Defensive protectors for oars and sculls to prevent the paint wearing off and the spoon degrading. Things you can do to preserve the spoons and handles.
Timestamps
You paint the spoons in the club colours and the paint wears in the middle of the back of the oar and the tips of the blades get worn off at the corners (so you no longer have a sharp corner). Defensive protectors for oars Our dock is wood and the surface gets greasy and is a slip hazard. We put non-slip matting onto the dock - water drains through the holes. The brand is Ako Matting and is recommended for ice, snow and water uses. The downside is the surface is abrasive on oars because of the non-slip elements.
We have a rule that when you land and leave the dock we always put our oars tip side down on the dock. This helps to preserve the paint and stop the wear patterns on the back of the oars. Tips down meant we got wear on the tip of the blade.
Croker Oars have tip protectors - little triangles which fit over the corners and you superglue in place. The plastic takes the wear rather than the carbon oar.
Concept2 oar users can use the vortex edge - it's a strip which goes along the length of the oar tip.
The wear on the tip of the oars reduces the surface area of the spoon. And the wear is always in the same direction - my sculls ended up thinner than 3mm. This is the legal minimum for World Rowing rules - I had to sand down the tips of the blade to restore the minimum 3mm.
A scuff pack kit made to protect the back of the oar from rubbing when your oars are on the bank. Defensive protectors for oars.
Lastly - blade wraps - vinyl that is pre-printed with your club colours and they are cut to the oar spoon shape. Use a heat gun to apply them and it also gives some protection to the oar spoon.
How to wrap oars
Take care of your oars to make them last longer. If you paint your oars the old fashioned way is to sand them and use marine-grade gloss paint with undercoat and topcoat paint layers. Others have used spray can car paint too. We had stickers (decals) of the club logo made to put on the shaft of the oars so that they can be identified - helpful if you don't paint your oars and they look the same as every other club. Easy for them to get lost at a regatta.
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Ways to improve speed of the oar through the water. Keep the stroke rate the same and increase the speed.
Timestamps
00:45 This is a long term project. Less experienced rowers push the oar less hard than the more experienced and you need to train this. Time through the water at stroke rate of 20 is approximately 3 seconds per stroke. Pushing the oar through the water on the power phase takes 1.2 to 1.5 seconds and yet we row with a ratio of at least 2:1 at low rates.
Experienced rowers get more rest every stroke. They push the oar with high intensity through the water and so they have more time with the oar out of the water.
How to row at the same stroke rate and deliver more force into the boat hull. The key to training this on the erg was to start with a focus point once every 5 minutes for 10 strokes. For ten strokes push harder through the power phase but you're not allowed to take the rate up. This showed us how much harder we could push and how much more rest we got as a result. It depends on your muscular strength and fitness.
Then we moved to doing this for a minute. After each intense stroke period we allowed 5 strokes to recover and take a little rest. Over time, you don't need to take that rest.
Taking the same principle of increased intensity into the boat. We call "Up one down one" which means take the stroke rate up one point in rate through the water and down one point in rate on the slide. So at rate 20 you move to rate 21 through the water and rate 19 on the slide - which averages to 20.
This has the effect of intensifying the power phase. Train yourself to do this and it gets a better ratio in the stroke - you learn how to relax more as you rest on the recovery. The benefit is slightly more boat speed, slightly more rest and this helps to keep the boat moving fast through the water.
Here's an earlier episode which covers this topic further of how to train yourself to relax.
Do this for short periods to begin with as it's tiring. Introduce it to your warmup just for 5 strokes at each stage in the pick drill.
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Three ways to get faster (or avoid slowing down) in training.
Timestamps
00:45 Can you increase the average speed of your boat? The net of how fast it accelerates in the power phase and how much it slows in the recovery phase.
Our past episode about how to get speed on the recovery https://youtube.com/live/RRF3o7LxNXM
Pay attention to the water surface, to the wind and waves, to the water swirls under a bridge. This allows you to make subtle changes to how your boat is moving. Rowing in a headwind - at the start the waves are highest (they've progressively built up) and these lower as you get closer to the end of 1k. With large waves you cannot rate high. When rowing to the conditions as you notice the wave height reducing, push on and increase the rate by half a point. You can also change the ratio (intensity through the water compared to relaxation up the slide).
If you do a big push the chances are you will suffer a large fall off in boat speed after the push is done. Choose moderate moves and you are more likely to be able to hold the new boat speed after it ends. Make your moves sustainable longer. Pushing hard means you may compensate by trying to save energy and your pace judgement may suffer.
