Rowing words

Your rower has started speaking another language

Every sport has its own vocabulary and rowing has more than most, almost all of it inherited from boats. Here is what the words mean, roughly in the order you will run into them. Nothing here is a test.

You will also see some of these underlined around the site. Hover or tap one and the meaning comes up without losing your place.

Start here

Where everyone sits

Rowers face backwards. Almost every confusing word in this sport follows from that one fact.

An eight, from above. Rowers face the stern, so they are looking backwards as the boat moves forwards.

Telling boats apart

What the numbers and symbols mean

A boat is described by how many people are in it, how many oars each of them holds, and whether anyone is steering. The x means sculling, two oars each. The plus means there is a coxswain aboard, the minus means there is not.

Boat types, showing the number of rowers, oars per rower, and whether the boat carries a coxswain
Boat	Written	Rowers	Oars	Coxswain
Single	1x	1	Two each	No
Double	2x	2	Two each	No
Quad	4x	4	Two each	Sometimes
Pair	2-	2	One each	No
Four	4+ or 4-	4	One each	Sometimes
Eight	8+	8	One each	Always

11 words

The boats

Boats are told apart by how many people are in them, how many oars each person holds, and whether anyone is steering.

Shell: The boat. Rowers say shell and boat interchangeably.
Sweep: Rowing with both hands on one oar. Half the crew rows each side.
Pairs, fours and eights are sweep boats. It is what most Oakland Strokes athletes do most of the time.
Sculling: Rowing with two oars, one in each hand.
Singles, doubles and quads are sculling boats. Sculling is how our Sunday Sculling middle schoolers start, because a single teaches balance faster than anything else.
Eight, or 8+: Eight rowers with one oar each, plus a coxswain. Nine people, about sixty feet.
The plus sign means there is a coxswain aboard. An eight always has one.
Four, 4+ or 4-: Four rowers with one oar each. The plus means a coxswain, the minus means none.
Quad, or 4x: Four rowers with two oars each. The x means sculling.
Double, or 2x: Two rowers with two oars each.
Single, or 1x: One rower, two oars, about twenty six feet of boat and thirty pounds.
Straight: A boat with no coxswain, as in a straight four. Someone in the crew steers with a foot.
Oar: Not a paddle. Ours are orange and white with a green stripe, so you can find your kid from the bank.
Launch: The small motorboat a coach drives. Every crew on the water has one alongside.

11 words

Where you sit, and what you sit in

Rowers face backwards. Almost every confusing word follows from that.

Coxswain: The one facing forward. They steer, call the race plan, and keep eight people rowing as one.
Said "cox-un". It is a real position with real recruiting, not a passenger, and coxswains may compete for either the women's or men's squads.
Bow: The front of the boat, and the first part across the finish line.
Rowers face the stern, so the bow is behind them as they row. This is the source of most of the confusion.
Stern: The back of the boat, and the direction the rowers are facing.
Stroke seat: The rower closest to the stern, who sets the rhythm everyone else follows.
Bow seat: The rower closest to the bow, also called one seat. Often the one balancing the boat.
Port: The left side of the boat looking forward, which is a rower's right as they sit.
Starboard: The right side of the boat looking forward.
Rigger: The metal frame bolted to the side of the boat that holds the oar.
Rowers lean toward their rigger when they sit in class. You will start noticing it.
Slide: The rails the seat rolls along. Rowing seats move, which surprises most people.
Real rowers are mildly surprised when a chair does not slide back and forth when they sit down.
Footstretcher: Where the feet go. The shoes are bolted into the boat.
Cox box: The small speaker system that carries the coxswain's voice down the boat.

8 words

The stroke

One stroke, in four parts, over and over.

Catch: The moment the blade enters the water and the stroke begins.
Drive: The part where the legs push and the boat moves. Rowing is mostly legs, not arms.
Release: The blade coming out of the water at the end of the drive. Also called the finish.
Recovery: The slide back up to the catch, ready to do it again.
Also the eight hundred extra calories a rower needs after a hard afternoon.
Feathering: Turning the blade flat on the recovery so it cuts the wind instead of catching it.
Catching a crab: When the blade gets stuck in the water and the oar handle wins the argument.
Everyone does it. First-year rowers do it a lot, usually into the Estuary, and it is one of the ways you learn.
Swing: The feeling when eight people move as one and the boat suddenly runs. Hard to describe, obvious when it happens.
Set: The balance of the boat. A boat that is down on one side is off set.

4 words

Training words

What you will hear at practice.

Erg: The rowing machine. Short for ergometer, and used when the water is not an option.
It measures how hard you are working, which is why coaches use it, and why rowers complain about it.
Piece: One measured effort in practice, on the water or on an erg. "Four by five minutes" is four pieces.
Split: How long it would take to cover five hundred meters at your current pace.
It is the number on the erg screen a rower watches. Lower is faster.
2K: Two thousand meters, the standard racing distance and the standard erg test.

7 words

Racing words

What you will hear at a regatta.

Regatta: A rowing competition. Expect a long day, a lot of waiting, and about six minutes of racing.
Bring a chair, sunscreen and layers. Everyone underestimates the wind the first time.
Head race: A long fall race, usually about three miles, with boats starting one at a time against the clock.
Sprint race: The spring format. Boats line up in lanes and race two thousand meters side by side.
Stroke rate: Strokes per minute. It goes up at the start and the finish, and settles in the middle.
Power 10: A call for ten of the hardest strokes in the crew, usually to take a length off someone.
Uni: The one-piece racing suit. Yes, everyone wears one. Yes, your athlete will have opinions.
Lightweight and openweight: Two categories at some regattas. Lightweight events have a weight limit, openweight events have none.
Most of our racing is openweight. Nobody at Oakland Strokes is asked to lose weight to make a boat, and if weight ever comes up at home in a way that worries you, tell a coach.

2 words

Words you will hear other clubs use

We say these differently, so it is worth knowing what someone means when they use the older words.

Novice: What some clubs call a first-year rower. We say first-year rower.
You will hear it at regattas and read it in older documents, including some of ours we have not rewritten yet. It means the same thing.
Varsity and JV: School sport words for the top and second crews. Junior rowing uses age groups instead.
Our squads are U16, U17 and U19, which follow the USRowing calendar year rather than how fast a crew is. You will still hear "varsity" around the boathouse as a plain word for the top boats.

Still lost?

Ask a coach. Every one of them has explained all of this to a family before, and nobody minds the question. You can also email information@oaklandstrokes.org, or come down to watch a practice and see the words attached to the things they describe, which is much faster than reading about them.

If it is race day you are worried about rather than the words, what happens at a regatta walks through the whole day, from the bus to the boat area to the bit where you are not allowed to talk to anyone.

One last piece of advice from the version of this list the club wrote years ago, which still holds: do not try out your new rowing vocabulary on a rower who lives in your house unless you are ready for the eye rolling.