The need to win each training session

Each training session should be viewed as an opportunity to get better than your opponents, as an opportunity to make your self better than you were before. As an athlete it is important that you create a high performance mindset where you as an athlete try and “win” each session and make it as productive as possible.

I always think of the danish national team as an example, with their very high intensity training program that makes the most of the time they have, as they all have jobs or are in college while training throughout the year.

If you make it your duty to do the best you can each session and to push your self and be constantly trying to learn while in the boat, then your rowing will vastly improve.

So next time you have training, do yourself a favor and “win” it.

Should rowing clubs charge more??

Lets cut straight to it. Rowing is an extremely expensive sport. With equipment that costs thousands to buy and maintain, clubhouses and boat sheds to be built, trailers, pontoons/ slips, not to mention the gear that need to be bought, why then do so many clubs only charge a membership based on what other sports are charging per year?

Especially at junior level where juniors in other sports might play/train 2-4 times a week with a rare few (swimming comes to mind) training every day. All that happens then is, a club can only buy limited amounts of equipment, can’t afford to pay for professional coaching or even a minimum of good coaching education for the non professionals( Everyone needs to learn somewhere). Usually they also have a huge rower to coach ratio, which then leads to diluted coaching and injured/frustrated rowers in the future.

If you are not a university club and aren't given huge amounts of money then start charging for the amount of time the athletes are actually at the club training for. For example, lets take a junior rower training 6 times a week for a total of 10 hours a week. Over 40 weeks that amounts to 400 hours of time using the clubs resources. A typical soccer club training 3 times a week for a total of 6 hours amounts to 240 hours over the 40 weeks. 

Now though lets look at the expenses that the soccer club have to pay..... hmmmm a few balls and some gear and the maintenance of grounds. Maybe they have changing rooms and so on. Still nothing on the boats rowing clubs have to get/maintain. So 240 hours vs 400 hours both to be average(not medal winning at all) in each sport. (I'm taking numbers out of the air for the soccer)

	Soccer Club	Rowing Club
Yearly costs for club	10,000	50,000
Time training	240 hours	400 hours
Membership fees	100 euro	150 - 250 euro

The numbers in the table above are approximate figures but you can still get the jist of it. Rowing clubs need to be charging more. But then you have the other side of the coin that says what about those that can't afford to be paying those huge amounts of money. Shouldn't they be able to enjoy the sport too? Yes I think they should. 

Rowing is known for its "elitism" and it being a favorite sport at many English boarding schools. My idea, would be for clubs to run learn to row camps as they already do, and then identify individuals with talent. If upon hearing about the full cost of the fees the parents are just unwilling to pay then a form of concession could be made, maybe in the form of a half price membership or even free membership but again only if the family needs it. 

Yes I know there are flaws in this plan and there are probably many other ways that it could be implemented, but to finish it off, I have seen many clubs struggling with debt and terrible rower to coach ratios which could both be fixed with more money. At the end of the day its only the rowers who suffer when there aren't enough boats to go out in or only one coach who can't give the proper attention needed to the kids as they learn. 

They(the kids) then go off and learn bad habits and later unless the situation improves keep loosing races due to horrible technique or even worse end up injured or quitting. 

Are you a good rower?

Everything in rowing, like in life in general, is relative. How good you are at rowing is relative to the skills of everyone else who rows. Racing is important as it gives us a vital chance to compare ourselves against people from other clubs/countries who we wouldn't be rowing against every day. Once you are the best, then the test becomes to break down the barriers and become the fastest in the world/your club/ your country.  

Its always darkest before the dawn.

In the run up to the start of the regatta season its always hard to keep the motivation going. People go training and do the same things with only the same people to test themselves against and little notion to how they compare to others in they're boat classes.

Now is the time to keep pushing on. When others are loosing motivation its the time you have to get ahead and make yourselves even better, instead of putting it off till the races start, and then suddenly realizing that not enough work was put in and that you might not be able to catch up to win the important races.

Again, the races are not won on the day, they are won in the gym, on the erg, and on the cold horrible mornings, on the lakes and rivers when you decide to push your self out of your comfort zone and into the realm where you can make yourself better rower. Its not easy, but no one ever said it was.

