due to everyone being the same weight and not varying much in terms of power output. This means that they have to be as efficient as possible to get to the finish line first.

Even simple things such as holding the knees down till the hands are past them, rowing the blade in instead of catching where you reach and a hang off the oars on the drive are missing from some of the mens 8+ from the London Olympics  There is the idea that if you train like mad and become the strongest and fittest crew in the world then you’ll win. If you're missing out on technique then you're wrong.

You should want each movement you do to be as efficient as possible. Of course by not touching the blades off the water while rowing you have won half the battle but the body must still be in the right place at the right time. If you don't get your body over before your knees rise then chances are that you’ll end up reaching at the catch and killing your boat speed. At the end of the day you don't want to disturb the run of your boat.