Can we talk spacers/poppers for a second? I feel like I’m going crazy 🥹

Masters rower with lots of scholastic/some collegiate experience. Newish to coaching as well.

For this I’ll be talking about our “top boats/rowers” in 8’s.

Our team struggles with handle heights so much. I am aware that set comes from more than just handle heights, but it’s very apparent that handles are a huge contributor at this time. We can’t catch for shit because we are so very much not setting ourselves up for the catch (literally as in boat lean/wobble but also oar/body prep for catch)

*To me, much of this comes from the tap down and snowballs from there. Everyone on my team puts all of their spacers on the bottom, raising the oar lock to the very top. *

We are masters. We are not 6’2”. I’m talking women who are 5’1” on a good day putting them all the way up. They think it gives them more space off the water. I disagree, I think it causes way more problems than it fixes. They use it as a massive crutch. But our coach won’t talk about it so I have come to the holy grail (r/rowing lol).

When I learned, you needed to have leverage on the blade to tap down. If your wrist is bent angled down at the finish, you don’t have leverage to tap. You also have to tap further if your oar lock is higher.

So:

1. Their wrists are bent, thus no leverage. I thought flat wrists at finish squared and buried with handle around chest height was ideal.

2: not tapping really at all. From there, they still don’t have the leverage because it’s probably at a weirdly high angle for them on recovery but can’t confirm.

I would absolutely love to hear everyone tell me what they think about this. I could be entirely wrong. Maybe popper height really isn’t that big of a deal. I just want to hear this open conversation to settle my brain.

Thank youuuuu.

—— TLDR;

How does the spacer position relative to each person in an 8 impact ability to (leverage the) tap out, and keep hands even and steady on the recovery, to set up for a GOOD catch?