Learning to race

Rowing is a sport where the opportunity to race only comes around 4 or 5 times a year.
Therefore learning to race is an important skill to learn. Go off to hard at the start and the race can seem to last for hours. Let the competition get too far ahead, and unless you trust yourself, and really know what you are capable of then you are at risk of not having the mental strength to come back.

Trusting your own ability and staying in control

Being ahead is always satisfying but when your not it can be a bit demoralizing if you don't trust yourself to come. One of the best things you can learn is to stay calm and trust yourself while your competition is ahead. So many crews panic and let all the hours of hard training go out the window. When you freak out and give in to panic you are in effect helping the opposition.

Remember that everyone around you is in just as much pain. This is something that is quickly forgotten as soon as the pain sets in. Everyone is human. Everyone feels pain. It comes down to a battle of wills where either one crew gives up and cracks and the other crew moves through them or they stay battling the whole way to the line. A great example of such a battle would be the 2003 boat race where the crews were neck and neck for over 6800 meters. With the winners only determined in the last stroke. Many people fail to remember is that a race is not over till you cross the line.

Another reason I think people start freaking out and loosing control of themselves during a race is because they become to concerned with winning. Winning is only a by product of you doing your best and your best being better than the others on the day of competition. Doing your best is 100 times more important than winning. But when I say doing your best I don't mean doing the best you have done before. In many races you will need to be pushing the boundaries of what you have done before. (Unless your like the Canadian 8+ who once said, we're training so we can win the Olympics on our worst day, and don't have to rely on our us being at our best. Which is a good way to train.) So on race day you have to be ready and waiting to give a performance that is 110%.

The problem can be when people focus on winning (when they aren't capable of winning) instead of doing their best then they get distracted when they aren't winning and loose their heads instead of trying to row to the best of their ability and hunting down the person/ crew closest to them.

Learn from your race mistakes

If you screwed up a race. Learn from it. See what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again. If you happened to go off to hard or didn't sprint at the finish until it was to late then you'll know for next time. Often the worst mistakes are the ones you learn the most from. If you didn't train hard enough during the year, then getting beaten might just give you enough of an incentive to train harder and make it.

Believe it is possible.

Say its possible. Say to your self every day its possible. Most people operate out of their memory things they have done, things they have experienced, things they have seen. Operate on what you want to do. Operate on your imagination not on your memory. Your memories will tell you you cant do it. Block out this inner voice that says you can't. After a time most people being to think they can't do it and resign themselves to a life where they don't push themselves and where they don't reach for their dreams.

 Many people do this out of fear. Fear that they'll be different, fear that they'll be missing out, fear that they'll be left behind. But if you operate on this idea then you'll never discover anything new about yourself. You have to believe its possible. If you know its possible you'll try your hardest, if you think its impossible, you wont be fully committing yourself. Of course, this has to be backed up with hard work. But I really do believe any thing is possible.

Watch the video below!

A rower should become an "athlete"

As a rower you should be able to do more than just row. You should learn how to become an athlete. What I mean by this is to have respect for and enjoy other athletic sports. Getting to a high level in every sport requires huge amounts of training. In my opinion rowers tend to have a bit of a snobby view of their sport. I think this is partly due to everyone thinking rowing is an easy sport in the first place.

Due to the nature of our sport we tend to do a lot of cross training. So we have to chance to experience and get good at the likes of cycling, running, swimming, cross country skiing( if you go on nice training camps).

To become truly "athletic" the 5 components of fitness should be mastered.

The 5 components of fitness

1. Body composition

   Body fat is necessary for your body to help with hormone production, vitamin absorption and to pad the internal organs but once you go over 5-6% its just adding on weight in the boat you don't need. For Women the minimum needed is about 10 - 11%. This extra weight increases the drag on the boat and makes it heavier.

1. Cardiovascular fitness

   Cardiovascular fitness is the ability of the body to deliver oxygen and nutrients to tissues and to remove wastes.



2. Flexibility

   Flexibility is the ability of the joints in the body to move to their full range of motion.



