How London Rowing Club strategised to win at the British Masters Rowing Championships for the second year in a row.

01:00 James Sexton-Barrow is Captain of London Rowing Club he is talking about their Victor Ludorum Trophy win - they won more points than anyone else at the championship regatta.

It is more special as the whole club got involved.

02:00 Mindset approach

Masters groups can change a lot from one year to the next. We went straight into planning the next year's racing after the regatta in 2024. We needed to be better athletes and performing at a higher level than the prior year.

Two other clubs had more entries than we did this year - we got more medals showing that the standard of performance was higher. We won 8s and 4s which got more points as big boats.

04:00 From participation to performance

The club was very proud of our achievement - this became a driving force for the impetus to keep going and to improve, bringing in more participants to train regularly.

05:00 Coaching and training plan

The age range is from 36 to over 75 within the club so the coaching plan had to be flexible and reflect the different abilities and time availability. We could not mandate everyone to row on Sunday mornings or to erg on Tuesday nights as work/life balance was so varied within the group.

Any good masters group h as to acknowledge the vast differences between individuals' ability to train.

There are times in the week when we try to get as many people on the water as possible and coaching will be available. We aim to get as many boats out as possible then for side by side pieces - get value from togetherness. We ask those who cannot make it to go out at another time to make up the session.

For land based training we put out a schedule - flexibility enables more participation. Fit in training around your own diary.

Selection was focused on several regattas "age banding" and also availability for both events. We started in March/April with a squad meeting and to do early lineups. We reviewed erg performances over winter, race performances in head races, age-banding for selection.

Last year we were too strict in crew selection and left it a bit too late. Last year it was when we did the entries - we didn't look back at past training performances, it was only based on age. Training in a unit together for a long time contributed to better success.

10:30 The aftermath

We have our second peak regatta next weekend. World Masters is following and some of us are going there too. It feels like a 'bigger machine' this year. We also love going to local regattas like Kingston and Molesey.

The website has a masters page londonrc.org.uk/masters if you want to join.

The rest of the club is more respectful because we won there is a growing sense of this group as a serious entity within the club. LRC was founded to win medals at Henley Royal Regatta - which we did this year this is the club focus. We are a big club and the masters play a big role in running the club organisation. Prior to last year's win the masters were left to "do their thing" and as long as the masters are happy then that's OK. The club doesn't put a big emphasis on the performance of that group.

A big change this season is now the club sees that we can win, are noteworthy and are out there making a name for themselves. There is recognition that the masters are going faster, and that they should be supported adequately, with equipment, coaching, training and access to trailers to go to regattas. We have had huge support this year and we hope it continues.

Winning it 3 times would the real trick!