About Rowing

Rowing is a team sport. Aside from the single sculls event where there is only one athlete in the rowing shell, there is a very high requirement for cooperation, timing and trust among the the team members.

Those that are unfamiliar with the sport, often confuse rowing with canoeing, kayaking, or dragon-boat paddling. All of these are done sitting on a fixed seat with a paddle that is not in an oar lock. In rowing, the oar goes into an oarlock and the seat of the boat slides on rails along the length of the boat. Rowers fasten themselves into the shoes that are fixed in the boat. As a result, rowing is a sport that utilizes the lower body to propel the boat. While rowing, it feels more like a push with the legs than a pull with the arms. Indeed, the legs become exhausted during a rowing race.

The sport of rowing has three disciplines: sweeping, sculling and coxing. In the sweep boat, each athlete has a single oar, whereas in a sculling boat, each athlete has a pair of oars. Coxing is done by a coxswain, who motivates, strategizes and steers some classes of rowing shells. A one-person scull is referred to as the single, a two-person scull as a double and a four-person scull as a quad. In sweeping, a two-person shell is referred to as a pair, a four-person shell as a four, and an eight-person shell as an eight. Pairs and fours both come with or without a seat for a coxswain while eights always have a seat for a coxswain.

The standard distance for olympic world championship racing is 2000 m where six shells line up side by side. This is mostly adhered to throughout club and school programs around Canada through the spring and summer season. In the Fall season, clubs participate in head races, where shells race through a longer winding course against the clock. In some introductory programs such as our league, teams race side by side over 1000 m.

The movement of the athlete through the rowing stroke comes with some terminology. The catch, the drive, the finish or release and the recovery are all terms used to describe the parts of the rowing stroke. The feather, the square, the pocket, the pile, the back splash and the puddles all refer to the blade or oars interaction with the water. There is a decent description of the anatomy of a rowing stroke on Wikipedia.

The movement at first seems awkward, but quickly becomes a coordinated movement that the boat responds well too if done properly. Advanced rowers can appreciate the champagne-like nature of a well-executed rowing stroke. There are centimeters of run to be gained on each stroke that ultimately add up over the length of a race that can make the difference between winning a race or not. Sometimes races are won or lost by nothing more than a bow-ball. The challenge in this sport is to get the whole team to row efficiently and have the precision to do it at exactly the same time as one another. It takes a special athlete to take on the job of setting the pace and rhythm in the stroke seat, but it also takes a special person to be able to follow with perfect timing.

You can truly start the sport at any age. There are examples of athletes who started when they are 12 that go on to row for Canada at international regattas, and there are also examples of athletes that start in their twenties.

The sport requires a lot of focus and fortitude, and has earned the reputation of building character. You have to think when you row; it takes some concentration. The athlete is rewarded in small increments for their persistent effort in perfecting the rowing stroke. On one day it might be a little extra run on the boat, on another it might be rock solid balance. Or, you get a lift out of the water because the catches are sharp and the boat moves effortlessly. The spacing of these little achievements is just enough to keep you coming back, sometimes for decades.

Land training also helps build character as rowers are well known for their level of fitness. The rowing stroke recruits most muscle groups in the body and has been shown to cause thickening of muscle tissue in the heart. There are fewer injuries in rowing than many sports because of the lack of contact; the most common injuries are from overuse. The rowing ergometer is a wonderful tool for measuring improvements in fitness from our training efforts. They can be found in every gym across North America.

It's a wonderful sport and once you try it, you won't want to stop.