The puddles of the crew in front are disturbed water. When the water block is churned by someone else's oar it makes the water unstable and hard for you to get your oar to grip the water. This affects the boat run and your ability to put energy into pushing the boat forwards.
When rowing near other crews, put their puddles under your riggers - between the hull and your spoon. The disturbed water will neither affect the run of your hull nor your spoon grip on the water. Rowing in dirty water is hard to avoid if your eight has an unconventional rig (two people on the same side in sweep eights) this may result in bow and stroke being on the same side. Only the fastest mens eights can avoid stroke rowing into bow's previous puddle.
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David Frost reviews Practical and Personal Looks at Coronary Artery Diseases (CAD) in Master's Rowers - download the additional information link below.
Timestamps
00:45 David Frost's journey through CAD Coronary artery calcification - men need checking after age 70 more than women. Even rowers who are known for being stoic - if you feel something in your chest, get it checked out. "You have the coronary arteries of a 92 year old" was my signal that I needed help. The Agatston Score is is a proxy for heart health.
Inflammation in your arteries can cause an issue if you work too hard, too fast for too long.
08:00 Rowers have a higher than average incidence of atrial fibrillation (AFIB) Maybe rowers are doing themselves a disservice by training long and hard. What to do about this?
There are interesting heart age metrics - pulse wave velocity measure tells how elastic your arteries are. Heart Rate Variability - the higher it is the better you are recovering. David encourages masters to measure these and track their trends. Dr Churchill in Boston is studying masters rowers' aorta for ASCVD. Get a calcium CT scan - it helped David understand his condition.
Perceived exertion, rest and hydration are a good guide to how you are feeling each day. David is mindful of recovery as well.
What age should you start getting the calcium CT scan done? For men from age 40 and women maybe 50. For the plus wave velocity test this could be done from mid life - age 40 maybe ladies a bit later. Note David is a layman, not a doctor.
Rowing training is more 80% steady state and 20% higher intensity. This has trended upwards from about 60% when David was younger. As humans we are slow to recognise when our body moved into the "next" stage. The competitive mindset can make us live in denial of aging. It's not good for you to carry to much body fat - your waist to hip ratio is worth checking.
25:00 Burden or banish? David's new book coming out 2026
Sloth and gluttony contribute to heart disease - 80% is preventable. Lifestyle measures can defer the onset of heart disease. Hopefully rowers can start to banish the preventable problem. STRESSED spelled backwards is DESSERTS.
David's package of information
Resources on this topic
Three more drills to learn sequentially which will improve your recovery. These will help fix balance issues.
Timestamps
Crew alignment, bladework skills and body movement. The benefit is that the boat slows down less when you achieve these. The biggest gains in boat speed can be achieved here (assuming you aren't going to get much fitter/stronger). By keeping the same peak in the power but slow the boat down less on the recovery, the average speed of the boat each stroke will be higher, and you will go faster.
Our teaching method: do one drill and then layer another drill on top of it - making it progressively harder. this allows you to build your skill and also crews of different ability can row together.
Understand the impact your hands and handle heights have on boat balance.
On the recovery - let your oars run along the surface during the recovery. This teaches where the oar handles need to be relative to each other. The water is level - so your handles reflect the correct height during the power phase. In sculling this also helps to recognise the left hand over the right hand differential.
Check the "nested" versus "stacked" hands demonstration at the crossover position.
Then add progressively deeper tap downs on the recovery - 1 cm, 2 cm, 3, cm. Can you keep the boat level? It can be hard to keep your left hand higher than the right from half slide to the catch (the left hand is always higher than the right).
From hands away / body over / quarter slide. Advanced rowers can also pause at weight on the feet. This is explained in the drills compendium. Build on the skimming drill - now check your hands and body posture at different stages of the recovery. Watch the elbows of the person in front for timing.
The idea here is to arrive at full compression with your blade already in the water. Time the movement so the blade placement is before you change direction on the seat. Go fast up the slide and then drift your oars through the power phase. This helps you to make handle movements fluid.
Buy the Drills Compendium (24 drills video demonstrations / explainers and 3 bonus ebooks)
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How to increase stroke power using three layered drills.
Timestamps
These are all part of the Drills Compendium (24 drills + 3 ebooks bundle). Masters rowers tend to row a good leg drive and arm draw but neglect the back swing. The back is crucial to joining the leg drive and arm draw. How to ensure back swing adds to the speed of the boat.
