How to Row
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The big idea in rowing and sculling is to propel yourself backwards across the surface of a body of water as fast as you can. Rowing has a reputation as a brainless sport ('pull until someone tells you to stop'). But speed depends on far more than sheer strength: how efficient you are in applying that strength, your co-ordination with other crew members, the line your boat takes through the water, and the degree to which you coxwain motivates you to go even faster.
This article is about rowing as opposed to sculling. How to tell the difference? Scullers have two oars ('sculls') each, whereas rowers only have one, which is called a 'blade'. For obvious reasons, it is possible to scull on your own, whereas rowing on your own would result in going round in very small circles.
Boats come in a range of shapes and sizes, depending on the number of rowers, whether or not there's a coxwain (cox), and to a lesser extent the weight of the rowers. The standard combinations are the pair (two people), four, and eight, and whilst eights are always coxed, fours and pairs can chose whether to lug the extra weight. There's a common shorthand for these boats: 2, 4, 8; and a + or - sign to show whether the boat is coxed. So 2- means a coxless pair, 8+ means an eight.
Many people might remember (if only for the phwoarrr factor of the gentlemen in question) watching the Searle brothers winning their 2+ gold medal at the Barcelona olympics, only to see a third, mystery man on the medal podium with them. Where was he hiding? What happens is that pairs and fours can be 'bow loaded' or 'stern loaded'. Bow loaders are the boats that most non-rowers will be familiar with, where the cox sits upright at the back of the boat, looking over the rowers' heads (the coxwains' cameras in the BBC coverage of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race show you what kind of view the cox has from here. What they show less is the danger of getting spat all over when the rower at the front (the 'stroke') tries to talk to you and row hard simultaneously). In stern loaders, the cox is lying down at the front of the boat, and can't see the rowers at all. So whilst this may be more aerodynamic, it means the crew can't rely on the cox to tell them who's out of time, etc, and so is usually for experienced crews. It can also be extremely claustrophobic for the cox, and severly unamusing should the boat capsises.
There are millions of little bits of jargon that rowing experts love to bandy around. Forget all that: the important bits are the 'blade' (oar), 'seat' (little thing on wheels that you sit on, surprisingly), 'footplate' (flat plate bolted into the boat, where your feet go) and 'rigger' (the thing that sticks out the side of the boat that holds your blade in place. Coaches will spend many happy hours adjusting riggers in different directions, and usually have car-loads of tools for this very purpose. Rumour has it that the double-ended spanned that you need for a VW Beetle makes a fine 'rigger jigger' (just one of these wonderful tools).
