(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 back wards 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 testi mony to his knowledge and skill, agrees with me.
In an article published during a recent rowing controversy, he remarks, " I think Mr. — will find that all men, consciously or unconsciously, use the foot-strap more or less, to aid them in the first inch or two of recovery. If he doubts this, let him remove the strap and watch results, be the oarsman who he may." I need only add that this pressure should never be greater than will just suffice to help the body-recovery. If exaggerated, its result on slides will be to spoil swing by pulling the slide forward in advance of the body.
I have now, I think, taken you through all the complicated movements of the stroke, and there for the present I must leave you to carry out as best you can instructions which I have endeavoured to make as clear on paper as the difficulties of the subject permit. But I may be allowed to add a warning. Book-reading may be a help ; but rowing, like any other exercise, can only be properly learnt by constant and patient practice in boats under the eyes of competent instructors. Do not be discouraged because your improvement is slow, and because you are continually being rated for the same faults. With a slight amount of intelligence and a large amount of persever ance and good temper, these faults will gradually disappear, and as your limbs and muscles accustom themselves to the work, you will be moulded into the form of a skilled oarsman. Even the dread being who may be coaching you—winner of the Grand Challenge Cup or stroke-oar of his Uni versity though he be—had his crude and shapeless beginnings. He has passed through the mill, and now is great and glorious. But if you imagine that even he is faultless, just watch him as he rows, and listen to the remarks that a fearless and uncompromising coach permits himself to address to him. And to show you that others have suffered and misunderstood and have been mis understood like yourself, I will wind up this chapter with "The Wail of the Tubbed," the lyrical complaint of some Cambridge rowing Freshmen.
"Sir,—We feel we are intruding, but we deprecate your blame, We may plead our youth and innocence as giving us a claim ; We should blindly grope unaided in our efforts to do right, So we look to you with confidence to make our darkness light.
" We are Freshmen—rowing Freshmen ; we have joined our college club, And are getting quite accustomed to our daily dose of tub ; We have all of us bought uniforms, white, brown, or blue, or red, We talk rowing shop the livelong day, and dream of it in bed.