Rowing Part 2

(_Stationary Photograph._)]

(11) As you swing, use the inside arm and hand to shove against the oar.

You will thus keep the b.u.t.ton of the oar pressed up against the rowlock, a position it ought never even for a moment to lose; you will help to steady your swing, and you will go far towards keeping both shoulders square. Most novices and many veterans over-reach badly with the outside shoulder.

(12) While you are carrying out the last four instructions, your feet, save for a slight pressure against the straps during the very first part of the recovery (see instruction 23), must remain firmly planted, heel and toe, against your stretcher. During your swing you should have a distinct sense of balancing with the ball of your foot against the stretcher. This resistance of the feet on the stretcher helps to prevent you from tumbling forward in a helpless, huddled ma.s.s as you reach the limit of your forward swing.

(13) As to taking the oar off the feather. Good oars vary considerably on this point. Some carry the blade back feathered the whole way, and only turn it square just in time to get the beginning of the stroke.

Others turn it off the feather about half-way through, just before the hands come over the stretcher. For a novice, I certainly recommend the latter method. Turn your wrists up and square your blade very soon after the hands have cleared the knees. It will thus be easier for you to keep your b.u.t.ton pressed against the rowlock; your hands can balance the oar better, and you will not run the risk, to which the former method renders you liable, of skying or c.o.c.king your blade just when it ought to be nearest the water, so as to catch the beginning. A good and experienced waterman, however, ought certainly to be able to keep his oar on the feather against a high wind until the last available moment.

The movement of returning the blade to the square position ought to be firm and clean.

(14) As the body swings, your hands ought to be at the same time stretching and reaching out as if constantly striving to touch something which is as constantly evading them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIXED SEATS.

NO. 4.--POSITION AS ARMS ARE BENDING FOR FINISH.

(_Instantaneous Photograph._)]

(15) When you are full forward, the blade of your oar should not be quite at a right angle to the water, but the top of it ought to be very slightly inclined over, _i.e._ towards the stern of the boat. A blade thus held will grip the water cleaner, firmer, and with far less back-splash than a blade held absolutely at right angles. Besides, you will obviate the danger of "slicing" into the water and rowing too deep. At the same time, I am bound to admit that I know only a few oars who adopt this plan. One of them, however, is the present President of the Oxford University Boat Club, Mr. C. K. Philips, as good a waterman as ever sat in a boat. I am quite firmly convinced that the plan is a sound one, and I believe if it were more generally followed, we should see far less of that uncomfortable and unsightly habit of back-splashing, which is too often seen even in good crews.

(16) I have now brought you forward to the full extent of your swing and reach. Your back is (or ought to be) straight, your shoulders are firm and braced, your chest and stomach still open, though your body is down somewhere between your open knees. Your hands have been gradually rising, and your oar-blade is, therefore, close to the water. Now raise your hands a little more, not so as to splash the blade helplessly to the bottom of the river, but with a quick movement as though they were pa.s.sing round a cylinder. When they get to the top of the cylinder the blade will be covered in the water. At the same moment, and without the loss of a fraction of a second, swing the body and shoulders back as though they were released from a spring, the arms remaining perfectly straight, and the feet helping by a sharp and vigorous pressure (from the ball of the foot, and the toes especially) against the stretcher.

The result of these rapid combined movements will be that the blade, as it immerses itself in the water, will strike it with an irresistible force (a sort of crunch, as when you grind your heel into gravel), created by the whole weight-power of the body applied through the straight lines of the arms, and aided by all the strength of which the legs are capable. This, technically speaking, is the beginning of the stroke. The outside hand should have a good grip of the oar.

(17) Swing back, as I said, with arms straight. The novice must, especially if he has muscular arms, root in his head the idea that the arms are during a great part of the stroke connecting rods, and that it is futile to endeavour to use them independently of the body-weight, which is the real driving power.

(18) Just before the body attains the limit of its back-swing, which should be at a point a little beyond the perpendicular, begin to bend your arms for the finish of the stroke, and bring the hands square home until the roots of the thumbs touch the chest about three inches below the separation of the ribs. Here you must be careful not to raise or depress the hands. They should sweep in to the chest in an even plane, the outside hand drawing the handle firmly home without lugging or jerking. As the hands come in, the body finishes its swing, the elbows pa.s.s close to the sides, pointing downwards, and the shoulders are rowed back and kept down. The chest must be open, but not unduly inflated at the expense of the stomach, the head erect, and the whole body carrying itself easily, gracefully, and without unnecessary stiffness.

