A coach’s eye on your blade keeps technical crabs at bay during an outing. But if you’re out alone you need a way to self-coach. As a part of your daily warm-up choose a drill that gives you clear feedback and sets the tone for your row.
Mens pair at the catch. Photo credit: David Sogan
Two essential drills
Here are a couple of suggestions.
Feet-out rowing focuses on a clean release of the blade using the support of the water to assist the exit. The drill helps you row tall, preventing your weight from falling into the bow. Remove your feet from the shoes and place them on top of the stretcher. During the drive hold steady pressure against the foot stretcher and as you draw the oar handle. Tap down on the oar handle to release the blade in sync with legs down; just before you lose the pressure on the blade. Keep your weight over the handle as you then feather as the hands move away from your body. If the release is late, your feet will come off the shoes, and going in the water is likely. If you nail it, it’s crisp and feels easy. Practice rowing slowly for 10 minutes feet-out.
Rowing with a pause at one-quarter slide helps you practice rowing with a quiet upper body on the recovery. Transition smoothly from the drive to the follow-through position of arms-body away. When your knees rise slightly at one-quarter slide, pause. Let the boat glide for a count of one-one thousand, two-one thousand, then row on. Keep your upper body quiet and steady as you compress on the slide. Let the knees come up to your chest versus the chest dropping to the knees as you get ready to place the blade. Practice sets of 10 strokes.
If it helps you to focus, give yourself a score out of 10 for each set of the drill you do. Mark your improvement. If you don’t get better, it may be time to head in to the dock and practice again another time. Practicing rowing wrongly will not be helpful in the long term and a tired body and mind finds challenging drills very hard to do successfully.
When you are in the groove and the boat is in stealth mode, you dial into your mission and rise to the challenge. Whether in practice or on the race course if you are “on” thoughts of failure get no airtime.
However, there will be days when you feel like toast. Athletes need enough rest and at times your scale may be tipped towards the side of fatigue. However, if your performance is starting to drag and the doldrums don’t seem to be going away, you may be pushing the “more is better” principle too far and be risking burnout.
Photo Credit: Nuno Silvestre quad with great sky sitting idle
Am I over-trained?
Asking yourself these 20 questions can determine if you need to build more rest and down time in your plan.
Answer each one True or False:
I am tired all the time.
I don’t enjoy training/practice like I did before.
When I am at training I wish I were somewhere else.
I dread racing.
It has been a long time since I had fun rowing.
I continually ask myself why I am rowing.
It is hard to stay focused on my goals.
I seem to get injured more often than before.
My injuries never seem to heal.
My attitude seems to have become worse over the past few months.
I resent having to sacrifice so much time for rowing.
I don’t handle the discomfort from hard training as well as I did last season.
Sometimes I don’t care that I don’t care.
I am more negative than usual about myself and my training.
I put myself down a lot lately.
I resent my coach.
I have trouble getting along with my teammates.
I feel pressured by others to keep rowing.
I don’t seem to bounce back from setbacks and losses like I used to.
Each true answer equals one point; each false equals zero points.
If you scored between one and three you are not at risk for burnout; between four and seven you are entering the trouble zone so take some time off; between eight and 14 you really need a vacation from training and competition; 15 or higher you are seriously burned out and should sit down with your coach and evaluate your rowing future.
Taking a breather can turn the Thank Goodness it is Friday mentality, counting the minutes of practice, into the Thank Goodness it is Monday mentality and get you revved up for the next season.
Converting those erg watts to more boat meters per second demands a plan. Get more out of your stroke without more time on the water.
Today we are going to show you how to sync your technical focus with your fitness and mental training.
Dana Cawte rowing in South Island NZ
One Year Rowing Plan
Based on one peak per year, divide the year into these three training phases each with its own focus and demands.
The general preparation phase is approximately seven months in duration. Work on creating a solid foundation of stroke elements. The core stroke elements are drive initiation, mid-drive power and recovery. Use drill work to kick off each workout by choosing one exercise as your focus. Then incorporate the drill learnings into steady rows. Emphasise improving weak elements, defining new movements, and solidifying these movement patterns.
