Rowing in bad weather

Rowing is an outdoor sport. You can't really avoid that fact! All the gym work and fitness work can be done inside but eventually to learn how a boat feels and balances you’ll need to get outside. This can be annoying in countries where the weather is very changeable. Most coaches don't have a problem pushing their athletes to row in windy and wet conditions. My view on it is, if they would cancel a regatta over the weather we’re rowing in, then is there much point rowing in it? Well actually, you want your rowers to be able to handle themselves in weather slightly worse than that because for example a race might go ahead in which the weather might suddenly pick up. So you want your crew not to freak out and to be confidant rowing in as many adverse weather conditions as possible.

Another thing to factor in is, are your crew learning while being out in bad conditions? If they aren't, and the weather is affecting their ability to learn, then they should be brought in, as more beneficial work could be done on rowing machines, or if its fitness that is the focus of the training session, then bike or running would be better. I remember once being out rowing and having a coach refuse to let us come in even though we had to stop every two hundred meters to bail the water out the boat. Nothing beneficial was learned that day and I've seen the same sort of situation happen to other crews too. 

Some coaches think that by forcing their crews out into the worst weather they’ll magically become great at dealing with such conditions. In my opinion exposing your athletes to gradual increases in weather conditions is a technique that should be used, as a person who’s never been out in strong winds in a scull is going to suffer compared to someone who’s been let out in gradually more difficult conditions and has learned to adjust. However being out in snow or rain is not too bad as long as everyone is wearing proper gear to keep warm. This obviously can vary, as in extremely heavy rain or snow, productive things cannot get done.  

Learning to row before/while clocking up the miles.

With rowing, technique is very important. You can be the worlds fittest and strongest person but if you can't move a boat properly then its of no use in rowing. Therefore a person must first and foremost, learn the proper set of movements which they can use to move the boat in the most efficient way possible. 

Efficiency in rowing means long, horizontally powered strokes. Any fool can throw their back into it but it takes a lot of learning to use the correct muscles in the correct sequence. A Lot of people know that the drive should commence with the legs with the body only swinging through on the last quarter of the leg drive but how many actually do it or try and make a change for the better each and every time they go out?

Time is well spent mastering the basics of rowing, the fundamentals with which will you will later be able to reap the benefits from when they are ingrained in your brain. Some people however enjoy spending hours rowing up and down rivers and lakes further ingrained bad habits into their heads. If you're not actively trying to improve your technique every time you go out for a row then don't row. If you want to get fit get on a bike or go for a run. Better that than injuring yourself from hurling yourself up and down the river using your back and bent arms as means of propulsion. 

The leg drive, when properly used accounts for just under 50% of the boat movement. The body swing 30% and the arms 20%. Most people have a lot more boat speed in them which they can unlock just by improving their technique.

Rowing as “One”

Yes a 24 person boat the Stämpfli Express.

The best crews are the ones that move together as “one”. In a scull you can do whatever you want (if you have a good level of technique) but crew boats must be moved together. A fraction of a difference in timing and body positions between crew members can be the difference between winning and losing.

The blades must go in and out perfectly together in time. If the athletes are out of time then they are not sharing the load catch and not driving together of as long as they should be. The phrase many hands make light work really come into play here.

By catching together the load is distributed amongst the crew and the boat will have less disruptions. The same is true of the finish. By having a single finish and tapping the blades out together at the exact same time the boat will not be dragged to one side by a person leaving their blade in a second too late.

On either side of the boat the blades must be perfectly parallel and all hand heights the same, again, on the recovery, the importance of minimizing the disturbance on the boat is often overlooked but it is here that a lot of the boat speed can be found. The boat wants to glide, so leave it do its thing.  A crew that is together will get more of a response from their boat than a crew that is constantly fighting it and each other, by doing slightly different movements. 

Crews can be amazingly together and yet everyone in that crew can have their own individual technical flaws. Obviously rowing together for a period of time as a crew is important as it gives the crew time to blend their movements and become one.

In my opinion this means that crews that are together for longer, often (but not always) do better than crews that have not been together as long. This is especially true of athletes that have a certain level of technical ability as those without a solid technical base will never be truly together as a crew until they can negate their technical flaws.


Being together as a crew also means that you learn what everyone in your boat is capable of, if you can rely on them or not, what motivates them and their strengths and weaknesses are.  

Here's a video of a crew who have their own individual flaws but do the boat moving together as one which results in great, effortless looking rowing . Try pausing the video to catch them out of time.

Techniques from business world to the rowing world.

