In Part 1, we covered goal-setting, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive reframing, and positive self-talk. In Part 2, we talked visualization, pre-practice, pre-performance, and mental reset routines. Now, we’ll discuss the final two mental skills and wrap the series up with how to put them all together in a training plan for better training sessions and improved performance.
In Part 1, we talked about the basic skills of goal-setting, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive reframing, and positive self-talk. This article will continue with some more basic mental skills that you can incorporate right away into your training. Remember, mental training is just like physical training in that you can’t just flip a switch and be in shape. It will take time and dedication to improve, and from reduced anxiety to increased performance to improved focus and happiness in sport, the benefits are worth the work.
Anyone who has rowed or been around rowers can tell you that this is a mentally difficult sport, and maybe you have to be a little crazy to do it. The constant pressure of technical improvement combined with the drive to improve on the ergometer tests and in training can be a lot to deal with, and athletes not equipped to deal with this stress often find themselves burned out after a few seasons. This article series will teach you some basic mental skills that you can incorporate into your own training as a rower or coxswain.
MST can help reduce anxiety and build good mental habits to lay a foundation for race day and tests. Just like in school, you can’t just cram for a few hours and expect to do well on the test—you have to work at it all quarter.
MST can help improve performance by reducing distractions, improving focus, and decreasing anxiety. The basis of short-term MST is maintaining a mindset of positivity and not getting bogged down in uncontrollable factors. Control what you can control, let everything else go.
The previous excerpt from “Rowing Stronger” discussed training and strength training for masters rowers at a broad level with topics of recovery, exercise progression, and injury prevention. After I got a shout-out from renowned masters coach Marlene Royle on a recent Rowing Chat podcast, I received several questions about specifics of strength training for masters rowers and how to start training if you are 50+ years old and have minimal lifting experience. Here’s my advice for how to start strength training for a male or female masters rower.
I think that Marlene’s opinion of strength training in her podcast was spot on. Strength training is a vitally important part of masters training, especially for injury prevention, but it is small in comparison to technique, aerobic endurance, and ability on the water and on the ergometer. If you aren’t technically sound on the water or on the erg, you won’t be able to display the full potential of your strength. However, if you’re a masters athlete who has spent a lot of time in the sport, developed great technique and aerobic base, but hasn’t been seeing improvement, strength training could be the missing ingredient. Read the first chapter of Rowing Stronger for free to see why training endurance from the top-down with strength work is so effective.
Technique is the first thing I emphasize with an athlete of any age. Technique is important to develop the movement patterns that will help you both in and out of the boat. I’d suggest working with a personal trainer or qualified coach on lifting technique, because it isn’t intuitive or natural to a lot of people and there are many ways to go wrong when learning a new skill. You can take this article to a personal trainer or qualified coach so they can teach you the proper technique on these simple exercises.
Snapping hip syndrome (SHS) is a common injury in rowing. The most noticeable characteristic of SHS is a palpable or audible “snapping” sensation around the hip joint that may be painful or not painful. There is Internal SHS, felt more toward the groin and associated with the iliopsoas tendon, and External SHS, felt on the outside of the hip around the head of the femur and associated with IT band tendon or gluteus maximus tendon. Both forms of snapping hip syndrome in rowing are common, uncomfortable, often painful, and are usually a chronic injury, not a traumatic injury (Cheatham, Cain, Ernst, 2015). Snapping hip syndrome in rowing is common due to the seated and bilateral nature of the sport, which can result in chronically tight hip flexors, increasing risk of SHS. Prevention of snapping hip syndrome in rowing revolves around care of the hip flexors and muscles involved at the pelvis, as well as strengthening the antagonist muscle groups to prevent chronic hip flexor tightness and move through a full range of motion (Hannafin, 2011).
Originally posted as a guest post on Rowperfect UK.
