Club slang for the recovery error where the knees rise before the hands have passed them — hands and knees collide and the stroke loses its straight line.
On the erg it sounds like a stumble; in the boat it feels like climbing over your own knees. Scooping means letting the knees rise during the recovery before your hands have cleared them. The hands have to dodge, they arc upward, and the whole stroke loses its straight line. The fix is purely a question of order and costs no strength: extend the arms fully, hinge the body forward from the hips, and only then let the knees break — the exact reverse of the drive. Two notes. First, you barely feel scooping yourself; film from the side and the arc is instantly obvious. Second, it comes back under fatigue and at too high a stroke rate, even once it had disappeared at a calm tempo. So take the rate down deliberately while you correct it.