The specific preparation pre-competitive phase is two months long. Hold gains made thus far. This is the period of highest physical stress. Your goal here is to maintain your movement pattern or “form” while training with high levels of lactic acid present in your blood while in a fatigued state. You need high levels of mental concentration to complete each workout.
When specific preparation shifts to the competitive months of the season, turn your attention back to technique in order to sharpen your racing skills. Clean up your movement patterns on the erg or bladework in the boat at high tempos. Focus on refining your start sequences and practice stroke transitions from the start to the mid-race pace regularly. Polish the best aspects of your stroke and build your crew’s confidence. This is not a good time to make major technical changes because of the lengthy time it takes to neurologically ingrain a new movement pattern.
Once your season has ended, a one-month transition period is the time to address physical limitations that affect your technique. Then the cycle starts again.
Quiet refined bladework is the signature of a skilled oarsman. Turbulence and splashing at the tip of your oar sends a big hit of drag to your boat speed. The standard of your feathering motion may not be at the top of your technical to-do list but, how you change the position of the blade from square in the water during the drive to the horizontal, flat position when the oar is out of the water on the recovery, makes or breaks the release. If your blade exits the water cleanly, without catching its lower edge or throwing a lip of water, your hull is going to carry the power of your drive into the recovery. Any interruption as it attempts to exit will steal the speed you have built up through the drive.
Mark Eller’s crew showing a “quiet” finish
Improve your feathering and squaring
Common flaws in feathering are turning the blade while it’s still under the water before the blade has exited the water and feathering as the hands are continuing towards your body at the end of the drive. At this point, the blade is no longer working in the water but the handles continue moving towards the body as if on the drive.
Perfecting your feathering is a function of correct sequencing
First, complete your release by pressing down on the handle, take the blade out of the water until you clear the lower edge of the blade. If the blade is still loaded it will facilitate coming out square. Once clear, feather the oar as your hands move away from your body. Once the blade is released, aim for the feathering motion to happen on the recovery as the blade tip is moving towards the bow.
Practicing a new pattern is best done stationary at first, so watch your blade to check and reinforce that you are releasing completely then changing the direction of the blade after the oar has exited. If you are sculling you can practice rowing circles with one oar and focusing on the sequencing. When you row continuously, exit with the blade square and delay the feather until your hands start to move away from your body and lead into the follow-through motion.
I spend a lot of my time coaching. During the school season that’s mostly school crews but off season and when time allows I like
Wakatipu Masters rowing
coaching masters.What do Masters bring that makes coaching them so rewarding?
Increasingly the masters I coach are taking it up after their own children have taken up the sport. Nevertheless they bring a youthful enthusiasm and have a real desire to row well. Add in to that the social aspect of masters rowing and a simple desire to get fitter, plus the fact that as coach you can have a coffee or other refreshment after training with the crew and masters crews are a lot of fun.
So how is it different?
There are some difference in the stroke pattern.
Flexibility is generally not quite what it was so the arc of the stroke is smaller.
For those who are newer to the sport the catch tends to be slower. That means that lots of focus needs to go on making sure the blade goes into the water at the point point the blade is out at its full arc – I describe that as when their knees reach the top. Strangely I have sometimes found that as the balance in the boat improves a slight pause at the front starts to develop as in a balanced boat there is less urgency to get the blade in the water.
Then the focus moves to ensuring that the drive does not start until the blade is buried – you might hear coaches going on about rowers missing water. There are drills for addressing that but one that sometimes works [there are no silver bullets] is having half the boat rowing square blade and every second stroke place the blade but don’t push at all and simply let the momentum of the boat move the boat under you and the handle come through to the finish.
Masters rowers are also much more likely to be on the water without a coach. That can mean that every session is much the same and that the session involves rowing to a point, turning round and rowing back. A suggestion is to have a coach set up some training sessions that include a warm up, a drill or two for the session [with an explanation of what the drill is wanting to achieve] and some set work. If those are typed up and laminated crews can chose the session they will follow and take that out on the water. From experience it makes the sessions more useful, more fun and actually seem shorter.
