The finish is where the handle ends. Most advice about it is spatial: bring it to the lower ribs, keep the elbows travelling behind you, do not let it creep up towards the chin. Those cues are not wrong and they are not sufficient, because they describe where to put the handle without describing what the finish is actually for.
The context
There is a persistent coaching habit of treating the finish as a reach. If the handle can go further, it should go further, and the rower who lays back more is assumed to be rowing better. This is easy to pick up from footage, and it is also the reason the same advice produces visibly different rowing on different machines: the layback in indoor-rowing video is partly a property of the machine rather than a standard anyone chose. The manufacturer's technique material describes where the handle should travel and what the recovery should look like ([1] Concept2), which is a specification of the stroke's shape rather than of its timing.
There is a reason the advice is phrased in terms of landmarks. The lower ribs, the navel, the sternum and the chin are all things you can feel, and a cue naming a landmark is a cue you can apply without a mirror or a coach watching you. That is a real advantage and worth keeping. The trouble starts when the landmark becomes the target. Once the handle has somewhere specific to arrive, arriving accurately begins to matter more than arriving ready, and a rower will happily sacrifice the recovery to get there on time.
The core idea
Peak handle force arrives near the middle of the stroke, not at the end of it. In race simulations with force measured at the start, middle and end phases, male rowers peaked at 46 percent of the cycle and female rowers at 43 percent ([3] Ledergerber).
Read that as a timeline and the finish stops being where the stroke gains anything. Force does not stop at the peak: the curve declines while the handle is still driving the flywheel, and the late drive is still doing work. What changes at the peak is only that the stroke is no longer adding to its best number. The finish is a brake, a landing, and a setup for the recovery — a different job from the one most finish advice implies, and one where what you optimise for is not reach but arriving somewhere you can reverse cleanly.
The braking half of that job is measurable. Across the drive, trunk extensor activity dominates the earlier portion alongside the hip extensors, and then trunk flexor activity takes over for the remaining stretch, performing a braking action as the stroke runs into the finish ([4] Legge). The finish is not the end of the pull. It is where the pull is deliberately stopped.
And how far back you go is not a free choice. In a direct comparison of machine types, sixteen rowers with international competitive experience showed a thorax angle at the finish of 27.5 ± 7.6 degrees on a Concept2 against 19.4 ± 4.5 degrees on an angular ergometer at heavy intensity, despite similar oxygen uptake on both ([2] Cardoso). The researchers attributed the difference to the angular machine sitting closer to an on-water technique. Which means the deep layback in most erg footage is not the finish being done well. It is a large part of the machine.
All of this has a consequence for the recovery, and the consequence is worth making explicit. If the finish is a brake rather than a reach, then the recovery's job is not to undo the layback but to return the body to position in time for the next catch. That is a timing budget rather than a stretch. Field work on stroke rate shows the balance of losses inside the stroke shifting as the rate climbs, with velocity-fluctuation losses rising as propelling efficiency improves ([7] Hofmijster). Read at the finish rather than at the flywheel, that is a shorter and busier window to get back into position, which is a good reason to stop adding reach at the front of it.
The how-to
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Aim to stop, not to reach. The handle comes in to the lower ribs and the elbows continue behind the body, but the intention is a controlled arrival rather than maximum extension. Biomechanics reviews describe the finish as an ordered endpoint of a sequence rather than an opportunity for additional range ([5] Soper, [8] Baudouin), and the rower-physiology literature treats the stroke as a coordinated sequence that has to be reversible into the recovery ([10] Secher).
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Let the legs set your limit. Your knees are straight and your shins are vertical before your upper body has finished opening, which means the body swing cannot go much further than the leg drive actually took you. Over-extending past that point adds nothing the stroke can use, because there is no leg drive left to deliver into it.
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Do not add layback to fix a slow recovery. A long reach costs recovery time in the direction you are already short of. Practitioner biomechanics writing coaches the recovery as unhurried and unpowered by definition ([11] Kleshnev), which means any extra distance you invent at the finish has to be paid for on the way back.
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Check the setup, but do not expect it to be the whole answer. Foot-stretcher height and angle do change ergometer kinematics, but the effect is confined to the ankle and the hip, and the rowers in the study largely absorbed it: the researchers found those changes generally smaller than the differences stroke rate produces on its own ([6] Engstrom). If the handle finishes somewhere consistently odd, the stretcher is a live explanation. It is just not automatically the explanation.
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Watch the peak, not the finish, when you speed up. At higher rates the balance of losses inside the stroke shifts, with velocity-fluctuation losses rising as propelling efficiency improves ([7] Hofmijster). If your finish starts to travel further as the rate climbs, that is usually a timing change in the braking phase rather than a new habit.
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Finish the stroke and let it reverse as one movement. The recovery is unhurried and unpowered by definition ([11] Kleshnev), so the transition at the finish is a change of intent rather than a pause. A common failure at higher rates is treating the finish as a resting point, after which the recovery has to start from a standstill. Watch the handle leave the body rather than watching it arrive, and the pause tends to disappear on its own.
