RowingChat

Reflections on the 2024 Older Athlete and Aging conference learnings.

Timestamps

01:00 My learnings from Al Morrow

Al Morrow on developing a good "eye" as a coach. Demonstrated the importance of being able to look at your athlete and see where they way they row doesn't line up with the model you are using.

First you must have a good model of rowing to compare with.

02:45 Books on sport - most have the first chapter on grip. We don't check and instruct athletes on this frequently enough. It affects your posture and efficiency.

Shoulder alignment in sweep and sculling.

Most masters can probably row longer at the catch.

03:50 My learnings from Greg Benning

Greg Benning on the power of reducing negatives and 1% gains modelled on the Sky Cycling team led by Dave Brailsford.

Review all aspects of your training and life and find places where you can make small improvements. Some are compounding and others are linear e.g. weight lifting are linear. The compounding effect of rowing in the same crew consistently gives big gains.

06:00 The power of reducing negatives - taking fewer bad strokes. Slowing down less on the recovery will make your average speed higher. Greg showed the change in his absolute strength over 12 years and how he increased his boat speed despite this - the whole picture of positives and reducing negatives.

07:30 John Leekley on when to coach the whole crew vs individuals.Everyone focusing on the same thing at the same time.

How to give more to your athletes as a coach and how athletes can get more out of their time with a coach. Can the coach take two crews simultaneously? The important role of the bow person.

Can my crew competitively "beat" the other crew by being better at the thing the coach was focused on. Not necessarily a race but you can do better.

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https://fastermastersrowing.com/older-athlete-aging/

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Diary alignment is the hardest thing for masters to figure out.

Three tips for you to try

Timestamps

01:00 Regular practice in the same lineups helps you to get better faster.

What NOT to do.

Avoid agreeing crew lineups on the day in the boathouse - fix crews ahead of time so when they arrive they know who they are rowing with, the equipment to use - boat and oars.

Prevent people from only rowing with their friends in the interest of community within the club.

02:30 A masters club that has a goal to grow, to add newcomers - it's more useful to mix up crews. When you're a newcomer it can be daunting seeing a large number of strangers.

In a crew you can chat to people in your crew and get to know them.

03:30 Ideally set up groups

Easy division into learn to row group, intermediate, advanced, racing and fitness groups. If you have a group each needs a co-ordinator/captain. Use software to help you.

1 - Software to manage your rowing club.

2 - Software to enable messaging. SMS is immediate and people notice it (email can be lost or ignored).

Rowing club software options - listed on rowing.chat/retailers the Directory of rowing businesses.

https://rowing.chat/retailer/?retailer_category=software

- Fitclub

- Boathouse Connect

- iCrew

- Rowfer

- RowerHub

- iSportz

- Hello club.

05:45 Ideally book a long way ahead of time - masters are busy people. It can be hard to organise a week ahead, two weeks ahead is better. With software, each person can check/tick the days they are available. The Club can offer different times of day for workouts.

The group organiser can easily see in the software calendar who is available and make up lineups.

07:00 Keep your group regular

Try to find a day when you always do the same crew - important for large boats. This helps the co-ordinator. The software sends out crew lineups ahead of time (which also serve as a reminder).

Acceptable behaviours - ideally if you cannot come, find your own replacement. The responsibility is on you.

08:30 Running a regular crew

You need more than 4 or 9 people to run a crew of a four or eight. It takes 12 people to run an eights group. Running a four/quad can be done with 5 or 6 people. The port/starboard preferences mean you need more people for an eight (unless everyone can row on both sides).

Work with a coalition of the willing - set up the behaviours with those who are prepared to get involved. People who are keen to get better and get into another crew for racing are often the most willing.

How do you enable people to move between groups? How can people find substitutes or alternates at the last minute? Can you go to another group to find a final person to make up a crew?

Some athletes advance their skills rapidly by being the person available to take the empty seat.

11:15 Back up plans

Work out what you can do if you need.... mixing men and women, finding people to fill seats etc.

One person in charge of scheduling (allocating equipment and lineups). They don't need to be a coach, but must know each person's skill level in order to be effective.

