Friends and business associates of Faster Masters Rowing have the following camps planned.
Not an exhaustive list.
2026 - Masters Rowing February Symposium
Camp Dates:
What is offered: 2 day or 4 days of rowing, rowing and more rowing with unmatched coaching! Sweep and Sculling options—you can even do both! The symposium will combine on the water rows, with in-depth video sessions and on-land convention style seminars to help you do a deep dive into becoming a better and smarter rower.
Please visit the following link to register! https://sarasotacrew.org/index.php/joinus/campandclinics/mwintercamps?id=32
— at Nathan Benderson Park.
Hosted by Club Naval Infante D. Henrique located near Porto. 25km of stable, sheltered water, on-site accommodation for up to 42 people.
Events: Regata Internationale de Gondomar in May; Aerobic Monsters Singles Regatta in October.
http://www.cninfante.pt/
Enquiries to [email protected] +351 224 831 194
Specialists in beach sprint rowing.
Flexible Training Options: Understanding that national teams often bring their own coaching expertise, we offer two training options:
Self-Coached Camps: Utilise our top-tier facilities, including on-site gym, wellness activities, and boat equipment, while maintaining your team’s coaching structure.
BSA-Coached Sessions: If desired, benefit from our experienced coaching staff to provide additional expert guidance tailored to your team’s needs.
Details & registration: https://www.beachsprintacademy.com/book-our-facility
Small-group sculling camps for 4–6 participants, mostly in singles.
Five days, two sessions per day.
2026 Camp Dates:
Details & registration: https://aramtraining.com/ref/13/?campaign=Newsletter
We do not run camps. Our self-guided online courses Sculling Intensive Camp, Erg Intensive Camp, Nutrition Intensive Camp, and Square Blades Challenge can be purchased - go to Online Courses and browse Skills and Technique.
Rebecca Caroe and Grant Craies are available to visit your camp as coaches.
Camps in Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, plus:
Various dates; check their calendar.
2026 International Camps:
Details: www.allamericanrowingcamp.com
2027 private group camps (4–12 people) also available.
Sabaudia, Italy
Aviz, Portugal
Aiguebelette, France
Please check the Masters Brochure for more info.
April and September 2026
Advanced sculling technique.
scullingcamp.rojabo.com
Tailor-made rowing camps for all levels.
Row in mixed crews with Olympians and receive coaching from Italian National Team coaches.
Various dates and locations across Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, and more).
rowingintuscany.com
Located in Vermont USA camps run from May to September. Sculling only in 3,4 and 6 day formats.
As of the time of writing (Dec 2025) all camps are full for 2026.
https://www.craftsbury.com/sculling/camps/camps-home
Three-day sculling clinics
December 1, 2025 – May 3, 2026
floridarowingcenter.com
No in-person camps for 2026.
Offering virtual indoor rowing classes:
Nov 2025 – Mar 2026 (USA Eastern Time):
$15 per 60-minute class.
Fundamentals + interval work.
p3pe.net
Five-day rowing retreats combining yoga, breathwork, wine tasting, and cultural experiences.
No rowing experience required.
2026 Dates:
http://mindbodyrowexperience.com
Intermediate/advanced 3-day sculling camps.
2026 Dates:
Kevin McDermott Camps
Dan Duxbury Camps
Coaching available on request for clubs, organisations, private groups, or individuals.
Sessions can take place in Amsterdam or at your location, by arrangement.
Best suited for personalised technical coaching and small-group development.
enjoyrowing.com
Ways to improve speed of the oar through the water. Keep the stroke rate the same and increase the speed.
Timestamps
00:45 This is a long term project. Less experienced rowers push the oar less hard than the more experienced and you need to train this. Time through the water at stroke rate of 20 is approximately 3 seconds per stroke. Pushing the oar through the water on the power phase takes 1.2 to 1.5 seconds and yet we row with a ratio of at least 2:1 at low rates.
Experienced rowers get more rest every stroke. They push the oar with high intensity through the water and so they have more time with the oar out of the water.
How to row at the same stroke rate and deliver more force into the boat hull. The key to training this on the erg was to start with a focus point once every 5 minutes for 10 strokes. For ten strokes push harder through the power phase but you're not allowed to take the rate up. This showed us how much harder we could push and how much more rest we got as a result. It depends on your muscular strength and fitness.
Then we moved to doing this for a minute. After each intense stroke period we allowed 5 strokes to recover and take a little rest. Over time, you don't need to take that rest.