After listening to a speech from the CEO of the company I work for what really came to mind was how techniques that he was using to lead the company were essentially the same principles that rowers and coaches could use too to improve themselves and their clubs. After all, being competitive at anything in life requires the same fundamental rules, weather it be rowing or running a business. Some of the main key things that I heard were: 

Learn from your competitors that are better than you.
This ones a no brainier really. If some one is better than you they must be doing something that you are not. Find out what it is and if you work as hard as them you should be able to be as good as them.


If somethings not working out( we're not making money), find out why, and do something to fix it, check if things are improving. Constantly monitoring will help us see trends developing.
If you are not getting better. Find out why. Try and keep track of your self/ your athletes training so you can analyse it and spot trends either good or bad.


If your to over stretched then step back a bit and see that your not doing too much.
Improve at the right rate. Too fast, you can burn out and not peak at the right time. For example if your goal is to win the most important regatta of the year, winning at the start of the year is not what you should be aiming to do.


Be passionate, and enjoy your work.
The same applies to rowing/coaching, enjoy what you do.


Focus on your weak spots. Work the most at the things you are the worst at. 
This is especially true when it comes to rowing. If you have a weak core, work on it and you'll reduce your chances of injure. If you suck at weights, work on them and you'll see a big increase in speed if your technique is already good.


Keep setting your sites higher. By keeping your self challenged you are keeping things interesting for your self. 
We should all be trying to challenge yourselves, be it as coaches or athletes. Push your self to learn new things. Be open.


Stay up to date with current technology.
The way we train for rowing and monitor our improvement in skills and fitness has changed greatly in the last 20 years. These days we have wide access to heart rate monitors, lactate testing, and even labs, which before might have been too expensive to visit to get your Vo2 Max and stats, are now much more accessible to clubs not only national teams.


From the above we can see that many rules from the corporate world can be used in rowing. This also means that many good CEO's of successful companies would make a good job of running successful clubs. This is the case in Germany, where Mario Woldt the Performance Director of rowing, came from the Steel industry where he had been in charge of a successful steel company. The same can be said for rowing transitioning from high performance rowing into high positions in businesses as can be seen below.

http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/when-the-road-ends-what-athletes-do-after-the-olympics/

http://www.thegrindstone.com/2012/08/02/work-life-balance/olympic-rowers-are-most-likely-to-have-the-best-careers-in-business-240/

Learning to say no and follow your dreams.

Another topic that came from the danish coach at the world rowing coaches conference was learning to say no. Saying "No" to what exactly? Saying no when people are asking you to go out for a few drinks, going to the cinema, going on holidays, etc etc. The more serious you become about rowing, the more training you have to do and the more you have to learn to say no to things.

Athletes can often feel like they're missing out on a lot, but the majority of it (the drinking, cinema, holidays, dinners etc.) gets pretty repetitive. Nothing new comes of it. Your not moving towards completing a goal. Its just what people without goals choose to do with their time, while people with goals are working towards achieving their dreams. After another night out of drinking what will you have to show for it apart from a few Facebook pictures and a sore head?

 I'm not saying don't go to the cinema and go or go out with your friends! That's really important and at the end of the day we are nothing without friends and family, but if for example you've gone out twice this week already, and by going out a third time you will be missing training or it will affect your training, then if your goal is to be a good rower and help your crew achieve its goal then maybe you should reconsider and say no. You have to sit down and decide what is at the end of the day important to you. If its going out for the third time this week then go out, if its going training and improving your strength and fitness then don't go out.

You can go through life following the crowd and never make anything special of your self or you can work towards your goals and passions and excel at them, making you feel 100 time more fulfilled than doing meaning less things just because other people are doing so - unless of course you are taking a break from all the hard work you've just been doing achieving what you want to achieve. Rest is always important!

What I enjoy about coaching.

The role of a rowing coach is one that comprises of many different roles. You must be a teacher, motivator, planner, psychologist, sports scientist etc. As these fields are always progressing, its our duty as coaches to be constantly learning and improving ourselves if we are to give the best coaching possible to our athletes. Below are some of the main things that I enjoy as a rowing coach.

Improvement
Constant learning and having to accept that I do not know everything and therefore must learn more is something I highly enjoy and hope I keep, as I believe it is an important trait. The main thing that I enjoy about coaching is seeing your athletes improve due to your coaching. Watching them go from total beginner to someone who can go against the best in their class is extremely rewarding.