(19) Do not meet your oar, _i.e._ keep your body back until the hands have come in. If you pull yourself forward to meet your oar, you will certainly shorten the stroke, tire yourself prematurely, and will probably fail to get the oar clean out of the water or to clear your knees on the recovery.

(20) Do not try to force down your legs and flatten the knees as if you were rowing on a sliding seat. The mere movement of the body on the back swing and the kick off the stretcher will cause a certain alteration in the bend of the knees, but this tendency should not be consciously increased. Remember that fixed-seat rowing is not now an end in itself. It is a stage towards skilled rowing on sliding seats, and its chief object is to give the novice practice in certain essential elements of the stroke, and particularly in body-swing, which could not be so easily taught, if at all, if he were to begin at once on sliding seats. Swing is still, as it always has been, all important in good rowing, and if a novice attempts to slide (for that is what it comes to) on fixed seats he will begin to shuffle and lose swing entirely.

(21) Do not let your body settle down or fall away from your oar at the finish. Sit erect on your bones, and do not sink back on to your tail.

The bones are the pivot on which you should swing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIXED SEATS.

NO. 5.--THE FINISH.

(_Stationary Photograph. In movement the body would go a little further back._)]

(22) The blade of the oar, having been fully covered at the very beginning of the stroke, must remain fully covered up to the moment that the hands are dropped. If the oarsman, when he bends his arms during the stroke, begins to depress his hands, he will row light, _i.e._ the blade will be partially uncovered, and will naturally lose power. On the other hand, if he raises his hands unduly, he will cover more than the blade, and will find great difficulty in extracting it from the water properly. The outside hand should control the balance of the oar, and keep it at its proper level.

(23) As to the use of the stretcher-straps. Many coaches imagine that when they have said, "Do not pull yourself forward by your toes against the straps," they have exhausted all that is to be said on the matter. I venture, with all deference, to differ from them. I agree that in the earlier stages of instruction it is very useful to make men occasionally row in tub-pairs without any straps, so as to force them to develop and strengthen the muscles of stomach and legs, which ought to do the main work of the recovery. But later on, when a man is rowing in an eight, and is striving, according to the instructions of his coach, to swing his body well and freely back, he can no more recover properly without a slight toe-pressure against the straps--the heels, however, remaining firm--than he could make bricks without straw. The straps, in fact, are a most valuable aid to the recovery. Take them away from a crew and you will see one of two things: either the men will never swing nearly even to the upright position, and will recover with toil and trouble, or, if they swing back properly, they will all fall over backwards with their feet in the air. This slight strap-pressure just helps them over the difficult part of the recovery; as the body swings forward the feet immediately resume their balance against the stretcher. Indeed, if these movements are properly performed, you get a very pretty play of the toes and the ball of the foot against the stretcher, you counteract the tendency of the body to tumble forward, and you materially help the beginning from that part of the foot in which the spring resides.

Totally to forbid men to use their straps seems to me a piece of pedantry. On this point I may fortify myself with the opinion of Mr. W.

B. Woodgate, as given in his "Badminton Book on Boating." I am glad, too, to find that Mr. S. Le Blanc Smith, of the London Rowing Club, a most finished and beautiful oarsman, whose record of victories at Henley is a sufficient testimony to his knowledge and skill, agrees with me. In an article published during a recent rowing controversy, he remarks, "I think Mr. ---- will find that all men, consciously or unconsciously, use the foot-strap more or less, to aid them in the first inch or two of recovery. If he doubts this, let him remove the strap and watch results, be the oarsman who he may." I need only add that this pressure should never be greater than will just suffice to help the body-recovery. If exaggerated, its result on slides will be to spoil swing by pulling the slide forward in advance of the body.

I have now, I think, taken you through all the complicated movements of the stroke, and there for the present I must leave you to carry out as best you can instructions which I have endeavoured to make as clear on paper as the difficulties of the subject permit. But I may be allowed to add a warning. Book-reading may be a help; but rowing, like any other exercise, can only be properly learnt by constant and patient practice in boats under the eyes of competent instructors. Do not be discouraged because your improvement is slow, and because you are continually being rated for the same faults. With a slight amount of intelligence and a large amount of perseverance and good temper, these faults will gradually disappear, and as your limbs and muscles accustom themselves to the work, you will be moulded into the form of a skilled oarsman.