Taking the same principle of increased intensity into the boat. We call "Up one down one" which means take the stroke rate up one point in rate through the water and down one point in rate on the slide. So at rate 20 you move to rate 21 through the water and rate 19 on the slide - which averages to 20.
This has the effect of intensifying the power phase. Train yourself to do this and it gets a better ratio in the stroke - you learn how to relax more as you rest on the recovery. The benefit is slightly more boat speed, slightly more rest and this helps to keep the boat moving fast through the water.
Here's an earlier episode which covers this topic further of how to train yourself to relax.
Do this for short periods to begin with as it's tiring. Introduce it to your warmup just for 5 strokes at each stage in the pick drill.
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David Frost reviews Practical and Personal Looks at Coronary Artery Diseases (CAD) in Master's Rowers - download the additional information link below.
Timestamps
00:45 David Frost's journey through CAD Coronary artery calcification - men need checking after age 70 more than women. Even rowers who are known for being stoic - if you feel something in your chest, get it checked out. "You have the coronary arteries of a 92 year old" was my signal that I needed help. The Agatston Score is is a proxy for heart health.
Inflammation in your arteries can cause an issue if you work too hard, too fast for too long.
08:00 Rowers have a higher than average incidence of atrial fibrillation (AFIB) Maybe rowers are doing themselves a disservice by training long and hard. What to do about this?
There are interesting heart age metrics - pulse wave velocity measure tells how elastic your arteries are. Heart Rate Variability - the higher it is the better you are recovering. David encourages masters to measure these and track their trends. Dr Churchill in Boston is studying masters rowers' aorta for ASCVD. Get a calcium CT scan - it helped David understand his condition.
Perceived exertion, rest and hydration are a good guide to how you are feeling each day. David is mindful of recovery as well.
What age should you start getting the calcium CT scan done? For men from age 40 and women maybe 50. For the plus wave velocity test this could be done from mid life - age 40 maybe ladies a bit later. Note David is a layman, not a doctor.
Rowing training is more 80% steady state and 20% higher intensity. This has trended upwards from about 60% when David was younger. As humans we are slow to recognise when our body moved into the "next" stage. The competitive mindset can make us live in denial of aging. It's not good for you to carry to much body fat - your waist to hip ratio is worth checking.
25:00 Burden or banish? David's new book coming out 2026
Sloth and gluttony contribute to heart disease - 80% is preventable. Lifestyle measures can defer the onset of heart disease. Hopefully rowers can start to banish the preventable problem. STRESSED spelled backwards is DESSERTS.
David's package of information
Resources on this topic
Remember the disco funk classic theme tune from the Kids from Fame TV series?
Fame: I'm gonna to live forever, I want to learn how to fly - high!
My most frequent gripe about aging is 'nobody told me it was going to be like this'. But the real truth is I was not looking out for that information. Scientists are now treating aging as a disease and research focuses on longevity and anti-aging. I've been taking NMN and Novos Boost since 2021 when Clare Delmar, keynote speaker at our Older Athlete and Aging conference referenced it in her speech.
Efforts to extend healthspan through pharmacological agents targeting aging-related pathological changes are now in the spotlight of geroscience, the main idea of which is that delaying of aging is far more effective than preventing the particular chronic disorders.
Science Direct: Anti Aging Pharmacology Promises & Pitfalls
Education is the major determinant of healthy aging. What can you do with lifestyle choices, rowing practice and new therapies to make your future the best possible?
Aligning your physical activity - rowing - and your lifestyle towards aging well and understanding what choices you can make for yourself is outlined in our guest article by Brian Clark.
Scientists are working on ways to reducing aging - not face creams and vitamins, but serious scientific endeavour into proven methods.
Gen Xers who adopt healthy aging practices can live long enough and well enough to benefit from the research and resulting treatments that defeat the ailments that come with aging. Even by current standards, we’ve got 20 to 30 years post retirement before we’re considered old. That means if you retire at 67, you should plan to live to 97. Maybe you will or maybe you won’t, but it’s hard to imagine betting against yourself, right?
Based on the amount of investment into scientific research there’s a better-than-average chance we’ll have one or more effective anti-aging treatments in our lifetime.
So here’s a primer on that vital education that can boost your longevity potential. These are the four most promising approaches.
Read the full detail of each from Further: Why Generation X May Be the First Group to Live Much Longer - what it is, how it works, the promise, where we are and the challenge.
