Anyone who has been to the fourth floor of the WoodPEC can tell you that the club crew team works hard to stay fit. Like most teams, the members spend plenty of time lifting weights and raising their cardiovascular fitness on the erg machines ­— or, more commonly, the “rowing” machines to prepare for races.

What most people can’t tell you, however, is exactly what a crew regatta looks like or, for that matter, how exactly a rower’s stroke is supposed to crest and fall.

“You explode with your feet into the floor boards. We think about it as a pulse,” Emory Crew President Will Bringgold said. “You try to almost lift your weight off the seat. Then you open your back once your legs extend. ...Your arms don’t help move the boat so much as finish the stroke.”

The task seems simple enough, until you factor in the challenge of maneuvering your oar in and out of the water in unison with seven other rowers. This is accomplished through several factors: leadership from the boat’s coxswain, the first rower’s rhythm and teamwork.

The coxswain is the only member on the boat who does not row. Instead, he or she faces forward from the back of the ship to keep track of the other boats and to set the pace by barking orders to the rowers.

The other eight rowers face backward, following the aft-most rower’s pace. Each of them aims to insert the blade of their oar perpendicularly to the water, a feat that is completed with a tell-tale “V” or “neutral” splash, Bringgold says. When the blade is submerged, the rowers pull straight back to keep the oar just below the surface of the water. As the blade emerges, they flip it parallel to the water to reduce air resistance, a technique called feathering.

Teamwork in rowing cannot be overemphasized. Every stroke must occur simultaneously or else energy, and therefore time, is lost. Not only do the strokes require perfect timing, they also must carry nearly the same force. And if the people who row on the left side row harder than those on the right, lateral movement results in lost energy.

There are two lengths of races, and each has its own type of boat, or “shell.” In the fall, races run five kilometers long, or roughly three miles. Teams of four or eight rowers plus a coxswain attempt to follow a curving course delineated by a center line of buoys. Due to the length and curving nature of the course, the coxswain has an extremely important role in controlling the team’s pace and path. These races tend to last around 15 minutes and place a high value on endurance.

In the spring, the course shortens to two kilometers, or 1.25 miles, and the teams race in straight lanes next to each other. Because of the relatively short distance of these races, which last about six minutes, teams try to accelerate as quickly as possible. Weight, and therefore inertia, becomes a bigger factor.

Since the coxswain does not contribute to the physical force of the boat, he or she often feels pressure to lose as much weight as possible. It is for this reason that coxswains are weighed before the race and must reach at least 120 pounds, the same for both men and women. Those who do not weigh enough must bring sandbags on board to compensate.

“Sandbags are a real disadvantage because they’re dead weight. They don’t move with the momentum of the boat the way a coxswain does,” Bringgold says. He added that some teams’ coxswains drink a large quantity of water before they weigh in and then relieve themselves before the race to lighten the boat.

While clearly not healthy, as long as the coxswains make weight at the time of weigh-in, this practice is technically allowed.

The rowers themselves do not feel as much pressure to lose weight, though excess body fat is a disadvantage. Bringgold says the team cares more about the power-to-weight ratio of the rowers than the weight itself.

The Emory crew team took 11th place last year at the National Club Regatta, against competition from among the fastest men’s rowing teams in the country, such as the University of Virginia and the University of Minnesota.

It did not come easily, though, as the team practices twice a day on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Some of these practices can be held in the WoodPEC, but in order to practice in the water, the team must drive 30 minutes to a lake in Stone Mountain Park.

Despite the challenges, Bringgold, who picked up the sport his freshman year at Emory, couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

“Rowing is a huge other world that no one knows about it,” he said, “but once you do it, you’re hooked.”

— Contact Richard Higham-Kessler.