(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 pass 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.
(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