Researchers publicly emphasize extending "healthspan" (healthy years without debilitating illness) rather than total lifespan for three strategic reasons:
But the distinction is somewhat artificial. All of these approaches work by targeting the fundamental biology of aging: the cellular processes that cause both disease and death. If you can genuinely slow cellular aging, you're likely to get both additional healthy years and more total years. The animal studies certainly show this to be true.
In other words, most longevity scientists privately believe that meaningfully extending healthspan will naturally extend lifespan too. They're just being strategic in how they frame their research for regulators, investors, and the public.
So, in light of this fantastical but valid information, I’ll ask you a question I’ve asked you before:
What do you want to do with the rest of your life?
Choose wisely.
Brian Clark, founder Further: Live Long and Prosper
There are four types of recovery responses to be familiar with:
Acute overload is the recovery that takes place on a daily basis, session to session. Proper diet and sleep are the main factors for long term recovery. However, immediate recovery interventions should start as a session concludes to signal the body to start repair. This can include a 10-minute cool down row with focused deep breathing, changing to some slow music after listening to upbeat music, a protein snack within 30 minutes ending a session, wearing compression garments, and light massage.
Functional overreaching is the gold target. It is the result of good management of the daily training load. It will show improvement in the performance of the rowers from week to week. As they repeat weekly sessions they get better. Repeating the same weekly sequence of workouts for a few weeks is an effective approach for masters. Making small changes or increases to achieve slow steady gains are preferable.
Non-functional overreaching is when athletes are not seeing performance improvements, they are feeling stale, and the usual number of recovery days is not enough for them to gain energy back. The prescription is then to recommend taking three or four days off perhaps a week. Often the athlete will then feel better and be able to return to their previous level of performance. Usually non-functional overreaching happens because the increase in the training load was too fast.
An example of recovering from non-functional overreaching:
R.C.’s normal heart rate variability measurement is between 7.2 to 8.3. She had a moderate training session on Wednesday, rowed a hard session on Thursday, and then trained easy on Friday.
On Saturday her HRV was high 9.5 but she went to train but had to abandon her session due to fatigue.; She rested on Sunday but HRV was still high at 9.3. On Monday it was 8.7 so she took an additional rest day. Tuesday her HRV was 8.5, still slightly above normal, but she was able to resume training on Wednesday when her HRV was received to her normal range.
All in all she required three days rest to recover but was able to resume training at her previous level.
Fortunately, true overreaching is rare. This is when the athlete cannot recover for weeks and can take months to get back to their baseline performance level. Overreaching can be avoided with attention to the balance of work and rest on a daily, weekly, and seasonal basis.
Researching masters physiology - aging from 50 to 70 affects your rowing.
01:00 Guests from Athlone, Ireland Lorcan Daly and Paul Gallen
Lorcan is a sport science researcher starting with his grandfather, Richard Morgan who was an erg champion. Uniquely he was sedentary for most of his life, was a smoker and at 73 took up indoor rowing. He was tested aged 92 and some of the tests were on a par with a 30 year old. Three world champion indoor rowers were his next test subjects - described as a "game changer" by Irish Rowing.
Paul Gallen Dennis and Ken were recruited after winning their divisions at the 2024 World Rowing Indoor Championships. The tests were done over 2 visits - diet, lung and muscle function and sporting history.
06:00 Paul Gallen rejoined masters rowing
He took 30 years out of the sport and his first event back was the Head of the Charles Regatta. Learned to scull aged 60 and indoor rowing competitions. His 8s crew includes school friends. For the winter season he does a 10 week lead in to the Irish Indoor Rowing Championships. The three age gaps gave a good framing for the study.
Lorcan found that their muscle oxygen take-up was similar to an Olympic champion. The deterioration over life is much flatter than non-trained people.
Paul has 10 years of his splits at the indoor champs 6:59 - 7.14 times over ten year drop off. Paul does daily Yoga for rowers - 12 moves a day. Off season 2 weights; mix of high intensity and longer rowers. At least one high intensity per week.
13:00 General advice on aging well
The principles for healthy aging - keep your full body system going is a mix of resistance exercise and the mix of aerobic exercise is key. The two together is the winning formula.
15:00 Returning rowers
Paul the big thing about people coming back to rowing - it depends on how busy your life is. Start at recreational level and not commit fully to being in competition. Build up if your life gets less busy.
Lorcan's paper is called Toward the Limits of Human Ageing Physiology: Characteristics of the 50+, 60+ & 70+ Male Indoor Rowing Champions
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What is normal for you? What to expect when you track your normal waking heart rate.
Resource: Daily Diary - simple templated record keeping for your training diary
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.
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.