Try to avoid people hogging equipment - do you allow equipment requests? By having a person doing the scheduling they can be fair and ensure the boats get shared around. When you sign up can you request crew / boat / tie of day?

How can you get consistency for your training group to get more skilful and it's fun to row with a regular group.

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The athlete pathway for masters is different from other groups. What can clubs and Federations do to enable masters to succeed by changing the structure of our sport.

Timestamps

00:40 What is our goal for masters in rowing?

Should masters be allowed to leave and rejoin the club? One of the differences compared to youth rowers is that we remain in the sport for a long time. Youth, school, Seniors all have a long term athlete plan for the pathway of their progress. Masters are not the same. Our goal may be to race and achieve high results - but it is not always. The long term development plan is very different. Some join for participation and to learn how to row; others are there all the time, training and racing. Others like the weekend rows and train for fitness, pleasure and friendship - they may also race but on a shorter term horizon leading up to an event.

04:30 Looping in and out of rowing

Many masters remain in the sport for a long time. What is possible for you right now? Life stage is important. In your 30s you may have a high pressure job. Or a flexible worker who can train during the working day hours. Some masters retire to row - actively. If you have children, under 14s are different from over 14s and can look after themselves for a time. Care responsibilities for aging parents are also another different group of masters. Our goal is continued participation - can you manage to stay involved on a level suitable for where you are right now?

07:00 Club membership structures don't align If you are required to buy an annual membership and are injured, this makes people decide not to rejoin their rowing club.

07:30 Create enabling structures

These allow members to loop in and out of masters rowing participation over time. How can you stay involved while injured? Join social events with the club group. Can memberships be by quarter, term or semester?

Groups in rowing clubs - often LTR, fitness, racing groups are common. As a club how to you enable members to move between groups in a way that reflects their life circumstance? How frequently do you re-assess group members? Can people see a pathway so they can see what the next step is for them in their rowing journey? What does it take to move from intermediate to elite racing?

10:00 Long term athlete development for masters

How can you make it possible for members to stay involved over the long term in your club? These structures might make masters rowing long-term participant so we can remain engaged with the sport over the ultra-long term. Athlete development needs to be aligned with an individual's goals, skills improvement, not necessarily always-upward movement towards high racing achievement. Masters pathways are not necessarily linear - people can loop into rowing and then step away and loop out for a while. Making this happen is structural, requires a strategy for leaders who are involved in masters rowing. What can you do in your club to help?

Top Crew Academy is a coaching service run by Sam Dutney. He explains the differences and how they apply to masters rowing.

Timestamps

Different modes of training methodology are polarised and pyramidal.

Most of the time people use pyramidal so the training intensity distribution is like a pyramid. It has a large base of low intensity, a moderate amount of mid intensity and a small amount of high intensity.

Polarised training skips the mid intensity and has 20% at high intensity.

02:00 Percentages are 60: 30: 10% for pyramidal.

Rowing training has been pyramidal for a long time - since 1930s.

Polarised became popular in mid 2000s and is based on a study done on elite cyclists in endurance sports.

04:45 is HIIT influencing this change?

The benefits of polarised training link well to the benefits of High Intensity Interval Training. What drives the benefits are the high intensity training - the top levels are very similar - the top level training is at or near top efforts.

A huge amount of rowing performance comes from efficiency and time in the boat. Develop the skill in a polarised model in the low intensity sessions.

07:00 How to choose which mode is right for you

Available time - if you can only train 3 times a week. Do a program with one low intensity and the other two as high intensity/

If doing 4-5 sessions a polarised model may be more suitable.

Pyramidal training is effective in the early season and head racing. because you aren't trying to operate at maximum intensity. So pyramidal can be effective at this time of year.

A 2016 paper on runners compared pyramidal and polarised training for 16 weeks; The results from pyramidal for 8 weeks and then shifting into polarised for 8 weeks was very much more effective than all the others. The polarised hard sessions have to be really hard and the easy sessions need to be really easy.

As we get older you don't recovery as well that's where polarised training can help recovery for masters.

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The Head of the Charles and all head races demand a good performance. How to find the ideal stroke rate for your crew.

Timestamps

00:30 Do you have a question in your mind about whether you've got the correct stroke rate for race day.