3. Muscular endurance

   It is the ability of muscles, whether in a group or separated to sustain repeated contractions against resistance for an extended period of time. This is related to muscular strength and cardio-respiratory endurance. If a person can perform more number of repetitions of a particular strength training exercise, then it shows- that person has good muscular endurance.

Muscle strength

The muscular strength is measured by maximum amount of strength a muscle has while lifting or during an exertion. In short, muscular strength is the ability of the muscle to exert strength during a workout or an activity. It is capability of the muscle to lift the weight.

A nice little video on what constitutes a good rower.....

Lower back pain in rowing

Lower back pain is often associated with rowing. Having been a victim of it myself I'm going to go over a few causes and remedies for it.

Why do people get lower back pain? 

Most often the answer is:

1.They have a bad core and glutes which can't support your body position which means you then compensate with other muscles and put your body at risk of injury.

2.Bad flexibility can mean that you end up using putting pressure on the places that shouldn't have pressure. For example, putting strain on your lower back due to not being able to hinge over at your hip joint due to tight hamstrings.

3. Bad technique. (This could be due to not being told what to do properly or either or both of the two points above)


How to relieve pain in your back if its sore?

1. Don't use the erg. 

   Ergs, especially static ergs put pressure on your back. While rowing on the water the boat will normally always sink down into the water(at least some bit) and take some of the pressure off your back. Unless you have a amazing 100% horizontal drive in which case you probably have good technique.



2. Go to a physio.

   A good physio is a must if the pain your feeling has been there for over two to three days. They can find your weaknesses and tell you how to fix them so it wont happen again.



3. Do yoga.

   Speaking from experience yoga was amazing at relieving pain I had in my lower back. I went from not being able to bend over in the slightest to being mobile, and not feeling pain, in the space of an hour class. If only the pain free time lasted longer! Still though yoga is great and I'd recommend it to anyone. Flexibility and core strength are a must for anyone who calls themselves an athlete.



4. Rest your back.

   Don't do anything that hurts your back. Seriously. Its a lot easier said than done too. Some normal mundane things that you take for granted should be avoided if you feel pain doing them for the sake of your back.



Use heat packs 

Heat packs which are widely available in pharmacies are great at re-leaving muscle pain. The heat dilates the blood vessels of the muscles surrounding the lumbar spine. This process increases the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the muscles, helping to heal the damaged tissue. Heat application facilitates the stretching of soft tissues around the spine, including muscles, connective tissue, and adhesions. Consequently, with heat therapy, there will be a decrease in stiffness as well as injury, with an increase in flexibility and overall feeling of comfort. Flexibility is very important for a healthy back.

How to prevent back pain in the future?

1. Develop your core.

   Core strength and control should be emphasised in rowing training largely due to the important role it plays in injury prevention. Core muscles play an important part in holding the trunk firm – control of these muscles allows the athlete to pre-load the abdomen against the reverse loading caused by the leg-drive, reducing backlash in the lumbar spine.



2. Improve your technique rowing in the boat.

   Stretching the arms forwards out of the release and pushing the handles out, against the gates in the final third of the recovery helps the athlete to both push themselves onto the stretcher and stabilise the upper body on the approach to the catch. Gently pushing out against the gate activates the rotator-cuff muscles and latissimus dorsi muscles, pre-loading the shoulder joints and reducing the backlash. The athlete should not feel tense, but they should feel poised and ready to take the force of the leg drive through their pre-loaded core, trunk and arms so that the leg drive is effective right from the moment the blades are locked in the water.



3. Improve your flexibility

   Do exactly that. Stretch everything, all the time. 

Another great resource on lower back pain and how to avoid/ treat



Thanks to inner-rowing for some of the useful information above

inner-rowing.blogspot.com

Top 5 rowing harlem shake videos

Harlem shakes are taking youtube by storm and over the last week everyone who's anyone has been doing their own rendition. Below are some of the best rowing ones out there. I'm sure in a weeks time there'll be hundreds more.

Number 5.

No ergs. Buts lots of crazy dancing girls.....who claim they row.