If it is possible, get someone to video parts of a session and share that with the crew Rowers can compare what they are doing with a video clip of what they aspire to look like. You may also inadvertently capture some moments of hilarity which can be a great addition on the big screen at your next masters social event.
For those masters who have rowed through the club ranks you can take comfort from that great saying –“The older I get, the better I was.”
Missing buoys, steering off course, falling out of your boat, being late to the start, rushing the slide, or stopping too soon before the finish line are only a few of those rookie mistakes common to the new competitive sculler.
The skills of racing a single scull take time to develop because it is a delicate combination of fitness, technique, mental preparation, tactics, and navigation. If you are new to competitive sculling it is reasonable to expect that it will take three seasons to start having consistent performances. Patience is a requirement. The peaks and valleys of your learning curve are normal. Although you may want to win right away, an internal focus on self-improvement will translate into greater external results in both the short and medium term.
3 Recommendations for you to try
Here are some suggestions to help you stay on track as you pursue your career in the single scull.
Fitness forms the base of the pyramid to build your technique and mental skills.
If your sculling technique is not at a level that you can apply power effectively you should use land exercise to get and stay fit while you are in the early learning stages. Progress towards more time in the boat but continue to supplement your sculling with cross-training until you can get a good solid workout in the single.
Technique will develop in stages and the experience of one season in the boat contributes to the next. First, establish your stability, then bladework, followed by power application, and racing skills at varied stroke rates. Consider full pressure as the best pressure you can row while maintaining good technique. Make drills a regular part of your warm-up and get as much coaching as you can during the early stages of your career by taking lessons, getting videoed or going to a camp.
Competition is where you have to synthesise the skills you have accumulated to date. A prerequisite for a good race is steering. Learn to steer. Concentrate on one stroke at a time and aim for efficiency each stroke rather than watching your split. After your event, spend some time evaluating it. Write down 10 points you need to work on and 10 points that you did better than last time.
Progress may not feel linear – but remember as you learn new things you will be constantly pushing yourself to new achievements. It’s like walking up stairs, if you find you have gone a step too far and cannot sustain your pace or your technique falters, go back down one step, re-establish your technique and then try again.
A coach’s eye on your blade keeps technical crabs at bay during a practice. But if you’re out
alone you need a way to self-coach. As a part of your daily warm-up choose a drill that gives you
clear feedback and sets the tone for your row.
Two essential drills
Here are a couple of suggestions. Feet-out rowing focuses on a clean release of the blade using the support of the water to assist
the exit. The drill helps you row tall, preventing your weight from falling into the bow. Remove
your feet from the shoes and place them on top of the stretcher. During the drive hold steady
pressure against the foot stretcher and as you draw the oar handle. Tap down on the oar handle to
release the blade in sync with legs down; just before you lose the pressure on the blade. Keep
your weight over the handle as you then feather as the hands move away from your body. If the
release is late, your feet will come off the shoes, and going in the water is likely. If you nail it,
it’s crisp and feels easy. Practice rowing slowly for 10 minutes feet-out.
Rowing with a pause at one-quarter slide helps you practice rowing with a quiet upper body on
the recovery. Transition smoothly from the drive to the follow-through position of arms-body
away. When your knees rise slightly at one-quarter slide, pause. Let the boat glide for a count of
one-one thousand, two-one thousand, then row on. Keep your upper body quiet and steady as
you compress on the slide. Let the knees come up to your chest versus the chest dropping to the
knees as you get ready to place the blade. Practice sets of 10 strokes.
If it helps you to focus, give yourself a score out of 10 for each set of the drill you do. Mark your
improvement. If you don’t get better, it may be time to head in to the pontoon and practice again
another time. Practicing rowing wrongly will not be helpful in the long term and a tired body and
mind finds challenging drills very hard to do successfully.
Just as pushing your bow across the line for the first time in the 50+ age category signifies entering a mature phase of your rowing career it may also mark new adventures in maintaining equilibrium in your training schedule. Masters athletes need to include the same intensities of work in their race preparation as their younger counterparts. However, the difference for masters is how and when workouts are planned in the weekly schedule to adjust for potentially longer recovery periods as the body requires more time.