It's also useful to determine 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.
There are two easy places - the side of your neck or the wrist - find your pulse 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.
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When you recognise that you need more rest by tracking the stressors in your life having a lighter training week is good athlete self-management.You can use a daily diary [free download] to help you track your pattern of recovery. This tool is very useful in the context of adapting your training to suit your recovery needs.
When following the full Faster Masters Rowing program, Monday is your only day off in the week, incorporating a degree of unloading will help your progress. Unloading is when you choose lighter workouts.
A typical mesocycle periodized training program follows a weekly progression of light - medium - hard - light workout loading.
If you consistently train five or six days a week that is the threshold for possibly needing more rest during a month. Whereas if you do three or four sessions a week there is plenty of recovery time between workouts and you may not need this. Tracking your recovery using a daily diary or HRV monitoring will give you the answer.
As a general principle, here are some ways you can get more recovery while still following the program. For example if after 3 weeks of full training you feel you need a couple of lighter sessions, choose one of the options below.
Remember, the program should be challenging - strike a balance between your rest needs and a robust workout.
What's the difference between a taper and a rest day? When should you taper before a regatta and how does it affect your readiness to race? A rest day gives your body time to recovery and feel more energetic. After the rest day you continue training in the normal way.
A taper is when training volume is vastly reduced before a race - this helps your body get deep rest, allows for travelling and will leave you bouncing with energy come race day. Usually a taper starts around 7 days before the big event.
Tapering incorporates elements of intensity and recovery. So you may be doing race pace workouts still and also getting shorter practice as well as days when you do not train at all.
A good way to think about your physical wellbeing is to use the formula Form = Fitness minus Fatigue.
Fatigue masks your potential true performance. Shedding the fatigue unveils the fitness you've built in training. During the taper you will maintain fitness - you won't improve your fitness.
The design of Faster Masters programs is such that we do not recommend tapering before a test like a 5k that’s just part of your training. We’ve been doing race distance workouts at weekends throughout the 1k and 5k training program.
But resting in order to feel ready to do a test helps you feel prepared for the test. Take a rest day beforehand - either 3 days before or 1 day before, not both.
In Faster Masters programs the “training load” is designed to stress your body and race distance test rows are programmed into the workouts as part of this process. You want your best performance to be on race day, not necessarily on the test day.
To be effective, tapers have to be preceded by strong periods of regular workouts. Most athletes only taper for 2 or 3 events per year. When there are only a few weeks left before your race event (and you've got a test planned in the program) doing a taper at this time will lower your training stress at a time when the program is designed to be bringing it gradually up. This compromises your ultimate peak if you’ve not followed the program.
Pre-race nerves diary week 5 Casey McKenna
Head race taper versus rest article
Travel, tapering and using borrowed boats podcast
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?
Resource: Make winter ergs fun again - 5 tips
3 Value Bombs
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.
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.
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.
Staying hydrated for training and racing can give you hidden benefits. It's very easy to become dehydrated and not realise. Performance improvements and recovery gains from hydration.
Resource: Home Made Sport Drink Recipe (below in notes).
Timestamps
What you are drinking and how to get fluids into your body. It's more than just drinking while training, off the water drinking matters too.
Start with a glass of water when you wake up in the morning. Every time you have a meal or snack, have another glass of water. Snacks might be mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Get into the habit of 2 litres of fluid a day - this includes any hot drink, shake or smoothie count too. Keep a record of your hydration - cricket notation makes it easy to see each 5 glasses of water you have.
02:30 Before during and after training sessions hydration is needed as well.
Drinks need carbohydrate and electrolytes in them. This is part of your recovery from exercise. Carbohydrates help you maximise energy levels to maintain intensity through to the end of a workout. Training works to provoke adaptations. Electrolytes are minerals which get lost through sweat. The air temperature during exercise affects your feeling of thirst. Do not rely on your sensation of thirst - anticipate your hydration needs before you feel thirsty.
06:00 Caffeine drinks - these are worthy of your consideration because caffeine is a stimulant. I drank a half and half Red Bull and water at a regatta when I had a lot of races. I'd learned that Dame Kelly Holmes used this for her race day hydration.
Use sports drink only on regatta days. Use either caffeinated drinks or tablets (noDoze or Pro Plus). Have caffeine every 2-3 hours while racing - half a can of drink 30-40 minutes before your first race or half a caffeine tablet.
From Nancy Clark's Sport Nutrition Guidebook affiliate link to buy.
Flavoured with orange juice and lemon juice or cranberry/lemonade.
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