A story about a crew and an experienced coxswain - they had 2 races in one day. In the first race he drove them hard, with pushes, focus points and technique improvements. Before the second race the crew told the cox that they felt uncomfortable and hadn't enjoyed the race. They wanted to have a stroke rate that they called "long and strong". The cox disagreed with them, but he did what they wanted.

What happened?

In the second race, the crew was 20 seconds slower than in the first race.

02:30 Why did the crew go slower?

They felt comfortable in the second race, they felt confident and that they had everything under control.

In the first race the cox pushed them close to their limits. It did not feel nice, they felt close to their limits, they felt awkward, out of breath, not fully in control and yet the boat went faster.

03:15 Your Training Pieces

You will be doing workouts at different stroke rates from 18 up to race pace. Your trial test races will also be planned into your program. This is where you try different things. Training pieces are often at specified rates - get a boat speed measurement in 500m splits or meters per second (m/s).

Download your workouts and put them into an analysis program like

www.rowsandall.com [free]

Find out how fast your boat went at different stroke rates. This is your base level of data. What was your average split in the piece. Where did you go slower or faster? Note wind and waves that upset your base speed.

05:30 Boat speed at different stroke rates

Look at how the speed changes when the rate varies. Learn the inter-relationship between these two things. Our program for October 2024 includes ladders with changing rates. These show your boat speed at each rating. Rating is the only variable in the ladders. Use the data aggregated over a few weeks to review with your crew where the boat felt good and went fast.

See all our programs and webinars

https://fastermastersrowing.com/our-courses/

07:00 Effective rate and boat speed

Learn how the boat speed and rating combine to learn which ratings are best for your crew. Remember they may be odd numbers (not even number ratings). Then test out the best rates in trial pieces and test events. Can you deliver the same boat speed under pressure of race conditions? Use what you learn to adjust your race plan.

07:30 Learn and revise

The key learning is to test your upper limit. As you train at higher stroke rates you get better at rowing at higher stroke rates, you get fitter too and more used to sustaining those rates. So your upper rate limit is changing over time. Take account of this - being good at 28 this weekend doesn't mean that next weekend you will still be good at 28, it may have lifted to 29 or 30 strokes per minute.

08:30 Three things you can do to push your upper limit stroke rate

1 - Rate higher - if you try one number higher than what you think is your top rate. Generally rowing boats move one boat length per stroke. They go faster at higher rates - but the relationship between stroke rate and speed is not linear, it does plateau. And it can slow down the boat speed at very high rates.

2 - Work harder - can you push the oar through the water from catch to finish. Improve your work rate for any given rating.

3 - Rest more - improve your ability to relax on the recovery to give your muscles a break before the next catch. If you can slow the boat down less each recovery, your average speed will have increased.

Practice these three in every single workout you do. Then bring this to your training pieces as you work out your ideal stroke rate for the race.

This gives you "tricks" to pull out of the bag or levers you can pull in the race to improve your performance.

What to take, make a list:- kit, tools, food, comfort, medical.

Timestamps

00:50 Regattas are busy times

There is a lot going on and so it's easy to forget things. There are many distractions around you and some may affect your race outcome.

01:50 Write it down on a master checklist

Start with packing the night before you leave.

- 3 complete changes of clothing for racing. If you can afford it buy a singlet as well as a row suit in race strip club colours. I include underwear and in winter waterproof socks; wellington boots for the boat park when wet and muddy.

Buy Waterproof socks

https://fastermastersrowing.com/merch/

- List the things you do before you go on the water - rigging the boat, number, crew talk, take your fluids and food.

- Write a timeline back from the start time of your event. Include time to adjust your boat (oarlock heights, foot stretcher positions, check oar length and inboard). Coxswains check your electronics and plug it in to test it.

- Know what time you want to push off from the dock, know if there is likely to be congestion queuing to get on the water (allow more time), check with experienced people what time allowance you should make.

- Write the time of each race, boat and oar allocation, my crew and my number.

- Food needs on regatta day. Arrive already fed - have breakfast before you arrive. Eat easily digestible food. Snacking food between races - gels, muesli bars, water with electrolyte and carbohydrate. Eating more than 20 minutes before a race means I can digest the food. Stuff you can eat in your hand without a knife and fork. A main meal for the middle of the race day - I choose pasta with cheese and vegetables.