Number 4.
A bunch of rowers getting their strength work in.... well trying to at least.. 

Number 3.

Best spazzy erg dancing but not much else going on! 

Number 2.

                                Includes the most amount of humping ergs dancing.

Number 1.

One of the first rowing ones uploaded to youtube. Includes oars, ergs, lots of props,great costumes, and a well placed camera to show the mayhem at its best. 

All rowers are human

When racing we tend to think a lot about our own pain and we rarely pause to think that the other competitors are feeling pain too. At the end of the day when two people have trained equally hard, the final decider of who will win is the question of who will put up with the pain the longest, and who will be relentless in their quest to win.

Rowers are not robots!!(even if they act like them)

People are quick to think that those who are better than them will beat them but at the end of the day your opponents get scared, feel pain and worry just like normal people even if they are better than you. They don't know (normally unless you raced the day before and even then things can change) what your capable of. Just because they've won more doesn't mean they cease to worry and feel pain! They can crack under pressure! You just have to keep putting them under pressure. If they are going to win then make them pay for it, hunt them down till you have crossed the line. A race is a fight. A fight with your self and your pain.

Great rowers feel pain too.

The following video is a reminder that all great people feel pain. Even the likes of Steve Redgrave, Mathew Pinsent and co. didn't always enjoy doing erg tests. If you watch the whole series of the oarsome foursome you will see that they cracked under pressure and had to fight their own personal battles every day just like the rest of us. With that in mind, never give up, never stand down, remember all the training you did and take the fight to your opponents.

                                     

Rowing - Video Analysis

Video analysis is great. I don't think its done enough. As a coach I try and get a bit of video each time my crews are out rowing. When your playing back the footage later, you can pause and watch it at a variety of different speeds to see who's doing what, and see if the rowers are doing the correct things at the correct times, as well as checking if they are in time with each other during the stroke.

A lot of crews look good when seen at normal speed but when footage is slowed down, faults begin to appear. So if we use video analysis more often then we can be aware of these issues earlier and take steps to address the faults so they don't become ingrained in the rowers natural rowing movement. An analysis can also be done on people doing erg.

Some things to look for when doing an analysis:

During the drive

Is there a hang off the oar through the drive starting at the catch?
Are the arms kept straight for as long as possible in the drive?
Is the body opening up too early in the drive?
Is the oar drawn into the chest or into the lap?
Is the oar drawn in with the wrist being kept flat?
Are the legs being pressed full down?
Are people driving before the blade is in the water?
Is everyone catching together?
Is everyone taking the oars out of the water together?
Is the boat being driven into the water or is it being driven along the top?

During the recovery

Is the recovery kept under control or is it rushed?

Are people squaring over together?
Are the blades coming out square?
Are the bodies being rocked over (from the hips) before the knees come up?
Are the blades off the water?
Is the back kept straight or are people slouching?
Is the catch slow or fast?
Are peoples heads looking straight ahead?

The examples above are just a few of the many things to look out for as a coach and are things that rowers must be aware of and fix if they are not being done properly. Another point to make would be that you also have to tell people how to fix their problems not jut criticize!

And here is a master video analyzer at work....

Willingness to learn - Rowing coaches

A second pair of eyes is always good.

Some coaches hate to have others commenting on their athletes, I think its great. First off, you don't have to take the advice to heart but if you don't at least you have things that you might not have seen, or taken to be OK and acceptable where once you would have been on top of it. There are so many different things to keep in mind and watch out for.

 

So many different aspects have to be perfected and honed.

From the warm up and the actual rowing to the stretches and the nutrition so many different aspects have to be taken . I think having more coaching staff and having at bit of a rotation every so often enables unworked on flaws to be found and worked on. The worst thing is that once you know about it the flaw, what ever is it, becomes blatenly apparent and you can't believe you didn't spot it.

As a coach I think you should never think you know it all and shut your self off from a outside opinion. The more you can learn and about all aspects of rowing the faster your crews can go. I don't think anyone knows everything and can be an expert about all aspects to do with rowing as there's is just so much there to know about, and information can change and be updated frequently. This is where larger clubs and national teams have an advantage as they can have people on their team who are specialised in strength and conditioning, stretching, nutrition, psychology, bio-mechanics and more.