Even the dread being who may be coaching you--winner of the Grand Challenge Cup or stroke-oar of his University though he be--had his crude and shapeless beginnings. He has pa.s.sed through the mill, and now is great and glorious. But if you imagine that even he is faultless, just watch him as he rows, and listen to the remarks that a fearless and uncompromising coach permits himself to address to him. And to show you that others have suffered and misunderstood and have been misunderstood like yourself, I will wind up this chapter with "The Wail of the Tubbed," the lyrical complaint of some Cambridge rowing Freshmen.

"Sir,--We feel we are intruding, but we deprecate your blame, We may plead our youth and innocence as giving us a claim; We should blindly grope unaided in our efforts to do right, So we look to you with confidence to make our darkness light.

"We are Freshmen--rowing Freshmen; we have joined our college club, And are getting quite accustomed to our daily dose of tub; We have all of us bought uniforms, white, brown, or blue, or red, We talk rowing shop the livelong day, and dream of it in bed.

"We sit upon our lexicons as 'Happy as a King'

(We refer you to the picture), and we practise how to swing; We go every day to chapel, we are never, never late, And we exercise our backs when there, and always keep them straight.

"We shoot our hands away--on land--as quick as any ball: b.a.l.l.s always shoot, they tell us, when rebounding from a wall.

We decline the noun 'a bucket,' and should deem it--well, a bore, If we 'met,' when mainly occupied in oarsmanship, our oar.

"But still there are a few things that our verdant little band, Though we use our best endeavours, cannot fully understand.

So forgive us if we ask you, sir--we're dull, perhaps, but keen-- To explain these solemn mysteries and tell us what they mean.

"For instance, we have heard a coach say, "Five, you're very rank; Mind those eyes of yours, they're straying, always straying, on the bank.'

We are not p.r.o.ne to wonder, but we looked with some surprise At the owner of those strangely circ.u.mambulating eyes.

"There's a stroke who 'slices awfully,' and learns without remorse That his crew are all to pieces at the finish of the course; There's A., who 'chucks his head about,' and B., who 'twists and screws,'

Like an animated gimlet in a pair of shorts and shoes.

"And C. is 'all beginning,' so remark his candid friends; It must wear him out in time, we think, this stroke that never ends.

And though D. has no beginning, yet his finish is A1; How can that possess a finish which has never been begun?

"And E. apparently would be an oar beyond compare, If the air were only water and the water only air.

And F., whose style is lofty, doubtless has his reasons why He should wish to sc.r.a.pe the judgment seat, when rowing, from the sky.

"Then G. is far too neat for work, and H. is far too rough; There's J., who lugs, they say, too much, and K. not half enough; There's L., who's never fairly done, and M., who's done too brown, And N., who can't stand training, and poor O., who can't sit down.

"And P. is much too limp to last; there's Q. too stiffly starched; And R., poor fool, whose inside wrist is never 'nicely arched.'

And, oh, sir, if you pity us, pray tell us, if you please, What is meant by 'keep your b.u.t.ton up,' and 'flatten down your knees.'

"If an oar may be described as 'he,' there's no death half so grim As the death like which we hang on with our outside hands to 'him;'

But in spite of all our efforts, we have never grasped, have you?

How _not_ to use 'those arms' of ours, and yet to pull it through.

"S. 'never pulled his shoestrings.' If a man must pull at all, Why uselessly pull shoestrings? Such a task would surely pall.

But T.'s offence is worse than that, he'll never get his Blue, He thinks rowing is a pastime--well, we own we thought so too.

"Then V.'s 'a shocking sugarer,' how bitter to be that!

X. flourishes his oar about as if it were a bat; And Y. should be provided, we imagine, with a spade, Since he always 'digs,' instead of 'merely covering his blade.'

"Lastly, Z.'s a 'real old corker,' who will never learn to work, For he puts his oar in gently and extracts it with a jerk.

Oh! never has there been, we trow, since wickedness began, Such a ma.s.s of imperfections as the perfect rowing man.

P.S. BY TWO CYNICS.

"So they coach us and reproach us (like a flock of silly jays Taught by parrots how to feather) through these dull October days.

We shall never understand them, so we shouldn't care a dam[4]

If they all were sunk in silence at the bottom of the Cam."