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Rowing Tips Crucial to Prolong your Career (and prevent an early exit)

Ergers are used to tolerating hardship on the erg and afterwards paying the price with tiredness and soreness. But when we get older this is not always a good thing because it can ultimately be the difference between a few more years erging and rowing or having to call it a day.

# 1. Listen to the messages your body is sending you.

Back off.
Sometimes you need to know when to back off and use your brain a little more in order to protect your longevity in erging. You should avoid the sessions and exercises that aggravate your body. For example if you know that sitting on the erg for 1 hour will cause your back to be in discomfort for 2 days then don’t do it.

It’s not worth it.

And don’t worry – it’ will not be a show of weakness. Nor will it harm your erging progress because there are other equally effective and safer methods of getting a good workout that is still specific to rowing.

#2 Adapt

With the 1 hour erg example you could do a shorter erg and supplement your workout with another exercise (like stationary bike). Or break your session up into 2 x 30 minutes, 3 x 20 minutes or 4 x 15 minutes. Get off for a short break between sets, stand up move around and do some mobility exercises before getting back on and resuming.

# 3 Other Training

If you workout to support  your erging program by lifting weights then there is a good chance that some exercises will become aggravating to your body as you get older. Avoid the particular exercise at all costs.

While it’s important to maintain a strength program (for lots of reasons) – especially as you get older, you should look to be innovative and adapt to your particular needs in avoiding the aggravating lifts.

Lots of athletes in other (more damaging and injurious) sports, at the latter stages of their careers adapt their strength workouts to suit their needs and avoid flaring up any injuries they may have.

Baseball players, American Football players Soccer and Rugby players all have specialist strength coaches who help them adapt and replace aggravating exercises.

Instead of racking a power clean they might do dead lifts and supplement the upper body with an upright row. Instead of squats they might do isolated leg and core exercises specially adapted to protect the injured area.

Try Something New

If erging continuously starts to cause you problems – maybe you are doing 3 -5 sessions (or more for some ergers I know) per week you should begin to think about replacing some of those sessions with other workouts. Like stationary bike, cross trainer, swimming, winching, treadmill, hill walking/running… the possibilities are endless.

There is a triple advantage to doing this.

1. You don’t keep aggravating the problem.
2. You find a new motivationally boosting exercise.
3. You get a new fitness stimulus which can improve your performance.

The third point is an important one.

One winter a few years back, I was erging 5 times and rowing 3 – 5 times a week. I was getting a little fried mentally and facing the erg day in day out was very challenging. Even dreaming up new innovative sessions wasn’t really cutting it for me. I needed to renew my erging. So I began to run a lot more.

Over an entire winter season I probably erged 2 times(maximum) in every 3 week cycle. In March I pulled a new PB.

I put it down to a few things

  • Mental Freshness
  • A new Physical stimulus that enhanced my core fitness
  • A new perspective on erging and technique.

But running might not be for you. It might be swimming or cycling or whatever exercise you discover that taxes you like the erg. Last year I was involved with a group of rowers who wanted a new stimulus and we spent 12 weeks mid winter hammering ski cross trainers. The benefits were predictable, profitable and brilliantly refreshing.

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2K Erg Rowing Test Fan Setting?

Once upon a time, I was involved in a summer time 2k erg test session with a group of international rowers.

One of my buddyies was testing as part of the final crew selection.

As usual, he began well and was settling down into a great rhythm at with his target power and stroke rate.

It was a good opportunity for us to gather some hardcore data from a series summer 2k erg tests from the group with little or no erging once we began the racing season properly in April.

After about 400 meters something weird started to happen to him. He started to rate higher and higher. But his split stayed the same.

After 600 meters his power started to slowly fail.

And he kept rating higher and higher.

He was up at 38 strokes per minute when he usually would be at 32 – 34 for 2k erg.

At 500 to go, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man in such trouble.
He was just fighting, pulling and spinning.
And going nowhere.

This was truly unheard of for this guy.

He eventually finished 6 seconds slower than his PB – when all the other guys on the team were pulling in and around their fastest erg times ever.

He was in a bad way.

What the hell happened?

He didn’t know, he said it just felt really weird. What?
“The resistance – it felt really, really light…”

I checked out the erg he used and saw immediately that the damper setting was rock bottom at level 1. I got on and pulled a couple of strokes and discovered that the drag factor was reading 74.

That’s 60 points below where he normally tested at.

I found that the damper handle was actually loose because it hadn’t been maintained properly. And every stroke he pulled, it slipped down a fraction of an inch. Slipping lower and lower.

As it got lighter and lighter.
He pulled harder and harder. (the handle moved faster and faster)
And rated higher and higher.
Till eventually he couldn’t take it anymore.

At least he finished.

Erg Rating, Power and Drag.

It was a perfect example (at great expense) of the connection between drag factor, speed of the drive and stroke rate.

We learned a new trick that day. We wondered if it could go one way and punish, could it go the other way and reward?
So from then on we erged between 5 and 7 points below our normal 2k erg drag factor setting.
Only on hard training and racing days would we erg at the normal 130.
Did it make a difference?

Absolutely.

What You Can Learn.

It’s worth a try. Initially, it will feel light and you will probably have a little trouble in keeping your normal split for a particular rating. Perhaps you could try it in your warm up and move to normal drag factor before you begin the nuts and bolts of your workout. A word of warning – be careful of your back and do not increase the resistance by anything more than you can handle.

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2 Rowing things I would do If I Was 14 Years Old Again

I’ve had a lot of back problems lately. I’ve been seeing a couple physiotherapists and back specialists to try and solve the problem. They all say it’s the same thing.

Wear and tear.

I never knew there was such an ordinary language medical term. Whatever it’s name, the worst thing is that it could have been prevented.
 

#1 Core Stability

Sitting writing this article I’m aware of 2 things – what I’m writing to you and how I am sitting. 6 months ago I would have been only aware of the way I was writing. Continue reading

7 Things Erg Rowers Can Learn From Cyclists

 

1. Mileage Is Not Always The Answer

Lots of rowers believe that cyclists spend all of their training time doing miles and miles of lower intensity cycling. Not true. Cycling has moved on a lot and many cyclists now structure their workouts like we do.

During the winter, cyclists might do 3 x 20 minutes on a stationary trainer. In spring they might do some of the VO2 Max workouts rowers do. And during the summer… Continue reading

How To Make Every Session Count – Why You Should Sprint #2

I got an interesting email the other day from  Mike, shortly after I wrote about the sprint in rowing and why it can give you a competitive edge. He asked why I thought sprinting wouldn’t affect the general purpose of a particular erg workout. And gave an example of a session where you might be rowing long and steady on a lighter day before a harder quality day of erging.

Would sprinting on the lighter day tire you out so that the following day’s quality session would be affected?

He got me thinking.

Continue reading