Narrow minded coaches

The sad thing is that many coaches are never open to learning as many think they know it all. In countries where the national rowing organisation has published and helped the clubs form a style of technique they benefit in the long run with athletes that come to them already rowing in the style that the use. This can be seen to have worked well with the British rowing team. Again for this to work the local coaches have to be open to receiving, taking on bored this new information and teaching it themselves to their athletes. 

Rowing Technique - The Blades and body.

Both blade work and bodywork must be properly mastered to make a boat move as efficiently as possible. In my opinion much more emphases these days is placed on bladework and body work is left(to some coaches) as an afterthought. This can be seen by doing a slow motion analysis of some of the top crews at the Olympics. Every crew racing has perfected balance and use of the blades and to an outside eye they all look amazing traveling at speed.

AP Photo/Keystone/Sigi Tischler

 Its only while analysing the crews in slow motion that you can see they are still far from perfect when it comes to the position of the bodies and the movement of body weight around the boat. Light weights generally row better than heavyweights due to everyone being the same weight and not varying much in terms of power output. This means that they have to be as efficient as possible to get to the finish line first.

Even simple things such as holding the knees down till the hands are past them, rowing the blade in instead of catching where you reach and a hang off the oars on the drive are missing from some of the mens 8+ from the London Olympics  There is the idea that if you train like mad and become the strongest and fittest crew in the world then you’ll win. If you're missing out on technique then you're wrong.

You should want each movement you do to be as efficient as possible. Of course by not touching the blades off the water while rowing you have won half the battle but the body must still be in the right place at the right time. If you don't get your body over before your knees rise then chances are that you’ll end up reaching at the catch and killing your boat speed. At the end of the day you don't want to disturb the run of your boat. 

Learning to coach yourself.

As a coach I find that a large amount of time is spent repeating the same things and concepts to the same people. Rowers must learn to understand the rowing stroke, how to do it efficiently and then how to keep the concentration and making sure they are doing it right. A coach is there to teach the technique, explain the stroke, and teach the athlete to be self analyzing and self improving.

photo by Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games on Flickr

What I mean by this is that you have to be constantly evaluating your stroke and asking yourself( and your coach) is this the most efficient way I can row. Will this make the boat go faster? And if a coach is telling you it will make the boat go faster, make sure to ask why, and how, it will make the boat go faster. A good coach should be able to answer these questions.

Having the outside eye of a coach to tell you what you're doing wrong is great, but that doesn't mean you should only rely on that and not learn to spot your own mistakes and fix them. Your goal should always be to make your self as good of a rower as possible.

Getting enough rest in rowing.

As the amount of rowing/weights/cardio/etc sessions increase, the importance of having enough rest between sessions increases. Each time you train, you are causing changes in your body, such as muscle tissue breakdown and the depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen), as well as fluid loss. By resting properly you are letting your body adapt to the training you are doing.

However, there is a fine balance to be maintained as too much rest will result in you not doing enough work to get your body to adapt at all, and too little rest will result in injury, sickness and/or being mentally burned out. It's not only your body that needs a rest, constantly pushing your self outside your limits in too many sessions each week will result in you not wanting to do it any more. Taking a mental break is just as important as a physical break. Again, this all comes back to time management and setting aside time to wind down each week.

Too much training all at once will not make you fitter.

Some people are of the opinion that if they can train 3 time a day every day( just an example), then they'll get much fitter. But it is not during training that the body becomes stronger, its while at rest. The training you do must be gradually scaled up so your body has a chance to adjust.

If you miss out on proper rest.

Without proper rest, you will begin to experience performance decreases. You will feel more tired than usual and exercise will become more difficult because you are not recovering and are not prepared enough to handle the stress of another workout.

Active rest

If you feel like you want to do a bit extra training don't do some active recovery. Very, very, light cardio with plenty of stretching will do much more for you than an extra full blown workout( unless you are doing very little in the first place, or, unless your body has adapted properly, in which case go right ahead).

