(11) As you swing, use the inside arm and hand to shove against the oar. You will thus keep the button 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 mass 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 button 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 cocking 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.
(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 passing 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.