- For your own boat - include boat ties, a flag for the stern. Also sunscreen, towel, rain proof jacket and trousers, hair bands / hat, sunglasses and rowing electronics.

12:00 Get ready to enjoy yourself

It's easy to get distracted when others ask you for help and then you miss your own crew race preparation timeline.

I set alarms on my phone - an hour before my race time with the name of the alarm e.g. quad race.

If someone asks to borrow your tools and you lend them they can get mislaid even if you name your tools. Ask the borrower to give you their phone or sunglasses while they borrow the tool - and they are more likely to return it.

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What is normal for you? What to expect when you track your normal waking heart rate.

Timestamps

00:50 This is important as we age. It's a free way to track your physical wellbeing.

I found out about it from Harry Mahon, the New Zealand rowing coach.

Resting heart rate is important for masters because we are too good at "keeping going". Knowing how well you are is key to how you approach training and to give you confidence.

03:00 What is resting heart rate useful for?

In the longer term it's an indicator of your fitness. The lower your resting heart rate the fitter you are. Heart rates are very individual - what's normal for you is not the same as mine.

Your readiness to train today. Waking heart rates when tracked regularly show you what number is normal for you. After one week you will see your numbers and what's normal.

The resting heart rate can show if you are incubating an illness - viral or bacterial. It shows up in your resting heart rate before you see symptoms. Before you get symptoms your heart is already responding to the illness. This could also be stress, poor sleep or dehydration - it's not always illness.

The heart rate jumps up 10 beats per minute when suffering an illness.

07:00 After being sick and wanting to go rowing again, I have gone out when I still have symptoms but find doing a medium intensity workout helps to clear the final symptoms of the virus. The normal pulse precedes this.

08:15 How to find your pulse

Two places the side of your neck or the wrist - on the thumb side about 2 cm from the wrist joint - use two fingers to locate it (not your thumb because there's a pulse in your thumb).

Take a one minute reading or 30 seconds and double the score. When you start counting, make the first pulse zero and then one, two, three etc.

Keep a daily record - use this free daily training diary from our website - to record your training, overnight health and hydration state.

https://fastermastersrowing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Daily-Diary-Recovery-Training-Tracker.pdf

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Flexibility and mobility aide our rowing. What you can do to keep mobility will help your rowing and sculling.

Timestamps

01:00 How can we stay mobile as we age?

Two mornings after a big workout you wake up feeling stiff, tight and tense in your body. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) has kicked in. Your body does not feel like it normally does.

01:45 Why mobility is important for rowing

Mobility and flexibility are words used interchangeably - but medically they have different meanings.

Mobility - ability to move through the full range of motion. The rowing positions we want to be able to achieve. Sit at the finish with good poise, no slump in your lower back and pressure on your feet. Rock forwards with a pelvic tilt so your shoulders are sternwards of your hips. Roll up the slide to full compression with shins vertical, arms wide and is your body able to take the strain of the load from the oars in the water,

Flexibility - ability to stretch your muscles, tendons and ligaments. IT is possible to be mobile without being flexible.

03:00 How mobile are you now?

Webinar Functional Movement Assessment - how does your body move to achieve a particular position. This free webinar can be watched on demand from this link.

https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/functional-movement-assessment/

10 Screening Exercise Tests

Where is your ability on 10 screening exercises? The ebook (free download) sets out the main positions for rowing and sculling. All are useful for you to work out if you can get into the positions for the stroke cycle. The webinar discusses ways to improve your score on the tests.

Rowing with compromises affects many masters rowers. The webinar shows you stretches to help you change your body to improve your screening exercise results. These exercises are useful if you want to make a change in your body.

06:00 Changing your body takes time and regular practice

Muscles, tendons and ligaments take time to change, to lengthen and to strengthen.

Old injuries or health issues affect our body postures. Setting up a rowing boat to suit each person's physical mobility is another article - link below.

https://fastermastersrowing.com/adapting-rowing-rigging-for-masters-physiology/

Getting more flexible is something we should all be able to do with regular practice.

Morning ritual while brushing my teeth, I stretch my adductors.

A challenge for you - improve one or two of your screening tests.