How to improve as you age
Improving your performance as you age is linked to maintaining a relatively high VO2 max. This means that high intensity intervals at race pace need to be key elements of any master’s program in combination with the substantial endurance work that rowing demands. Such intervals also place a lot of stress on your physiological systems so the volume and frequency needs to be approached carefully to optimize the benefits. Recovery periods are when your body makes the positive adaptation to the work you just did, without a good recovery period, you risk physical break-down and injuries can occur more easily.
Only you can gauge how much recovery you need between the intense sessions of the week. Monitor your morning resting heart rate the day after, if it is elevated above your norm, include low intensity sessions until it returns to normal rest rate. If this typically takes two days you can schedule a total rest day, easy distance work, or low intensity cross training. Using an app to track your heart rate variability gives an even more accurate measure your state of recovery. I use the HRV4Training app.
Weekly training patterns can vary, be creative so you don’t get bored. You may find you feel more energized taking a total rest day after three training days. If a traditional weekly pattern is better for your schedule, resting Monday and Friday might give you the edge you need to maintain quality workouts during the in-between days.
Ways to recover from training
The best form of recovery as you age is sleep. Getting 40 winks, taking cat naps, or simply lying down restores your energy the fastest especially when backed up by healthy eating. Look over your weekly cycle and build your recovery days around your priority sessions of the week and follow it up with a good dose of rest.
When coaching masters, I often find that they over-think the coaching instructions they receive.
This can be tested by asking the athletes to “think about nothing” for ten strokes and then to take 10 strokes thinking about a technical point. Most row better when thinking about nothing!
In our debriefs after practice many tell me that it’s hard to think about two or three things at the same time – their brain races from thinking catches, to thinking pressure, to squaring early and they fail to execute any of these well.
Thinking about multiple things simultaneously is just not possible.
So how does the human brain work when you are learning a new skill?
There is a 4 stage progression which begins with Unconscious Incompetence – you don’t know how bad you are. As the athlete starts to learn they become Consciously Incompetent – they know how bad they are. Later as skill is acquired and successfully deployed, the athletes become Consciously Competent. When they think about a technical point, they can execute it skilfully. The final stage is Unconscious Competence – you can row well without thinking about it.
Eight on Saugatuck by Timothy Aquino
Coaching using the 4 stage competence model
If you are a coach reading this article, you can use this 4 stage progression to help your athletes acquire technique skills. If you are an athlete reading this article, you can use this for self-coaching.
Most of us start at the consciously incompetent stage – we know what we are trying to learn but we cannot do it well. Coaches introduce drills and exercises to isolate part of the rowing stroke to help you learn the technique. This moves you into the conscious competence stage. When doing the drill can you do it well? After the drill can you introduce it into your normal pattern of rowing? If you can do these two things you are well on the way.
The trick to moving to unconscious competence is to practice not thinking. The athlete may be working on an early square during the recovery. Can you do this movement while rowing and thinking? Then try rowing and not thinking about squaring early – don’t think about anything…. Just row. And after 10 strokes, bring your thoughts back to squaring early but don’t make a change to your technique. You have to first observe your stroke – is it squaring early or not? When you have answered that question, you can make a change if you need to square a bit earlier – or no change if you are executing skilfully. Go back to not thinking as you row. And check back how your technique is going after a few more strokes. This is how to train your brain towards unconscious competence.
A word of warning – beware the devil on your shoulder. Most of us have an inner voice who talks to us while we row. As an adult it is very influential on your ability to learn. Children don’t have such an active inner voice and this is one of the reasons adults find it more challenging to learn a new skill.
Your inner voice has a tendency to be very critical as you learn to row; it may be saying “you’re an idiot”.
It’s really important not to listen to the voice because it gives a subjective assessment of your rowing technique. And frequently it’s a hindrance to your learning and acquiring skill.
When you review how you are rowing, try to be very clinical in your assessment of your skill. Be objective, not emotional and use logic only. Female athletes often have an overly-critical inner voice who can work them into a spiral of despondency which does not improve their technique!