From the catch (where boat is slowest) the stroke power takes the boat to its fastest speed. After the leg drive is half completed you need to start to layer the back swing so it overlaps with the end of the leg drive. Later the arm draw overlaps with the end of the back swing. Learn how to use each body part in turn without dropping boat power at the changeover.
This is the least intuitive part! Start with legs straight and arms straight with blade in the water while leaning forwards. Swing your back to take the stroke and take the oars out when your. back swing is completed. Do this square blades and then once confident, add power to the stroke by engaging your core and glutes.
06:00 Body and arms and half slide rowing are the second and third parts of this drill. The glutes provide the connection between the legs and back. By building up the stroke progressively you should feel the spoon of the blade accelerate through the water - as you add in more body parts this must continue. The arms have to pick up already moving water (from your back swing) and make it faster still. In a crew add in more people so the boat goes faster - notice how your body movements have to change to take account of the boat moving faster. If you aren't adding to the acceleration you should feel that you have no pressure on the end of the blade. Try an exaggeration by rowing at half slide and finish your legs/back/arms at the same time.
The way we teach is designed to work for adult learners. We teach how we row and then make it progressively harder so you can continue to challenge yourself, continue to experiment with ways to make the movement and lastly check your experience with your crew mates - am I getting the right feeling here? Even the most experienced rowers can do these alongside the less experienced.
Do the drills at least 3 times in a single practice so you're familiar with the drill and can see your progress as you do it better each time.
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The power phase is most effective when legs drive first and back follows yet so few masters rowers do this. Why?
Timestamps
The alignment of the womens double in the photo shows that the crew hasn't used their back while having legs nearly straight. Getting into this position requires having shoulders sternwards of the hips at the catch and to use their legs first in the power phase.
We have a lot of practice using hands and arms in daily life. We are good at this. At the catch you want to feel the oars loaded up under the water surface. If you pull with your arms you feel this earlier. By pulling with your arms and lifting the shoulders and lifting your chin you feel the workload on the spoon.
Rowing is a pushing not a pulling sport in the main. Rowing legs only is 60% of the power; back swing is 25-30% of your power and so your arms add 5-10% of your power ONLY.
The rowing stroke uses a range of body muscles from legs, thighs and calves through to arms and hands. In daily life we use small muscles a lot - they fire quickly when we use them in daily life. We are practiced using them.
The quads and glutes are slower to activate so we have to train them - we're less habituated using these. Connecting the handle of the oars through the footstretcher is unfamiliar and you have to train it.
The first activation in the power phase is the calves to push the heels down onto the footstretcher. Then the quads join in to straighten your legs. When your legs are 3/4 straight you start the glute activation - hinging to connect legs to the back. Using the glutes to sustain pressure on the footstretcher while you swing your back. If you lose pressure on the footstretcher you are no longer accelerating the boat. Your feet are the only part of your body connected to the boat. As your back starts to activate you draw with your arms.
Connecting to the footstretcher early in the power phase is our goal. If you take the catch with the arms or swinging the shoulders/back this is a problem. When delivering power through the stroke you can only use each muscle group once per stroke.
If you swing your back to take the catch you've got no back swing to use later in the power phase because you are already leaning backwards. It also prevents you from activating your leg drive - they do straighten but not as dynamically as you should. By not activating your legs this removes up to 60% of your possible total power which is a lot. And as a consequence you probably don't activate your glutes because you aren't using your legs enough.
There's a correlation between the water being slower at the catch than later in the stroke. The angle of the oar spoon is also going into the slower water at an acute angle to the side of the boat. Use the slower water speed along the slower muscles to generate that early power in the stroke.
15:00 The solution to delaying your back swing Is to train yourself to use the big muscles, learn what it feels like to activate the quads and glutes early in the stroke. Then you know what it feels like to grip the water at the catch with your feet (rather than hands or shoulders).
This is the beginning point to learn how to activate big muscles first and layer the smaller muscles on top as later activations.
Scroll down for more resources
Learn how to back down a rowing boat.
Timestamps
Blades up or blades down when backing? Different countries do this differently - UK is blades down and NZ is blades up.
Blades down rationale - the oar spoon is curved and you want the curve to grip the water and push it backwards.
Blades up rationale - the oar has pitch on it from the oarlock tilts the blade - this makes the oar go the wrong way and may cause the oar to dive into the water.
