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