One of my favorite rowing drills is the balance drill. I usually did this at the beginning of a row either to test my core stability or to show off in front of my teammates. When I trained at Potomac Boat Club in Washington, DC, we would launch at 6am and meet on the upstream side of Key Bridge as a group. There were anywhere from 10-20 of us, men and women, new and experienced who all trained with the high performance team.
The drill is basically this: in your single you sit at half slide, which is halfway up to the catch with your arms and body extended and your blades squared and in the water. The next step is to push down on your handles so the blades come out of the water fully and to try to balance the boat and keep them from touching the water.
I usually did the drill and then trash talked one of my teammates to say they couldn’t do it as well or for as long. And then inevitably everyone would be doing it and trash talking each other and laughing when someone almost flipped or wobbled abruptly. It was a great way to start the workout because it relaxed us, made us laugh, and created a sense of camaraderie.
I love drills like this because they do a number of things for you. You start to understand that your movements have a direct relationship to the movement of the boat. If you do something abrupt or hard or sudden, the boat responds to that, often by tipping dramatically to one side of the other. So, this drill teaches you to row with what I call a “quiet body.” You learn to make small, simple adjustments to keep the boat balanced.
It also forces you to engage your core. We always did ten minutes of core prior to each row to activate the muscles we would be using during the workout. Having a strong core is a key component to supporting your body weight and rowing without disrupting the boat. When you start to apply pressure to the handles and push the blades out of the water, you should feel your abs engage right away, which keeps your body centered and stable. From here you can make small adjustments in pressure with your feet or with your hips. The challenge is to push down far enough that you really have to work your core and small movements to stay perfectly still and set.
One of the other great benefits of this drill is that it develops confidence. This drill appeals to daredevils. Many many rowers are terrified of flipping and falling into the water. So they tend to shy away from drills that put them in precarious positions. But all this does is prevent them from learning how to make those precarious positions less unstable. Doing this drill right, teaches you that you are in control of yourself and the way that the boat moves. You can dictate what side the boat is on and getting the boat re-centered, all by using your core, being aware, and getting confident in your body.
This was a go to drill for me to find my center in the boat, to feel confident that I was in control, and to understand how to make small nuanced changes in the moment.
Try this drill and let me know what you think in the comments.
