Alternating dumbbell presses are among my favorite loaded upper body pushing exercises for rowers of all ages, types, and levels. We use pushup progressions as the starting place for horizontal pushing strength, and the half-kneeling overhead press for beginning to overhead press. When we need more challenge, particularly with the goal of improving shoulder stability, we go to dumbbell exercises including alternating dumbbell horizontal pushes and vertical presses.

Continue reading → Exercise Spotlight: Alternating Dumbbell Press Variations

The Copenhagen plank is a full-body exercise emphasizing hip adduction, or drawing the thighs towards each other. Similar to the Nordic hamstring curl, the exercise was popularized from Danish or at least Scandinavian coaches and physical training resources. It’s sometimes also called a hip adductor plank or adductor side plank, for more anatomical terms. In this post, why it’s an important exercise for rowers and how I use it in my coaching.

Continue reading → Exercise Spotlight: Copenhagen Plank Variations

This is Part 7 of my ongoing velocity based training for rowing series. In this post: Different ways to use velocity-based training in strength training programs, including the velocity-loss-10% (VL10) training protocol.

Part 1: Velocity based training for rowing research and resources, how VBT works to guide strength training, and pros and cons of using VBT in your strength training. Part 2: Unintended consequences of surveillance technology, initial athlete reactions, and how I try to minimize or mitigate these problems. Part 3: How I introduced and began to use VBT with the GRP teams. Part 4: Details of the 3-zone VBT system with findings from rowing research and erging data. Part 5: Video demos of the three-zone VBT system and strength training program snapshots. Part 6: Strength testing with velocity data. (Note: A lightly updated version of this series exists all in one place in the “5-Year Update” addendum PDF to my book, “Rowing Stronger.” Download that for free here.)

Continue reading → More VBT Training Methods and the VL10 Program: VBT Part 7

Hamstring knee flexion exercise was another area of emphasis in my February “Five-Year Update” to my book. Slider hamstring curls target the distal end (foot/leg) of movement, while Nordic hamstring curls and glute-hamstring raises target more of the proximal (hip/torso) side of hamstring strength. The hamstrings are a two-joint muscle, acting to extend the hip and flex the knee. There is a knee flexion element in rowing, but it’s unloaded as the athlete comes up the slide into the catch position. This has been a valuable gap to fill with some simple strength training exercises.

Continue reading → Exercise Spotlight: Slider Hamstring Curls

This post summarizes the three parts of my new rowing injuries article series, plus a bonus part of other general injury tips that didn’t quite fit into either piece. I hope you will find the full articles helpful. If I only had five minutes to talk about each part, this is what I’d emphasize to rowers and coaches for overall injury management, low back pain, and rib stress injuries.

Continue reading → Reducing Rowing Injuries: Highlights and Tips

Low back pain is the most common rowing injury, causing around 60% of rowers to miss at least one session per year. The vast majority of low back pain is non-specific, meaning not medically serious and not diagnosed to a specific tissue pathology causing pain or dysfunction. Non-specific low back pain in rowing is mostly due to training factors that are under the control of coaches and rowers, with secondary causes under individual athlete control. This article is a practical guide to what rowers and coaches need to know about rowing low back pain, focusing on preventing, managing, and returning from injury to full performance.

Key Points: Check out this summary graphic for a one-page flowchart of key points to rowing low back pain symptoms, management, and returning from injury. Also, read a partner guide here for the more detailed medical side of diagnosing and treating rowing low back pain, written by my friend and rowing physical therapist Dr. Lisa Lowe. I also have a reference section at the end of this article where you can read a lot more about rowing low back pain from the resources I have found most helpful. Finally, read my article, “Rowing Injuries: Understanding, Preventing, and Managing,” that sets up the basics of general injury understanding and prevention before the injury-specifics of this article and “Rowing Rib Stress Injuries.”

