by GRP Row Coach Steve Whelpley

While that’s a bit of clickbait, the very genuine answer is "the same thing that you do!"

At the Olympics, you can pan for golden nuggets of speed like the French grips used by Ollie Zeidler or the lightweight replacement bolts Australian crews made from aluminum and titanium. In reality, these athletes quest down the same avenues we do. They've simply advanced further down that same path, pushing their physiology and technique to a magnificent level.

If you asked me to determine one outlying thing about Olympic rowers other than their exceptional physiology, I would say their bladework. In the quest to go faster and faster, the path of the blade grows more and more direct and intentional. While you can still find anomalies of imperfection in the closing meters or particular athletes, the average bladework at this level is exceptional.

For example, I remember people being critical of Mahe Drysdale's rowing. I can still recall the justification that, "if Mahe goes deep at the catch, then I can go deep at the catch." First off, remember the myriad of things that might separate Mahe's rowing from your own: physiology, temperament, length, and other aspects of his bladework to name a few. That being said, notice in this video that while his blades may bury deep at the catch, he still has a remarkably direct placement and a very direct path of the handles from placement to release. At the level of the Olympics, I would argue that, although you may still witness some possible inefficiencies, the overall quality of bladework is so exceptional that we fail to notice the absence of typically ineffective movements like skying, digging, washing, slipping, and more.

So what do we do to advance our own bladework? While you can continually work through video review to hone your craft, you also need to push the boundaries of your coordination. Basketball players do countless drills to improve their ball handling and dribbling. Many of these drills push them outside of game situations in order to further their coordination. An easy example is dribbling with two basketballs at once. We need to do the equivalent. We need to practice challenging bladework that you may not utilize during a race in order to further our blade coordination and literacy.

You most likely already have a ton of drills in your quiver like early square, delayed feather, quarter feather, square blades, etc. To add a couple more, I would like to suggest a few drills that work with the path of the blade out of the water.

Tara Style

Jacob Plihal and I spent a lot of time in Lucerne and Paris acknowledging the unique paddling style of Australia's Tara Rigney. Every single recovery not at rate has an exaggeratedly low carry of the blade. You can see a sample of it here. This approach does a few things for Tara. It has her leave the water very cleanly, it enhances her preparation of her arms and body, and it drives her recovery to be more purposeful than careful. Sometimes, Jacob and I would simply call upon the image of her as a drill. I would say to him, "Ok, now row like Tara would." This would get him to immediately emulate a more dramatic tap down at the release, and the rest would follow.

V-Hands

In a single, it is relatively hard to do gunwale taps as they are so far below the pins and often below the top of your legs. V-Hands simply refers to having the path of the handle make a "V" on the recovery. Often, this feels like taking the blade out and directly pushing the handle down to your knees. Once at your knees, you let the hands rise directly to the placement. It is really not that dissimilar from the Tara Style rowing, but has a slightly different result. This can help to stay direct at both ends with a clean release and an immediate drop to the water at the front end.

Blade Flutter

At a body over pause, you simply push down on the handle to the point of letting go, then catch it again before taking the next stroke. This has the effect of making the blades rise and fall off of the pause. Essentially, it's a downward toss of the handle into the cockpit. It is easier to do than you think and will get you more relaxed on the handle than the classic "piano fingers."

Handle Toss

This is a more extreme version of the last drill that I watched Coach John Graves implement with the U23 Women's Quad. Shortly after rocking their bodies over, he asked them to toss the handle up on the recovery and through the arc. This requires you to not only push down like the last drill, but also out. You sort of throw the handle to the front end while trying to keep the blade off the water. It works to increase your dexterity while also keeping your efforts more direct and longitudinal on the recovery. It reminds me of learning to do reverse ratio more effectively where you had to let go of things in order to GO.

Playing with these coordination tasks on the recovery will help to both refine your movements at pace as well as improve the caliber of your drive. The right bladework can often unwrap the right power application. And remember, Olympians still put their unisuits on one leg at a time!