08:00 Coaches can use the tests to screen crews.

Find out whether they can get into the positions you are trying to coach. If athletes cannot get into the positions, you will find it harder to teach technique.

Skill stretch for masters who splay the knees out sideways as you roll up the slide. If you do not have the strength to hold legs parallel. Hold both fists together between your knees and use your legs to squeeze your fists gently. This strengthens the muscles on the outside of your legs and may help to keep your legs parallel.

Find out if your body is mobile and can get into the rowing positions and watch the Functional Movement Assessment free webinar. .

https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/functional-movement-assessment/

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Do you have a split to aim for during workouts? What to do if you don't hit your rowing 500m split and does this matter?

Timestamps

01:00 Psychology of chasing 500m splits on the erg and on the water? Is it beneficial for masters rowing training.

03:45 Before rowing electronics the best way to find out your boat speed was to work on a measured marked distance on your river or lake. Repeating the distance and comparing boat speeds helped to work out your improvements.

Splits are a useful tool

The advent of splits enabled comparability between workouts and also use on the indoor rowing machine. Concept2 erg splits are comparable to heavyweight men 4- times on water.

05:30 Splits as a comparable tool but your split does NOT equal your training zone.

The physiology of how coaches write programs to achieve key athlete outcomes. Training each physiological system helps you improve. As we age our base fitness is generally more sustained (we don't lose it fast).

Our absolute strength declines with age and our ability to rate high and train our anaerobic system can be more challenging.

Doing testing allows you to set up training zones aligned to your physiology. The same training program can't be applied to men and women of different ages e.g. 40 to 65 years old. They cannot do the same workouts - not physically capable.

Know your own training zones so you can adapt the program to suit you. In a club with diverse members, you may find that the program is too hard or too easy for you. You may find recovery is insufficient. These symptoms are caused by a one-size-fits-all training program for masters rowing.

Come to Faster Masters Rowing and use our program where you can interpret the program and adapt it to suit you.

Buy the testing protocols - Faster Five.

https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/faster-five/

09:00 Athletic benefits of training to splits

Re-testing yourself regularly allows you to measure progress and then adjust your training zones to match your new physical fitness.

Use tools mindfully.

It's fun to look at a number and to try to beat it - this is motivating.

But moving into an adjacent training zone as a result of beating the number will negatively impact your future performance.

10:30 You can choose to focus on a split that is attuned to your body or not.

The program you are following was written with a goal in mind. You aren't supporting your coaches' goals if you do not follow the program. Following the wrong split is a good example of not doing the program.

Getting the correct range of boat types and boat weights to suit your club group is important. What to look for, how to assess your fleet and plan for the future.

Timestamps

01:00 Boats to suit athletes

Review the stock of boats and equipment in your club and how they align with the needs of your athletes. We realised we needed to workout if our boat fleet matched the masters group needs.

Assess the weight class of boat to the athlete weights in your group.

03:00 What weight class was your boat designed for? Look for the manufacturer's plate - often in the bow or the front of the stroke's foot well. It shows the design hull type, year of manufacture and the average weight of athlete it's designed for.

Club asset registers list all the boats in the club ownership. We added the information about the boat design weight.

04:30 List all the boats in each boat class that you own (8, 4s, 2s and 1x) and classify them to the athlete weight they are designed for. Broadly we chose 3 categories - light weight boats (under 70kg), mid-weight boats (70-85kg) and heavy weight boats ( over 85kg).

Our list included boat name, age of boat, weight class of boat and whether lightweight, mid-weight or heavyweight. We added in how old the boat was and whether it was due for retirement.

It was then clear where to skew of boats matched our athlete weights.

06:00 Boat gap analysis

Have we got one boat in each weight class?

Which are the most popular boats which athletes like to row?

This shows you where you are short of boats by boat class and boat weight to align with what your group needs, frequency of boat use per week/month, and which boats your masters want to row.

This is not static, it changes each year as membership and priorities change.

This information was then put into the prioritisation for refurbishing boats, fund raising for new boats and spare parts / minor repairs list (consumables e.g. shoes, slides, gates).

08:00 Set out a 3-4 year programme to get your boat fleet more aligned with your group needs.

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