Author: h2rob

I am me.

Hammering a Screw

Posted on by h2rob

Why are you doing that? Are you even doing it right?

All too often we do a drill, like chopping or pausing, because we were told to do so and not given much more information. As a rower or a coach we do specific drills or exercises because your coach made you do them or it was read somewhere. STOP THAT!

A drill is a tool. It’s specifically crafted for a narrow purpose and has a definitive outcome. When the incorrect tool is used to do the job, like hammering in a screw, the outcome is chaotic, unpredictable, and may not meet your expectations. Even worse is using an exercise with no guidance or purpose. This makes me think of a 2 year old banging on the cement floor with one of her daddy’s new tools…time is used but nothing gets done.

The solution for this is fairly easy…all you need to do is think about what you’re doing and ask yourself, or your coach, a couple questions.

  • What are you looking to change? Ask what the current issue or habit looks or feels like. Also go into the effects of this issue or habit. “When you lower the hands to give the blade enough room to square you are also effecting the balance and causing the boat to wobble or fall over towards the catch.”
  • What is the focus of the exercise? Ask what you should be focusing on. Go into how to execute the focus properly. “Pause every other stroke at half slide. This is a collection point for all the bodies in the boat. You’re looking to come to the pause and patiently move out of the pause with precise synchronicity to one another.”
  • What is the expected outcome? Ask how it should look, feel, or sound when done correctly. Go into as many of the senses as possible. “When doing a catch in place, it should feel like the blade locks into the water. You will also hear a thwack or thunk sound as the water closes around the blade. The splash will be a ‘V’ shape when the movement into the catch causes a bow side splash and the lock into the drive causes a stern side splash.”

Recovery for Rowers

Posted on by h2rob

Recovery is something we always hear about like we used to hear our moms tell us to put a jacket on because it’s cold out. We know we should do it and some know how important it is, but we still don’t do it right or don’t know how. Recovery is arguably more important than training because without it you’ll get slower and weaker. To elaborate how advantageous recovery can be, think on these two scenarios:

  • Performance enhancing drugs. The ability of PEDs are regularly over-inflated. Many, if not most, don’t make us stronger but they do let us train harder. Many allow the body to immediately recover. Without seriously heavy training, many PEDs will have little to no effect unless making you fat counts. The ones that make us recover so quickly that allows us to train even harder.
  • Your teenager. We often speak of how the youthful are faster and stronger. Yes, it is sometimes because they are too dumb to know what pain is. More importantly, they’re so full of raging chemicals that allow them to heal more quickly which goes on until ~20 years old. This allows them to train harder and train more often without ever having the thought of “not going to be able to get out of bed tomorrow”.
So….how does all of this crap work? Let’s keep it simple and think of the blood as having 2 jobs: 1) brings the good stuff (oxygen, energy, healing agents, etc), and 2) carries away the bad stuff (muscle waste, unwanted acids, etc). To that end, recovery is the act of helping blood do its thing by moving more of it thus providing the body with more of the good stuff and giving the blood easier access to the bad stuff (i.e. foam roller) so the waste can be carried away. How do we do it?..nutrition, elevated heart rate, rolling, stretching, massages, sleep, staying happy, drinking less, having sex more often, or even getting more sunlight are all ways to help the body recover more effectively.
I wanted to take a moment to discuss the idea of recovery workouts because it is probably the most insane, monotonous, irritating, and impossible idea for a rower. By profile and generalization we are twisted, sick, over achieving, type A personalities and it’s part of our genetic code to believe that harder is better, faster is better, more is better, no pain no gain, and pain for pleasure. Going just a little easier during a team workout or cutting down the number of pieces in a workout from 4 to 2 IS NOT A RECOVERY WORKOUT! Cycling up the side of Mount Rainier at near max is not a recovery workout just because it’s not rowing. A recovery workout is the idea that we move more blood over time and warm up the muscles so we bring in more of the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff. If you go even a little too hard you won’t recover very well because you’ll be using up the good stuff and making even more of the bad stuff. To recover more efficiently, we need to elevate the heart rate…but not too much or for too long.
A recovery workout is a very light pace and doesn’t last a long time (i.e. less than an hour). If you don’t know what light pace is because it’s a foreign concept then consider using one of these guidelines as a starting point:
  • Heart rate. 180bpm minus your age. This is a low enough effort such that your body can use more of the “fat” for energy rather than the “sugar”
  • Split. 2k race pace (average split) plus 30-40 seconds. Boat or erg, it doesn’t matter.
During a recovery workout it is important not to “step on it”. None of this going hard for the last 100 meters to see if you can drop the average split. As soon as you do, the body goes immediately into action mode and the recovery processes won’t be as effective or last as long. As rowers, this is so hard for us. Take your day off and instead do a 25 minute recovery workout on your feet, boat, erg, or bike plus another 10 minutes on the foam roller afterwards.

The same idea of recovery workouts also apply for cooling down after a workout. Walking from the docks to the locker room is not a cool down. As you pile ergo meters for a holiday challenge or taxing your system in the cold when all it wants to do is shrivel up, don’t forget to recover. Just 5-10 minutes on the erg after a row is a perfect middle ground.
In summation, let the body do what it’s good at. Yes, as we get older the body is slower to do “it’s thing” but this is even more of a reason for proper cool down and recovery workouts. You know what needs to be done. Kill the inner beast, strangle the inner child, overcome the hardship of monotony, and do what you know is best.