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Principles to Row By

Marlene Royle

Important tips to keep your rowing career on track this season and next.

Keys to a successful rowing career include consistency, avoiding injuries, and having long term goals that are supported by your short term plans. Consistency does not necessarily mean that you have to workout every day. During the course of your career you may even have periods of time when you take weeks off but you need to maintain a positive direction toward your training. Here are some important points to improve your performance this season and for seasons to come.

Understand why you are doing what you are doing. Especially on your hard training days, it is important to know the purpose of your workout. If your focus is to improve your speed and economy while rowing fast you may not achieve your goal for the session if you reduce the rest period so that you start to struggle and lose efficiency. If your plan is to do eight 500-meter pieces with three minutes rest between but you cut the rest to one minute you create a much tougher workout but you have abandon the purpose of the original task.

Make daily adjustments when needed. If you are not able to hold the intensity, you are not accomplishing the purpose of the workout. You might need to do it another day or change the session to have a different purpose. Some workouts are easy to modify. For example, you are planning six repeats of 1,000 meters but it is windy and the water is rough. Even though you feel good you are unable to hit your target pace because of the weather. You can adjust to doing six 4-minute pieces without worrying about the distance covered but focusing on rowing hard for time.

Allow time to adapt to stress before you increase it. Adding stress can mean adding more distance or the same amount of rowing distance at a greater intensity. Give yourself three to four weeks of working at one load before you make a major change. Let your body get used to something before you impose more on it. Even if you are increasing slightly every week it is still something new for your body. Give it the chance to develop a solid feeling for the workload so it can then learn to do it harder or more.

Make sure to warm up properly before races. Include some aggressive rowing before you start so you are ready to race and not using the first 500 meters of your race to be set to go. During a good warm-up you increase your lactate levels slightly and that helps to release stored energy like a second wind effect. A harder warm-up also prevents you from going out too fast from the start.

Start your races intelligently. Go out at a pace that you know you can handle for the entire distance of your race. This may mean to field will start faster than you and this is difficult to handle if you have to row from behind to catch the other boats. Maintaining your speed throughout the body of the race especially in the third quarter of a 1,000- or 2,000-meter race can be the decisive element of a strong sprint when your competitors have slowed down because of rowing too hard off the start.

Get to know your body better. Pay attention to what it can and cannot do in a race. You have to be able to say to yourself that you recognize when your body is getting tired just as you it does in training. When this happens in a race you are better able to cope with the discomfort and stay positive as you do in your daily workouts than react in a way that turns your race negative.

Visualize your race during your workouts. When you are doing six 1000-meter intervals you are going to struggle through the fifth one. You know it is going to hurt but you tell yourself there is only one more after this one. You need to visualize your race, maintain your technique, and stay under control. Anyone can row hard on the last piece it is during the critical pieces that you have to learn to accept discomfort and deal with it. It is the same during your head racing pieces; you have to accept some parts of the session are going to be tough.

Get focused once you arrive at the race course. Avoid socializing or talking too much until your competition is done. You want to be focused on your race before it starts. Once you start your warm-up, you should begin to see what is going to happen in your race. Prepare yourself for various scenarios that could unfold. Think about where you are going to be. If you are not going to win, the key is to find the boat you need to be racing against and stay competitive against them during the race. A good rule of thumb is to see who is in front of you and race that boat. Be careful not mentally predetermine your results allow yourself to do more than you thought you could.

Ask if more is really better? More exercise isn't necessarily always better exercise. A correct approach improves outcomes. The amount of work that you can do is individual but clues that you are training properly are easy to identify. Are you seeing performance improvements from phase to phase? Do you feel energized? Are you excited about your next workout? Do you feel you can handle a little more intensity? Then you are likely on track. If you are injured often, getting sick frequently, or unable to stick to a routine you should re-evaluate your program to avoid over training.

Recovery and training stress need to stay in balance. Training involves breakdown and recovery must be adequate for you to rebuild or the risks of setbacks grows. Be wise. Space your hard workouts properly during the week. Higher quality will build confidence and lead to better racing.

Marlene Royle, OTR is the co-author of Skillful Rowing, Rowing News columnist and founder of Roylerow Performance Program the first online coaching service for rowers. Email: Roylerow@aol.com or www.RoyleRow.com.