Rowing is a full-body workout that makes you want to go full speed ahead
Members of the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club offer a glimpse into the sport during a sunrise practice session.
I thought rowing would be a breeze. Then I took a seat in an eight-person boat, pulled on an oar and realized three things: I’m sitting backward, I don’t know where I’m going and I am the most uncoordinated man on Earth.
Rowing in a 55-foot-long carbon-fiber racing shell, one of those long, thin $30,000 or more boats you see in college crew competitions and the Olympics, is a world away from the 10-second learning curve for a kayak. Rowing requires precise placement of the large, rectangular paddle and keen synchronization with your seven teammates. It’s a great all-body workout and group bonding experience — but staying in rhythm is difficult enough to humble the most coordinated athlete. Which I’m not.
Not helping matters is rowing’s vocabulary, starting with “port” and “starboard” (nautical terms for left and right), “weigh-enough” (stop) and “coxswain” (pronounced cox-sen, it refers to the non-rowing captain of the boat, who steers and calls out instructions). Even basics like “bow” and “stern” (front and back) are confusing, since you’re facing backward. (“‘Bow 4?’ he says? But I’m in the back.”) By the time I was done with my first morning of rowing in the glassy harbor channels of Newport Beach, I was more tired mentally than physically.
“Don’t worry. It takes about five outings to get the movements down,” said Matt White, who runs the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club, one of several rowing clubs in the area. “Part of the challenge is getting the blade to enter the water square. And more important than that is matching the movement of the other blades, so you don’t hit.”
Rowing, which includes sweep boats that use single-sided oars and sculls with double oars, has solo and two-man boats but is overwhelmingly a team sport. Currently 28 of the 37 members of Sea Base, founded a year ago, are women.
“I love the full-body workout, the water and all the people,” said Jan Kwok, a 67-year-old retired schoolteacher who does four hours of athletic activity a day. She took up rowing last January on the advice of her friend Barbara Plon, who got so good in just two years that she recently competed in the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in Lake Ontario.
Joining Plon at Henley was Sea Base member Gayle Jennings, a 56-year-old accountant from Corona del Mar who took up rowing four years ago to replace her running habit, which wrecked her knees. “When I saw a study that said that long-limbed people make good rowers, I knew it was for me,” said the 5-foot-10 mother of two. “The thing I like the most is that I’m still improving, sort of like golf. There’s always something to work on.”
That’s exactly why my 20-year-old son, Joey, and I came back the next weekend at 7 a.m. and helped the group lift the two 200-plus-pound boats into the water.
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Racing these carbon-fiber rockets puts it all together. Almost as if you are stretching your body beyond its limits, you slide forward on the seat into a deep squat and simultaneously push the handle down on the rail to lift the blade backward, Dropping it squarely into the water, you blast back off the balls of your feet with all your might, rocketing the boat backward, letting the legs do most of the work, with the arms focused on keeping the blade solid. White, our coxswain, called on four of us at a time for two sets of 10 strokes. With teammates counting on you, you push.
When it was over, chests heaving, the insecurity of the previous week gone, Joey and I joyously high-fived Mark Whalls, a 57-year-old retired Navy recruiter and outrigger paddler from Irvine. Yes, we won, but more than that, we learned a new skill. You don’t do that every day.
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Rowing clubs info
Long Beach Rowing Assn.
Where: 5750 Boathouse Lane (at Marine Stadium), Long Beach
Sessions: “Intro to Sculling,” 6-8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays for four weeks. “Intro to Sweep,” 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays for two weeks.
Cost: $200 per session or $350 for both. Annual membership, $480 per person or $720 per family.
Info: www.longbeachrowing.org
Newport Sea Base Rowing
Where: 1931 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach
Classes: “Learn to Row” on Saturdays and Sundays
Cost: $55; memberships are $75 initiation and $33 to $50 a month, with team membership additional
Info: www.seabaserowing.org
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