Table of Contents:

• Defining Rowing Low Back Pain
• Low Back Pain Risk Factors: Rowing and Individual
• Reducing Risk of Rowing Low Back Pain
• Low Back Pain Initial Care and Reducing Pain
• Low Back Pain Longer-Term Workarounds
• Returning to Training After Low Back Pain

Continue reading → Rowing Low Back Pain: What Rowers and Coaches Need to Know

Rib stress injuries are an overuse injury affecting up to approximately 10% of rowers in a given year of training. While not as common as other injuries, the long recovery time of a bone injury makes it the costliest injury in terms of total missed training time per injury. Injury risk increases with training volume: Collegiate and elite rowers doing more total training volume experience more rib stress injuries than masters and junior rowers. This article is a practical guide to what rowers and coaches need to know about rowing rib stress injuries, focusing on preventing, managing, and returning from injury to full performance.

Key Points: Check out this summary graphic for a one-page flowchart of key points to rowing rib stress injury symptoms, management, and returning from injury. Also, read a partner guide here for the more detailed medical side of diagnosing and treating rowing rib stress injuries, written by my friend and rowing physical therapist Dr. Lisa Lowe. I also have a reference section at the end of this article where you can read a lot more about rowing rib stress injury from the resources I have found most helpful. Finally, read my article, “Rowing Injuries: Understanding, Preventing, and Managing,” that sets up the basics of general injury understanding and prevention before the injury-specifics of this article and its partner, “Rowing Low Back Pain.”

Table of Contents:

• Defining the Rowing Rib Stress Injury
• Rowing Rib Stress Injury Symptoms and Red Flags
• RSI Risk Factors: Rowing and Individual
• Reducing Risk of Rowing Rib Stress Injury
• Care and Reducing Pain from Rib Stress Injury
• Returning to Training After Rib Stress Injury

Continue reading → Rowing Rib Stress Injury: What Rowers and Coaches Need to Know

Rowing injuries are typically defined as pain limiting the ability to fully participate in training as planned for more than 24 hours. This excludes minor tweaks or aches that just require a little extra warmup time, recovery attention, or occasional slight modifications to training for a day or less. More significant pain that limits an rower for more than a day can be stressful, aggravating, and disrupt training and impair performance. This article is a detailed guide to understanding, preventing, and managing common rowing injuries.

Key Points: The best rowing injury prevention and management occurs with an interdisciplinary program including the rower, rowing coach, strength coach, physical therapist, physician, dietitian, sport psychologist, and potentially more if available. Understanding and reducing pain requires a biopsychosocial model that considers biomedical, psychological, and social elements of training and outside life, as well as rowing-specific knowledge. We improve injury recovery outcomes when we can preserve fitness, strength, and muscle mass through pain-free forms of cross-training and strength training while healing, whether for a short-term or longer-term rowing injury. Rowers returning from injury should use specific training strategies to achieve approximately a 1:1 return timeline, spending as much time returning to full training as the rower was away or doing modified training. A gradual return progression to full training and performance improves recovery outcomes and reduces risk of reinjury or other injury.

Table of Contents:

• Get Qualified Professional Help
• Biopsychosocial Understanding of Pain and Injury
• Training or Competing Through Pain
• Short-Term Rowing Injuries: Offloading and Reducing Pain
• Longer-Term Rowing Injuries: Rehabilitation and Modified Training
• Returning to Training and Performance
• Wrap-Up and Guides to Low Back Pain and Rib Stress Injuries

Continue reading → Rowing Injuries: Understanding, Preventing, and Managing

This hamstring stretch comes from Kellie Wilkie, physiotherapist with Rowing Australia from 2008-2016 and co-author of the GRowingBodies.blog website where she and Dr. Lari Trease write/wrote about rowing, especially for young people with growing bodies (and their coaches). Kellie joined us on Science of Rowing in December of 2021 for a 45-minute feature episode about rowers’ hamstrings. This stretch was one of many useful things that I learned and have continued to use since. It gets its own feature for this post.

Continue reading → A Better Hamstring Stretch for Rowers

Glute bridge marching is a simple movement that any athlete can do to improve strength and coordination of the supporting hip muscles. It’s a good progression from the bodyweight hip thrust or regular glute bridge, which usually loses challenge quickly. I prefer glute bridge marching to standard hip thrusts done for very high reps, or loading a bunch of weight directly (often painfully) across the pelvis. Glute bridge marching also trains the left and right legs separately, but with interaction through the hip and lower torso. This significantly increases the challenge compared to a two-leg hip thrust. It offers a more productive next level of coordination and strength training compared to just more reps or load.

Continue reading → Exercise Spotlight: Glute Bridge Marching