Doctor Rowing: Meditations on the Micropause

Three years ago, one of my high-school oarsmen who had rowed in England before rowing for me returned from vacation talking about a new thing that was spreading through the UK—the micropause at the finish. He wanted us to adopt it.

“It gets everyone together at the finish,” he said.

I could see that it would do that, but my concept of the rowing stroke was the metaphor of the bicycle chain; the more you can keep the motion moving constantly, the less chance for a break in the rhythm of the rowing stroke. We did not adopt a micropause.

Since that time, I’ve watched as numerous crews have glommed on to this British innovation. Many of them have been good crews. Maybe I should take another look. Mrs. Dr. Rowing and I decided that we needed to take a look first hand at some superb crews and see what they did. I got in touch with Bobby Thatcher, the super-successful coach at St. Paul’s School in London and asked whether we could spend a week in his launch.

I had seen videos of SPS at steady state; to my eye they did practice the micropause. Bobby was welcoming. On the Tideway, that section of the Thames River that flows through the heart of London, it did, in fact, look like his crew paused.

SPS was the winner of the 2023 Head of the Charles by a whopping 20 seconds, a race in which the crew passed 14 boats despite starting way back at number 74 of 90 eights. More recently, SPS won the first two legs of the Schools Triple Crown—the Schools Head in London and the National Schools Regatta at the 2012 Olympic course at Dorney.

I asked Bobby about the micropause.

“We are not pausing,” he said. “We are finishing the stroke and organizing the next stroke.”

At rate 22, it sure looked to me like there was a distinct pause. It may be a matter of semantics; Thatcher was certainly not coaching them to pause, but he was insistent that they needed to organize at the finish in preparation for the next catch. It was also clear that at low rates, the oarsmen were feeling the boat run out, a desirable result.

As Volker Nolte explained in the January issue of this magazine, “With most training done at lower stroke rates and corresponding lower boat velocity, the best way to engrain this movement is to row with a slow recovery followed by a quick motion into the catch. This is the source of the so-called micro-pause.”

I’d add that there is a danger in coaching a pause because this “gather” at the finish may lead to a rush down the slide. If the crew is not skilled at catching the water, a coach may be encouraging a technique that will produce hanging and missing water.

I was fortunate to be at Henley this summer and get a launch ticket for the premier high school race of the year, the semifinal between St. Paul’s and its rival and last year’s Henley winner, St. Edward’s. It was a terrific race, with both crews rowing very well.

St. Paul’s took a very aggressive move early on and won by a length and a quarter. The team followed up by winning the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup the next day against Shiplake. Rowing at 36 and 37, they showed not a trace of a pause in their rhythm. They celebrated their triple—a quadruple if we add the Head of the Charles to the year’s big regattas.

I spoke with a fellow coach at Henley, Bill Manning of Penn AC, who said that he does pause drills at the finish to get the crew to prepare and feel the boat run. But after that conscious pause, he shifts them to “now pause for half that amount of time, now half of that,” so that before they know it, there is no pause at all.

“The micropause is a teaching device that functions well at lower rates and intensities and then disappears when the rate comes up,” Manning elaborated. “When I teach pause at the release, this is what I do. It helps them complete the drive rather than cut the finish when the rate increases, but I never expect any pause at race rates.”

We agreed that the bicycle chain analogy still holds water. Will I try a micropause next spring? I like Manning’s pause drill, so we’ll see.

Overheard at Henley:

One of the pleasures of being at Henley is being surrounded by so much rowing over the six days of the regatta. I like to keep my ears open.

I asked a friend how his daughter’s season had gone.

“She didn’t row this year because of a back problem, but she is rowing now at Henley.”

“And her back?”

“Well, she’s at bow, so not really straining.”

Spoken like the true five man that he was.

The showers at Henley are famed for their frigid water. There is no hot-water faucet, and rowers have been known to scream when the icy blast hits them. But this year, to the disappointment of many, athletes were reporting that the showers didn’t seem so bad.

One vet shared a memory: “In the old days, you could always tell a rookie because he’d put his palm under the water waiting for it to warm up. I loved to see it slowly dawn on him that it’s not going to get any warmer.”