How the catch placement changes with the oar angle. Why an acute catch angle with the oar is easier. Ways to adjust your catch technique as the boat speed changes.
Timestamps
When the blade goes into the water at the catch, it needs to be buried rapidly and the curved face of the blade needs to grip the water. the early lock on point is hard to achieve - it depends on how and where you place the blade.
The boat is a single unit moving through the water - water molecules are moving past the boat parallel to the length of the boat hull. The ideal oar placement should have the smallest surface area possible to the direction of travel. At half slide your oar is around 90 degrees to the boat length. It's slow to place the oar.
At the catch, the face of the work going into the water is reduced to around 15 cms compared to half slide. At the extreme, if the oar is parallel to the side of the boat - this reduces to about 1.5 to 3 centimeters width.
07:00 The smaller the face of work of the blade to the water, the easier the blade goes into the water. When the blade is in the same plane as the water movement, it goes in easiest. At very short strokes - arms only - it's hard to place the blade. With the smaller face of work area at the catch, using an acute angle, it feels easier to place the blade.
From half slide to the catch, your legs and seat move in a straight line up the slides to the catch. However your handle(s) are pivoting around the arc of a circle centred on the pin of the oarlock. Your body in sweep rotates around the pin - keep your shoulders parallel to the oar handle and let your eyes look out on your side of the boat - this helps create more rotation because your body follows where your eyes are looking. In sculling both your handles are pivoting around the arc of a circle - your arms move further than your legs from half slide to the catch. In effect there are 2 speeds on the recovery - the seat speed, and a faster speed of your hands leading the oar handles around the pin and upwards to place the oar under the water. By allowing your arms to go wider at the catch in sculling, you will get a more acute catch angle. Row longer by thinking about your arms, separately from your body.
When the boat speeds up and rate increases, you have less time per stroke to anticipate the catch. Often stroke length shortens as stroke rate rises. Counter this by moving your thinking earlier in the recovery. This gives you more reaction time. You need to move your body proportionate to the rate - as rate rises your body speed also increases. When you get the catch timing right the catch can feel very light (not heavily loaded on the blade).
16:00 Train yourself by trying a drill. Go from full slide to half slide - it gives the impression you're rating very high. Prepare early at half slide so you don't miss water at the catch. Then try to maintain the same boat speed you had at full slide. You move dynamically off the catch placement.
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Your boat speed depends BOTH on the power phase and the recovery phase. You've done the work - now get the benefit.
Timestamps
Your net boat speed is the power you put in to the power phase and the amount the boat slows down when the oars are out of the water. Rowing boats surge through the stroke cycle.
Keep the movements sequential and well-organised. Maximum boat speed comes after the extraction at the finish and as you transfer your body weight onto the feet. A key point is when you can get weight on the feet. As your arms straighten and your body follows - then the boat gets an extra burst of speed if you can sequence this correctly and smoothly.
05:00 4 focus points
You must have weight in the hand - elbows have to be higher than your wrist in order to give downward pressure.
Keep a flat wrist as you feather into your fingers allows you to keep weight in the hand. In sweep only the inside wrist bends.
Squaring on the recovery can mess with the rhythm. If you square late or it's a large movement this contributes to losing rhythm.
When to release your knees - a critical timing point to when to relax your muscles. You will get this right when you know what the feeling of weight in the hand is and the feeling of total relaxation in your leg muscles are.
Increase relaxation - know how to do this will help you to improve the other focus points.
Increase relaxation by 1% and what happens to the boat run, ratio and how the recovery feels. Does the boat speed change? [Remember they average over 3 strokes].
What "should" a masters rower be able to do? Training frequency, training volume, training intensity. What is the next big change in YOUR rowing training you can expect as you age?
01:00 When masters start rowing we are likely here for a while. Longevity in the sport is longer for masters than juniors or young adults. We come back to rowing thinking we are the same athlete as we were when we last were in a boat. Article - Rowing and Aging Each Decade.
Once you age past a certain point you will not be as strong as you were in your youth. This is inevitable - yet it can be delayed with careful training. This is a hard reality check.
03:15 in your 20s and 30s an athletic lifestyle can be achieved within work/family life. Many endurance sports peak in their 30s. You may be able to do 6-9 sessions per week.
In your 40s this is a decade where time is often limited. Time constraints mean your goal is to get adequate training to support your goals. Quality workouts are more important than quantity workout. The strength decline starts in this decade. Focus on rest and recovery to optimise your physical benefits of 5-7 workouts per week.
Regatta entries for D and E are large, and growing. Metabolic changes happen here - diet changes for weight control and for women and protein ingestion is more important. Also, menopausal changes also happen. You may need to change sleep patterns by introducing daytime naps to ensure you get enough rest. Review your rowing technique to align with your physiological capabilities - you may swap to sculling from sweep because it's symmetrical.
In your 60s more metabolic changes happen. You may be retiring to row and can do more training because you aren't working full time. Your erg score remains steady in your 60s - but technique improvements have big impact here as we lose strength we can gain speed by rowing better.
10:30 There are more rowers in their 70s than ever before. The body response to exercise becomes unpredictable and so affects rest and can cause injury. Flexibility and sensitivity to your recovery needs are a new habit. Maintain muscle mass with strength and conditioning work.
13:45 To get the best out of yourself each decade, assessing your capability is essential. Test your base aerobic fitness, peak power and anaerobic threshold using the Faster Five assessment this is included FREE with every training program subscription. Your training adaptations will be visible when you test.
Change your rig to suit your age and strength. The testing will enable you to determine what to do. Adjust rating and gearing to suit your capability. Webinar - Rigging for Masters has charts for oar designs, across the ages and skill. Many masters prefer the long distance races as we age - it's easier to keep your aerobic base as we age - what we lose is the high rating and sprint ability.
https://youtube.com/live/B1TqB8ZTxH0
https://soundcloud.com/rowingchat/rowing-and-aging-each-decade
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Reflections on the 2024 Older Athlete and Aging conference learnings.
Timestamps
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.
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.
John explained in detail 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.
Buy a ticket now to watch the recording.
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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.
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.
You can make an easy member division into learn to row group, intermediate, advanced, racing and fitness groups. If you have a group each needs a co-ordinator/captain.
Use 2 types of software to help you.
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.
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 crew lineups.
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.
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.
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.
Coaching mixed gender rowing groups article
Digitize your rowing club management webinar
Rowing time management podcast & checklist
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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?
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Today we are going to look at several different videos teaching how to get back into a rowing boat after having fallen in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcPE8-gENLo
This has good instruction from the bank – worth copying
https://www.youtube.com/embed/HkMcpAMmEhk
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nhtv53MOrqA
It is instructional because you can see what she does right and wrong
https://www.youtube.com/embed/I7sBJiK-ixs
This last video shows a large number of beginner adult / masters scullers doing the capsize and recovery drill
https://www.youtube.com/embed/T4iZN2WjbMA
Sam Dutney explains the differences and how they apply to masters rowing.
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.
The benefits of polarised training link well to the benefits of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). 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.
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 you are 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 recover as well that's where polarised training can help recovery for masters.
Top Crew Academy is a coaching service run by Sam Dutney.
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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.
Resource: The Ultimate Head Racing Guide for Masters [free download]
3 Value bombs
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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What to take, make a list:- kit, tools, food, comfort, medical.
Resource: Erg Racing Checklist
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.
Buy Waterproof socks https://fastermastersrowing.com/merch/
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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