About Will Ruth and Rowing Stronger

I am no longer writing. All of my existing content will remain available here on my website, on my Youtube channel (exercise index and webinar recordings), shorter posts and training tips on Substack, and the (now free) “Rowing Stronger” book in PDF and in print, including the 2024 “Five-Year Update.” I’ll send out any unexpected changes or new content via Substack. I am happy to reply to any questions via email.

“Rowing Stronger” has existed in a few different forms since 2015. I rowed in high school in Olympia, Washington before going to college at Western Washington University. I intended to leave rowing behind and played lacrosse, competed in strength sports, and majored in Kinesiology with a focus in Sport Psychology. I ended up returning to rowing during my senior year of undergrad to help the men’s club team with their strength training. I stayed on after I graduated, coaching on-water as well as the team strength training. I started writing online during this time, originally as “StrengthCoachWill.com” and for RowperfectUK. RowperfectUK published the first edition of my book, “Rowing Stronger: Strength Training to Maximize Rowing Performance,” in 2015. I published an updated second edition in winter of 2019. In spring of 2019 I finished a master’s degree (online) in Sport Coaching at the University of Denver and my wife and I moved to Vermont. I began coaching in the Craftsbury Outdoor Center sculling camps that summer and continued online coaching, writing, and doing other rower/coach-education work. In 2022 I went full-time at Craftsbury. I helped manage the sculling camp program and was the strength coach for their four-sport high-performance program, the Green Racing Project (GRP: rowing, Nordic skiing, biathlon, and running). I left Craftsbury in fall of 2024, consulted with the GRP teams through 2025, and was the assistant strength and conditioning coach at Norwich University until 2026.

 

PS: All the hand-drawn artwork on my website and in my book is by my Olympia Area Rowing high school double partner Eamon Smith (stroke).