My personal view is don’t turn your blades upside down (they are angled and the diving (being sucked down) you experienced is because the pitch / angle of the spoon is designed for the oar the right way up (not upside down). It's simpler to leave the oar blades up - because it's always the same whether rowing normally or backing.
Two videos you can use to learn shared lower down.
Remember to counter-feather your blades and run the tip of the oar along the water surface when they are out of the water in between backing strokes. Keeping them on the surface means you maintain the boat set/balance. This gives you a point of reference as to where horizontal is to keep the boat level - it shows you how high to have your handles when the oars are out of the water.
The catch when backing down starts with the oars next to your body. It may help to learn counter-feathering one side at a time. You can hold the boat level with just one oar.
Here’s a video about improving your backing skills
And another about turning the boat which demonstrates the counter-feathered oar
A final recommendation - get confident backing with good pressure. Try practicing 100 meters of backing down each time you go rowing.
If your knees don't bend more than 90 degrees, what can you do? Ways to get more reach in the stroke if you have knee limitations.
Timestamps
00:45 A 70 year old with osteoarthritis in both knees asks how to get more reach.
Recognise where your comfort zone is where you are capable of pushing your limits. As you roll forward into the catch your ankles, pelvis and lower body also need to bend. You can do a functional movement assessment to understand your mobility in those other joints - and whether they can be made more flexible using sports massage, stretching or osteopathy.
Test yourself with our Functional Movement Assessment - free webinar.
The ideal is to get shins vertical at the catch with your heels lifted, back leaning forwards so your shoulders are sternward of your hips.
The arc the oar travels through around the oarlock can be adjusted. Move the pivot point closer to the handle (try 1 or 2 cm). This enables your handle to move further around the arc - shortening the inboard relative to the outboard. But don't increase the load (gearing) a lot = keep the ratio of the length of outboard to inboard the same.
By using slightly shorter oars than your crew mates and a shorter inboard, you can increase the arc that the tip of your blade moves through each stroke. You will need to change your footstretcher too - closer to the stern. Keep the gap between your handles at the finish the same.
Mike Davenport explains more on the Rigging for Masters expert webinar. You may also look at increasing your layback / back swing too. Talk this through with your coach.
Rowing a quad, four or an eight? To get good speed and rhythm, you must have good finishes.
Timestamps
You row them differently than small boats. Finish together - all the oars come out of the water at the same time. Is everyone exactly in time? If not, look at what people are doing with the handle - what happens in the water is directly affected by what is happening on the handle. Some athletes may be dragging their handles downwards to take the oars out of the water.
Big boats move fast and this is one of the reasons why big boats are rowed differently than small boats. If you take the pressure off the tip of the spoon early the mound of water in front of the blade and the pocket behind the blade start to equalise. The water quickly starts to equalise in height and you may feel it's harder to get the oar out of the water. Keep pressure on the face of the blade is key to enabling a smooth extraction.
Signs you may be dragging at the blade end - if the bottom edge flicks water as it comes out at the finish. Also you may be feathering the blade out of the water - if it turns in order to extract rather than extracting first and then turns in the air. If your oar is close to the surface after the finish this may be a sign that you're dragging the blade out. It should be cleanly extracted and move high above the water surface before you feather.
Try square blade rowing. This is a discipline which is rewarded in the long term as it helps you fix blade dragging and getting the oar out of the water cleanly. Before starting, check when sitting stationary that your foot stretcher is set up correctly (all port side oars are parallel). Back of the seat back wheel is 58-62 cm behind the face of the pin [ask us if you don't know what this is].
When rowing square blades it's important to know where your handle should be at the finish before extraction. In sweep the outside hand position is key and in sculling, the gap between your handles if the key measure.
It's hard to do a good finish if the boat isn't level at the finish. Check your handle position at the finish when the boat is stationary to find where the correct place is. In sweep, check your outside elbow is pointing behind you and your inside forearm is at approx. 90 degrees to the oar shaft at the finish.
Outside arm should not be flared over the side of the boat because this inhibits your ability to control the handle height with your outside hand.
Remember inside hand square/feather and outside hand controls the handle height in sweep.
In both sweep and sculling if your elbow is lower than your wrist it's hard to put downward pressure on the handle and is a sign you are rigged too high and need to adjust.
When rowing square blades the height differences show up when the boat isn't level. The level finish and square blade rowing work together - if one is off the other is likely off as well. When the boat isn't level it shows up differences in your finish timing and also handle heights. Go back and fix these first as a means to improving your square blade rowing.
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