The trade-offs
Three limits on all of this are worth stating plainly.
The first is that the machine-specific finding is a comparison between two machines, not a correction handed to you. Sixteen rowers on two ergometers is a good study and a small one, and it tells you that the Concept2 layback is not neutral — it does not tell you exactly how much of your finish is machine. Treat it as a reason to stop copying footage and start measuring your own stroke, not as a number to chase.
The second is that the peak-force timing comes from a narrow group again. Fourteen adolescent rowers ([3] Ledergerber) is enough to establish where the peak lands in a race simulation and not enough to tell you what your peak does at an easy aerobic rate. The timing holds up as a general shape, but the honest position is that the exact percentage moves with intensity and with the rower.
The third is that lumbar posture is not held fixed by technique alone. In sixteen school rowers, lumbar flexion increased significantly across a trial while erector spinae activity showed the classic fatigue pattern of rising magnitude and falling median frequency, and the authors put forward the fatigue as a partial explanation for the extra flexion ([9] Caldwell). Note the direction, because it is the opposite of the usual story: the drift was toward more flexion, not more extension. A finish that looks level for four minutes and then starts to round in the last few is that signal, not a decision you made.
What to do tomorrow
Row ten strokes at a comfortable rate and film it from the side. Do not watch the handle. Watch where your ribcage stops.
If your body stops well before your legs finish, you have a sequencing problem, not a finish problem, and no amount of reach will fix it. If your body stops well after your legs finish, you are laying back into dead space and lengthening your recovery for nothing.
Then row the same ten strokes at a harder rate. If the finish travels further as the rate goes up, that is the braking phase absorbing a timing change, and slowing down will bring it back.
Peak force lands mid-stroke and the curve is falling from there. The finish is the brake, not the effort — and the machine can move how much layback you see.
Key points
- Peak handle force arrives at roughly 43 to 46 percent of the cycle, and the curve falls from there, so the finish is about braking and positioning.
- The layback in erg footage is partly the machine: experienced rowers showed a thorax angle at the finish of about 27.5 degrees on a Concept2 against 19.4 on an angular ergometer.
- Trunk extensor activity gives way to trunk flexor activity over the last third of the drive, and the flexors brake the stroke into the finish.
- Over-extending does not add stroke length you can use, because the legs finished before the body did, and it lengthens the recovery you then have to row back.
- Lumbar posture drifts across a trial as erector spinae fatigue develops, so a finish that looks different late in a piece is fatigue talking, not a decision.
- Foot-stretcher setup changes ergometer kinematics and the effect grows with rate, so the handle position you finish into partly belongs to the machine before it belongs to you.
Editorial & Coaching Standards
Guides in the MyNextRow Learn library are created by Concept2 athletes and coaches, synthesizing peer-reviewed sports physiology, biomechanics literature, and authoritative rowing guidelines. Every workout protocol and technical cue is tested for safety, repeatability, and PM5 monitor compatibility.
Sources and further reading
- Concept2 — Rowing Technique— Manufacturer technique guidance; the operational description of handle position and the recovery.
- Cardoso R et al. Assessment of angular and straight linear rowing ergometers. Sensors 2024;24(17):5686— Sixteen internationally experienced rowers on both machine types; the measured difference in thorax angle at the finish.
- Ledergerber R et al. Strength determinants across distinct phases of Olympic rowing. Eur J Sport Sci 2023— Race-simulation study in adolescent rowers; the measurements placing peak handle force near the middle of the stroke cycle.
- Legge N et al. Movement competency in rowing: the key to an effective stroke. Front Sports Act Living 2025— Perspective on sport-specific movement competency; describes trunk flexor activity braking the late drive into the finish.
- Soper C, Hume PA. Towards an ideal rowing technique for performance. Sports Med 2004;34(12)— Biomechanics review of the stroke sequence; the case that the finish is an ordered endpoint rather than extra reach.
- Engstrom I et al. Foot-stretcher position and stroke rate on ergometer rowing kinematics. PLoS One 2023— Directly tests the setup dependency of ergometer kinematics; the kinematic effect compounds with stroke rate.
- Hofmijster MJ et al. Stroke rate and the distribution of net mechanical power. J Sports Sci 2007— Force-curve decomposition across stroke rates; the balance of blade and velocity-fluctuation losses inside the stroke.
- Baudouin A, Hawkins D. A biomechanical review of factors affecting rowing performance. BJSM 2002;36(6)— Biomechanical review; the determinants-of-performance framing for how the stroke ends.
- Caldwell JS et al. Repetitive motion, lumbar flexion and erector spinae activity in rowers. Clin Biomech 2003— Within-trial fatigue study; lumbar flexion increases across the trial as erector spinae activity shows fatigue.
- Secher NH. Physiological and biomechanical aspects of rowing. Sports Med 1993;15:24-42— Rowing physiology review; the case that the stroke is a coordinated sequence ending in an ordered recovery.
- Kleshnev V. Rowing biomechanics newsletter. biorow.com— Practitioner biomechanics newsletter; the coaching translation of finish and recovery timing into cues.