Getting enough sleep

In general, one or two nights of poor or little sleep won't have much impact on performance, but consistently getting inadequate sleep can result in subtle changes in hormone levels, particularly those related to stress, muscle recovery and mood.


If you pay attention to how your body feels, and how motivated you are, it can be extremely helpful in determining your recovery needs( for example you might do with a few nights of better sleep, or more/better food after training session).

Not enough stretching in rowing.

In my opinion, many people (coaches included) do not place enough importance on stretching. Why don't they stretch you ask? For a few reasons, such as.... 

1. They believe that there is nothing to be gained from stretching.

I think this is due to the benefits not being seen immediately and not being advertised enough.
People are mad to go and buy protein and the such as they are widely advertised in health stores and people in gyms always seem to have them. But there are never enough people advertising stretches and their benefits.

2. Its time that could be used doing something else.

Well there's no point in having massive legs and a well built upper body if you cant use them well due to your lack of flexibility  If your not flexible enough then your more than lightly not getting the right muscles firing and over compensation with some areas which after a time will result in injury. Why work hard for most of the year to then be injured for the rest?? Its NOT fun.

3. They believe that injury only happens to other people. 

If you row then you probably know another rower who is or has been injured at some point in their rowing careers. It can and WILL effect you if you don't stretch enough. 

The following is a great piece on stretching from http://www.mensfitness.com describing how not stretching can go from nothing to a serious problem.

"What happens when you don’t stretch? Nothing. For a while. You lift you train. You get stronger. You improve your diet a bit. You get leaner. You look good. Who needs to stretch? Stretching is for yoga girls and geriatrics. Then you wake up one day and you have a slight pain in your lower back. Nothing major. “Damn,” you say, as you roll out of bed. You instinctively try to stretch it out. Maybe you lean over and touch your toes, which, coincidentally are very far from the tips of your fingers. It helps a bit, so you forget about it. 

You keep training. In the weights room(and on the erg), you are an animal. Other people look at you and say your lifts are good. But you start to notice that after sitting all day, your lower back is aching. You try to stretch it out. Maybe you put your hands on your lower back and do the old man, hips forward stretch with a bustling sigh, but it lingers. Not the biggest deal though, because once you get warmed up at the gym, things feel A-okay. 

So you forget about it. You keep lifting. You keep getting stronger. You can now squat a small automobile, which feels good. But one day you’re doing a deep squat and you feel something tweak in your lower back. “Damn it,” you say as you rack the weight. That hurt. You don’t stretch it out this time because it’s hard to breathe. It feels like you need your spine popped back in place. Something’s wrong."

The above paragraph describes what I have seen many people go through myself included.

Why do we not feel pain straight away which would cause us to stretch?

Where there’s tightness and lack of flexibility, you’re going to have added stress on the back.  In fact, the body tends to try to “make up” for lack of flexibility in these places by altering the low back and pelvis position in our movements.  In other words, we’re very good at inadvertently cheating or side-stepping proper form.  

We may think we’re getting away with it — or maybe we’re not even aware that we’re even doing it.  But our low back absorbs the wear and tear, either way.  On the other hand, if we take the time to stretch and release even a little bit of the tightness in these other muscles, we instantly take pressure off the low back, paving the way for proper, safe technique.

Other benefits of stretching.

If injury prevention is not enough of a reason for you to stretch then also consider the following...

Stretching should become a part of your workout because it will indirectly help to increase muscular strength by expanding your range of motion, which will transfer to your rowing technique (for example by being able to rock over from your hips due to having your hamstrings stretched out) and of course weightlifting. When lifting over a greater movement pattern, more muscle fibers are recruited, thus making your muscles stronger.

Another way stretching helps is by decreasing your DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness)It does this  by Elongating muscles helps which then increases blood flow and aids in the recovery process. This means that your body will be per paired for your next session sooner, resulting in faster muscle growth and you feeling better at tomorrows training session.


So to sum it all up. Stretch! For the love of all that is good in the world stretch!! If you had no reason to before then I hope you do now. Click here to view Xeno doing some good hamstring stretches.

You might like my other post on Lower Back Pain