Continue reading → Rowing Injury Prevention: Snapping Hip Syndrome
With the last few head races of fall complete, this article is for the many rowers who turn with mixed feelings to the erg for winter training. RowingRelated wrote a great article here exploring some of the reasons that many rowers are afraid of the erg, the consequences of erg fear, and how coaches and rowers continue to facilitate erg fear in rowing. A crucial observation in the article is this:
“When compared to other endurance sports like cycling, running, swimming, etc., I have not encountered an equal level of disdain for such fundamental mental and physical endurance training. A track runner might complain if he or she had to be on the treadmill all winter long, but the idea would not strike fear into his or her heart…” [RowingRelated]
Overtraining comes in two main forms, chronic and acute. Chronic overtraining is fairly rare and traumatic, but acute overtraining has broader symptoms and affects many athletes. Acute overtraining can be caused by training with too high frequency, intensity, and/or volume, or by failing to recover sufficiently from training via sleep, diet, and lifestyle. Overtraining is not to be feared, but recognizing overtraining symptoms is key to better managing your training, recovery, performance, and mental state.
The Internet pendulum swings rapidly on the subject of overtraining, and a brief survey on the topic will reveal attitudes both of constant fear of overtraining even in the lowest volume training situations and macho “there’s no such thing as overtraining” attitudes. The reality lies somewhere in the middle and the polarity of opinion is mostly the result of a lack of understanding of what overtraining actually is.
First, let’s clear up what overtraining is not. Overtraining is not overreaching. Overreaching is a strategic training period as part of a taper cycle when fatigue will be incurred past a recoverable level. Many athletes will experience this as a natural part of a training 
cycle. This period is strategic, intentional, and should be carefully monitored by the coach and athlete. The athlete overreaches for a short period of time (2-3 weeks) during which time fatigue is very high and performance is diminished, then training is scaled back for another short period of time (1-2 weeks) to allow for recovery before a peak performance. This is the strategy of tapering to produce an immediate short-term spike in performance for a peak event.
Regardless of age, experience, and gender, strength training can improve performance and all-around fitness beyond a chosen sport or activity. Intelligently designed, consistent, progressive strength training is one of the most powerful tools to slow and in some cases, reverse, the physical changes that are a natural, biological process of aging. Strength gains are still fully possible via central nervous system (CNS) improvements even after testosterone levels decline [5]. The central nervous system regulates the force produced by muscles. Strength training takes what was once a bumpy gravel road connecting the CNS to the muscle fibers and turns it into smooth pavement, capable of transmitting greater power to the muscles. Aerobic systems lose little with age, so the combination of the improved CNS, healthy muscular system, plus a robust aerobic base can power boats well into one’s masters years. In fact, if you have relied solely on technique and aerobic training to this point in your career, the addition of intelligent and progressive strength training could unlock the door to new personal bests and faster times.
I frequently get the question from former teammates and athletes I’ve coached, “what do I do at the gym now that I’m not training for a sport?” I’ve written on the discussion of retirement from sport, known in sport psychology as “athlete transitioning,” and my goal for this article is to provide more of a practical how-to guide for lifting for athletes after competitive sport. Read on for how to adjust training, learn to design your own training program, and find new goals to chase down and new ways to enjoy physical activity and strength training after sport.
Note: There is no great word to describe the athlete who no longer competes in organized or performance-focused sports. “Retired” has a negative connotation of age or frailty. Many athletes who have been invested in their lifestyle as a competitive athlete for so long will take offense to the terms of “non-athlete,” “recreational athlete/exerciser,” or even “normal person.” “Post-transition athlete” sounds clinical and like beating around the bush. I’ll typically stick to “retired athlete” in my writing, but just know that this is more for lack of a better term.
This is the final installment of mobility for rowers, where we’ll cover the importance of ankle mobility for rowers and how you can improve flexibility and strength in the calf and shin muscles for better compression, cleaner catches, and stronger drives. In Part 1, we discussed what “tightness” really is (and what it isn’t), why mobility is so much more than just flexibility alone, and how to address mobility restrictions in the thoracic spine. In Part 2, we broke down the big bad hip flexor muscles. In Part 3, we went to the posterior hip and dug deep into the glute muscles. The goal of mobility training is to improve flexibility, strength, and stability in major muscle areas to improve rowing performance and reduce risk of common rowing injuries. Knee, hip, and low back pain often happens as a result of something going on at the start of the kinetic chain. Ankle mobility for rowers is crucial to set the rest of the body up for great performance and to minimize excess force on other structures.
Restriction: Calf muscles (gastrocnemius, soleus), shin (tibialis anterior), bottom of the foot
Location: Calf area, shin area, feet
Test: Power Rack Test
Rowing fault: Poor compression, splayed legs at the catch, poor leg drive at the catch from being in an unstable position