Motivating and achieving goals
Being a fan of psychology I also enjoy finding out what motivates and pushes people. Watching people push themselves to their limit due to the motivation and drive that you have instilled within them is brilliant. Ultimately we are there as coaches to help them achieve there goal. Which, if it is to be the best they can be, then just makes us happy, as then we have a common goal.

Sports science
I enjoy learning how to train the anaerobic, aerobic systems along with the muscles properly to form a complete athlete who by becoming physically fit has also gained confidence in their ability to preform.

Being outside and watching the boat move
Being outside, wind in my face, following the boats, and seeing improvements in technique, fitness and strength take the form of boat speed, is for me, brilliant to watch. I also enjoy watching the boat when its moving well as the athletes and the boat are in time and they are working together as one, reaping the benefits.

The importance of enjoying your sport.

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture by Dr. John Kremer who is a sports psychologist. Sport psychology is an increasingly important field these days after being neglected for many years in favours of bio-mechanical testing and the field of sports science. One of the points that was stressed the most by Dr. Kremer was that to be successful, athletes should enjoy their sport.

Athletes can get into a sport because they enjoy it and as they get better at it they can loose that sense of enjoyment and fun. If your in a race against some one and ye both have the same set of skills and fitness then the crew who is enjoying themselves the most will, in my opinion, win. If your just racing because you enjoy racing and testing your skills against the best at competitions you won't be under any real pressure, in contrast to if your sole purpose is to win. You should want to win, but it should be obsessing about it. If you obsess about it, failing to win can then become all you think about. Your goal should be to do your best and have fun. Winning should be a by-product of this.

On the other hand if your only goal is to win the pressure to preform can cause your mind to over think, over analyse, and ultimately, if you haven't learned to control your mind, you can freeze and end up doing stupid things etc, even though you are perfectly capable under normal circumstances of doing this task which you have practised over and over again while training. So just relax, enjoy it, and remember that no one is making you compete. If you don't want to go out there and race, then don't.

World rowing coaches conference.

Last weekends world rowing coaches conference had many great speakers over the two days. One of my favourite speakers was one of the Danish light weight coaches. He talked about many topics that I found interesting, some of which I will now out line below.

Common goals

A very important of life is goal setting. Without goals in life we would just wander around aimlessly. In the lead up to the Olympic games the light weight coxed four got together with their coach and all wrote on individual pieces of paper what they wanted to get out of the Olympics.

Was their goal winning the gold, getting a medal or just qualifying for the final? Once they had analysed all the pieces of paper they realized that everyone had different goals including the coach. They then opened up a discussion on the subject and came to agreeing upon a common goal.

I believe that having a common goal is vital. There is no point saying your goal is to medal at the Olympics if you've never made an a final at world championship level. Its much better to have a realistic goal to head towards.

The coaches enabling the rowers

As coaches our jobs are to work with the rowers to achieve a common goal. Some times I find that coaches are trying to use their athletes to achieve their own personal goals without finding out if the athletes are fully on board and willing to reach for the same targets.

There is nothing wrong with having different goals but the goals must be known by everyone so there is no confusion when, for example, some one does not win a race and their coach or team mates ask why they didn't try harder. As it might have been their goal to come in the top three.

Smart training

The danish athletes seem to train less than athletes(in total hours) in some of the other systems such as GB or GER. I believe this is because they have found a way of pushing their athletes in such a way that they do more intensive workouts which results in more time needed between workouts for recovery and less time needed for steady state.

 A thing to also take into account is that the danish hold onto their top level rowers for many years at a time as they don't have that many of then to begin with. As time goes on and technique is perfected all that is needed to work upon is the aerobic, anaerobic, strength, and flexibility side of things.

Instead of calculating the difficulty of weeks using total hours or kilometers rowed. They use a points system in which the higher the intensity of a workout the more points it is given, using this method they can calculate the amount of stress that's being placed on their athletes and make sure they are not being over trained or get injured and that they are getting enough recovery, which in turn leads to improvement.

Passing on of experience

As Denmark doesn't have that large a rowing population to draw its crews from it tries to keep them in the system as long as possible, to do that they encourage their athletes to study and get jobs. According to their coach, almost everyone on the danish team has a job or is in third level education. As the athletes have other focuses and therefore stay on longer, they can pass on their knowledge and experience to the younger athletes coming into the system.

Although, at times, this can be testing for the older more experienced athletes who have to put up with more immature and less proficient rowers, in the end it provides a good mix of experience and ensures that the experiences of the older athletes are passed on, which in turn make the team stronger as experience always plays a part in rowing.