Rowing Quotes

Go out there and thrill me.

I know how to dance with the wind, I can use its power by sailing this way, then that way, and again this way, till finally I get to you. With rowing, you're working primarily with your arms and shoulders. But with sailing, you're making bigger use of the wind and the waves.

you're rowing by wordlight

I'm pretty active, so I wasn't really worried [about filming "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" ]. But there was a day when I was like, "God, I've been rowing for two hours."

Those of us who stayed were younger, more tractable. Less sure of ourselves socially and intellectually, we gave ourselves to the sport with little idea of what we could give or receive.

Fitness - Focus - Form.

I like the stroke seat. I want to be there. I want to have the race come down to a short distance and be the person to make the difference. I can't stand to be behind and I don't want to lose.

Still loving the sport; still working on the focus.

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

To improve the oarsman you must improve the man.

Follow the stroke - or be the stroke that the rest can follow.

The GLORY is in the TEAM, NOT the INDIVIDUAL.

What's Princeton doing today?

Take a look at your natural river. What are you? Stop playing games with yourself. Where's your river going? Are you riding with it? Or are you rowing against it? Don't you see that there is no effort if you're riding with your river?

Racing shirts should be sold on big, thick rolls like paper towels.

The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

For a thorough understanding of rowing, for the what, the how and the why, the books making up Peter Mallory’s The Sport of Rowing certainly do it all.

I climbed on the rowing ergometer, and started to pull - losing myself in the rhythm of sweat and pain.

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.

Without a doubt, the next few minutes would be the most hellishly exciting in my life. Grinding pain and killer fatigue waited just beyond the word, "Partez." But I tried to ignore those prespects, and concentrate on the priceless feelings that also awaited. I thought about the perfect strokes we would take, and about the merciless surge of power we would unleash in the last 500 meters.

Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining.

Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation.

To hell with that. If a guy can pull a big erg, I can teach him how to row.

Just remember we're now in selection. Every piece, every erg, every seat race-they're all recorded, and I notice things

Although it takes a long warm-up for an eight to swing, on an erg such subtleties don't matter. For me the sound alone raised my pulse to 120. Tying my feet into the stretchers increased it to 180. My maximum pulse was 200. I didn't need a warmup. I needed a sedative.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

One of the unique aspects of rowing is that novices strive to perfect the same motions as Olympic contenders. Few other sports can make this claim. In figure skating, for instance, the novice practices only simple moves. After years of training, the skater then proceeds to the jumps and spins that make up an elite skater's program. But the novice rower, from day one, strives to duplicate a motion that he'll still be doing on the day of the Olympic finals.

In college, I was an editor on the student daily... To the extent that I noticed the existence of crew at all, I saw only what appeared to be big-boned acolytes who rose at dawn.

After hooking up the fuel line and pumping a little gasoline through the hose, I prepared for a workout on the 'coach's ergometer'.

I watched them carefully, as always, searching for a sign of mental weakness. But there was none. Every man was coping well with the hardship, each one of them locked into his task. But it is one thing to practice, and quite another to race. And the trouble is, you never know who, on the day, will find it within his soul to give more than he has ever given before. It takes a kind of madness to compete like that, because of the will power and the ego, and his loyalty. And while some men have it, others have yet to find it. And a coach can only use his best judgement as to who those men will be.

A tale begun in other days, When summer suns were glowing - A simple chime, that served to time The rhythm of your rowing - Whose echoes live in memory yet, Though envious years would say 'forget.

If you ask why start-ups outperform established enterprises when it comes to catching the next wave, the answer is that they are not conflicted. Everyone is rowing in the same direction. That is never the case in a company that has a portfolio of businesses at different stages in their maturity. So the key to winning there has to be to "zone out" the conflicts - sort of like sending quarrelling children each to their own room.

I confess . . . that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very vast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue.

When you are on the erg your mind is too busy to pay attention to the sounds of the machine; you notice only that they are indeed loud.

The ship is going by a mighty engine, and you are busy rowing.

If you want to know why you didn't make a boat -- I'll tell you. You're just out there hammering the water. You're killing fish, not rowing.

During their college years the oarsmen put in terrbily long hours, often showing up at the boathouse at 6:00am for preclass practices. Both physically and psychologically, they were separated from their classmates. Events that seemed earth-shattering to them-- for example, who was demoted from the varsity to the junior varsity -- went almost unnoticed by the rest of the students. In many ways they were like combat veterans coming back from a small, bitter and distant war, able to talk only to other veterans.

One training device is the ergometer. I never owned one, never trained on one, and practically never used one. The few national team tests I took on ergs were dismal failures, which worked wonders to further my dislike of these beastly creatures. Boring. Tedious. Noisy. Ergs have greatly cheapened rowing. Graceless. Greasy. Grim. The erg is to rowing what having sex by yourself is to having sex. Stop it!

If you want to be your best, spend a lot of time exploring what is more than enough. Push yourself until the bar is lying immobile across your chest. Push yourself right off the edge of your capacity.

On June 14, 1998, I pushed off under quiet gray skies from Nags Head, N.C, in the American Pearl, a 23 foot long boat made of plywood and fiberglass. I planned to row 3,637 miles across the North Atlantic to France. I was alone. There were no chase vessels. No one planned to drop food or equipment to me along the way. The physical goal was easy to explain: I was attempting to do something no American and no woman had ever done - to row solo across an ocean.

I started rowing in December 1995. The place was Association Nautique Faontainbleau in France. A friend of mine from middle school told me that I should join him 3 times a week for rowing because my hands were so big that I would'nt require oars to row.

As some species of plants need to be burned to the ground in order for them to later flourish, I needed to have my ass handed to be in order to get it into gear for the upcoming Sydney Olmpics. Now, I'm on a mission.

Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Unlike boxers-or any professional athlete for that matter-rowers have little motivation to do it longer than necessary. With a modest amount of self-realization, you'll know when you have acquired the nebulous gifts that rowing has to offer, whether it's courage or a strengthened soul or a powerful body. Once you have it, drop back ten yards and punt. Someone new will pick up the ball and run with it.

White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration.

The feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying, as if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon.

I slapped my face two or three times with both hands, as hard as possible. The slapping hurt. It snapped me to attention. My adrenaline started flowing... the Yugoslavs, sitting in the next lane stared at me in disbelief. The harsh slapping made me angry-exactly what I wanted. I did my best work when I was angry.

As a competitor, winner or loser, one crosses the line into limbo. The adrenaline is gone, the anticipation is gone. The verdict is either comforting or devestating but it neithers returns the exhilaration of the race nor helps directly to win the next. Maybe all that matters is that there is a next.