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.