I'm going to hazard a guess. It seems you're talking about two similar but different exercises.
The first one is ikkyo exercise. This is where you raise both hands up to eye level, sort-of-like you're getting ready to shot a free throw in basketball. There is one variation of this where you change directions, doing it in both front and back.
The second one is rowing exercise. This is where you extend your hands in front about waist high. This comes from traditional sculling, using one oar.
You could combine the above exercises, but it might only confuse people, since the timing is different in each exercise.
Your best bet is to ask your instructor or a fellow student to go over the movements with you. Having an exercise name would help also, since it's hard trying to guess what the movement is. If you get one please let us know. Then we can see how correct or far off we were.