And lastly it is not possible to think about multiple things simultaneously in rowing. Even the Olympians cannot do this. Experienced rowers can focus on one aspect of the stroke, add a second complementary aspect and then try to do those two things together. So even that is just one thing at a time – keeping one in the background while you think about the second and then re-introducing the first to reinforce them working together. A good example is to work on improving power in the second half of the stroke – start by activating your back swing; then add the arm draw to the back swing and lastly do them together.
And keep that inner demon voice quiet while you are rowing!
Masters rowers fundamentally are no different from any other age group. However, regular competitors know that your strength and flexibility changes as you age and so it is helpful to re-assess rigging and boat set up regularly for masters training groups.
Comfort in the Boat
The goal of rowing and sculling boat rigging for masters is twofold
Be able to move through the stroke cycle
Be comfortable while doing it
Let’s start by reviewing the parts of a rowing boat which are capable of adjustment and the degree of difficulty involved in changing each.
Oar lengtheasy to change
Oar inboardeasy to change
Oar handle sizemoderately difficult to change
Seat heighteasy to change
Slide / track position moderately difficult to change
Foot Stretcher positioneasy to change
Shoe heightmoderately difficult to change
Foot stretcher angle / rakehard to change
Rigger pin position (span / spread)hard to change
Rigger pin pitch (fore/aft and lateral)hard to change
Oarlock heighteasy to change
My assessment of easy / moderate / hard is based on the amount of time, tools and skill needed to make a change. For example, a club who uses snap-lock washers on the oarlocks will find it very easy to change the oarlock heights on the water. Changing your slide position on the water is more challenging – but easy to do off the water with the boat on trestles. Adjusting the rigger pin takes tools, time and expertise and so is classified as hard.
Knowing what can be changed is a good starting point. Any change has to be made with reference to an “ideal” or preferred situation. Therefore rowing groups should all know some basic principles of rigging which can be adapted for taller or shorter people.
Key Rowing Rig Positions for athletes
Oar handle relative to the body at the finish (sweep and sculling)
Shoe height relative to seat height
Sill of oarlock relative to the water
There are some fixed positions that rowers should be able to achieve
Full compression at the catch, shins vertical, hips square off from the pin, oar spoons buried under the water
At the sculling finish blades buried under the water, wrist and forearms flat, elbows at 90 degrees to the oar shaft, thumbs brushing your lower ribs
At the sweep finish blades buried under the water, outside hand thumb brushes lower ribs
Mid-recovery oar spoons capable of square blades above the water surface
These give you clear points in the rowing stroke cycle to check against what your athletes actually do when they are rowing. Note that many will be able to get into these positions when the boat is stationary, check if they actually do it while rowing continuously.
Easy rigging fixes for you to try
Problem: not enough space between the handles at the sculling finish
Move foot stretcher towards bow
Shorten inboard on oars [keep outboard the same if the athlete is a novice]
Problem: Handles can go past the body at the sculling finish
Move foot stretcher towards stern
Problem: Cannot get shins vertical at the catch
Lower shoes on foot stretcher and / or
Use a seat pad to raise seat height
Problem: Cannot get back rocked forward with shoulders in front of hips on recovery
Lower shoes on foot stretcher and / or
Use a seat pad to raise seat height – or two seat pads
Problem: Cannot keep oars buried at the finish under the water
Lower oarlock height
Use a seat pad to raise seat height
Problem: Tall athlete rowing with a shorter athlete
Set oarlocks high / low for the tall / short athlete
Shorten oar length and inboard for short athlete (keep outboard ratio the same)
Problem: Big shoes in the boat and athletes with smaller feet
Wear neoprene beach shoes inside the boat shoes
Raise the shoes as high as possible on the footstretcher so the heels are elevated
Most rigging fixes are a combination of recognising a problem and knowing what to try as a possible solution. As a rule, only make one change at a time, go rowing and see what the change is before making another change.
Marlene Royle and Rebecca Caroe coach at Faster Masters Rowing
