(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.
(_Stationary Photograph. In movement the body would go a little further back._)]
(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 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.