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hamstring flexibility for rowers
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Is Hamstring Flexibility for Rowers Overrated?

Hamstring flexibility for rowers seems to always rank high in concerns for both coaches and rowers. “My hamstrings are tight” is offered as an explanation for everything from low back pain, poor stroke technique, restricted reach on the recovery, and more. However, perhaps we’ve been chasing the wrong culprit with our seemingly endless hamstring stretches. When writing my low back pain and rib stress injury research review article, I kept coming across references to “Koutedakis, 1997,” in regard to the muscular imbalance of quadriceps and hamstrings in rowers and resulting low back pain.

“Knee Flexion to Extension Peak Torque Ratios and Low-Back Injuries in Highly Active Individuals” was an intriguing study as described in other research, despite the bland name, as the authors reportedly did a 6-8-month study of female rowers with a history of low back pain, assigned a hamstring strengthening intervention, and found a decrease in days missed from practice for low back pain. I got the article through interlibrary loan, dug in, and it turned out to be even more interesting than I hoped.

hamstring flexibility for rowers

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resistance band rowing strength
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Resistance Band Rowing Strength Training

Resistance bands are a versatile tool to have in your strength training for rowing toolbox. Resistance bands are fairly inexpensive compared to other strength training equipment, require little storage space, are portable, and are adaptable for use with a wide range of athletes. If you train out of a boathouse or a home gym, resistance bands can simulate dozens of exercises that you might need dumbbells or a cable machine for otherwise. Rowers can learn to how to maintain tension at different ranges and directions of motion, making resistance bands an effective strength training tool to provide a different stimulus than traditional free weight exercises alone. We’ll do resistance band rowing specific exercises, as well as exercises to develop non-rowing movements and muscles. Programmed and instructed thoughtfully, resistance bands can add another layer of challenge, flexibility, and stimulus to your rowing strength training.

resistance band rowing strength training graphic bands and text

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deadlifting for rowing
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Deadlifting for Rowing: The Complete Guide

A simple eye-test should tell you that the deadlift is a great lift for rowing performance. With a big push with the legs, a tight torso to transfer the force, and an external load held in the hands, deadlifting for rowing should feel similar to the early drive of a rowing stroke. Including deadlift variations in rowing training provides a great opportunity to teach and reinforce similar skills as in the rowing stroke. Deadlifting for rowing also builds up the muscles of the lower body and posterior chain, important for performance and back health. Remember that the goal of deadlifting for rowing is to become a better rower. If all you care about is lifting the most weight or the most reps, go compete in strength sports. What we care about here is finding the best deadlift for the goal of rowing stronger, faster, healthier, and longer.

Table of Contents

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squatting for rowing
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Squatting for Rowing: The Complete Guide

The squat is one of the most important exercises in strength training for rowing. Done correctly, the squat and its variations build lower body strength and power in a way that cannot be replicated by rowing and erging alone. In this complete guide to squatting for rowing, we’ll break down the importance of the squat, variations of the squat that I use in rowing training, and how to train the squat throughout the year to build to peak performance.

Table of Contents

squatting for rowing

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rowing workouts
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How to Track Your Rowing Workouts

It’s common advice in strength training to keep a training log, but I find there’s often minimal instruction as to the how and why of data collection, how to also track your rowing workouts, and then how to actually use the data to inform your training. Tracking your rowing workouts and strength training offers numerous potential benefits. Knowing exactly what weights, sets, reps, meters, minutes, and intensity you did in previous rowing workouts improves session efficiency and can be motivating as you see the small gains add up over weeks, months, seasons, and years of training. I love the feeling of filling up pages and notebooks, and have my last 10 years or so of training that I can look back on. I can also look back on all that data to try to figure out trends and what has worked and not worked in my own training. For self-coached or solo rowers, your training log might be your best, or only, workout partner keeping you accountable for putting one session after the next. For masters rowers, the training log can provide all of this, as well as valuable clues to determine what training you respond best to, and what training might put you over the edge in recovery ability.

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strength standards for rowing
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Testing 1-Rep Maxes and Strength Standards for Rowing

I don’t use 1-rep maxes or strength standards for rowing training. There are lots of ways that strength coaches and rowing coaches can evaluate the efficacy of a rowing training program. What does it tell me about a rower’s ability if they squat 225lbs for one rep? Pretty much just that the rower can squat 225lbs for one rep. Without the context of this lift, it means very little. Strength standards have also always seemed to lack context, even when they are designed around other rep max ranges. Strength is a skill, and rowing is a skill, and I’m not sure that one is predictive of the other. However, we still need some way to evaluate the efficacy of our training program, right?

strength standards for rowing

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kiwi pair strength train
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The Kiwi Pair Doesn’t Lift?

The New Zealand pair of Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, known as “The Kiwi Pair,” was the most successful men’s pair in the history of rowing. In addition to world records, gold medals, and total dominance during their unbeaten streak of 2009-2016, the duo are known for shaking things up and not being afraid to train differently, and for openly questioning some of the dogma in rowing training. It became known at some point that the duo were not doing traditional strength training with barbells and free weights. “The Kiwi Pair Doesn’t Lift” then became a meme around the Internet to justify a lack of strength training in rowing programs of any age and level.

Now, I’m all for critical evaluation of the role of every training modality, but it has to be critical and evaluative, and I was not about to have the entire field of strength training for rowing “debunked” by a thoughtless expression based on very little actual information. However, the question of the Kiwi Pair strength training was never truly resolved…until now!

kiwi pair strength train

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low back pain rib stress injuries rowers
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The Research on Low Back Pain and Rib Stress Injuries in Rowing

Low back pain and rib stress injuries are two of the most common and costliest rowing injuries. Low back pain (LBP) affects 32-53% of rowers and is the leading cause of missed training sessions. Rib stress injuries (RSI) affect fewer rowers, more like 10%, but as a bone injury, the recovery time is much longer. A typical recovery window is 3-8 weeks of rest, rehab, and gradually returning to rowing. It is critical to understand and reduce risk factors for these injuries, because previous injury is one of the biggest risk factors for future injury. Once you get one, it’s more likely to get another, so we have to start with reducing risk, then preventing the first injury, then reducing injury rates overall.

Warning: This article is long, at nearly 6,000 words, and heavily sourced with the most up-to-date research on low back pain and rib stress injuries in rowers. I originally wrote this as a final paper in my graduate school biomechanics class, and adapted it to blog format with the goal of creating a comprehensive, accessible resource for rowers, rowing coaches, and strength coaches of rowers.

My goal with this article is to provide specific education for the rowing coach, strength coach, and rower detailing the mechanism of injury, risk factors, and rowing and strength training strategies to reduce LBP and RSI in rowers. You can use the links below to jump straight to a section as well.

  1. Limitations of Research
  2. Injury Mechanism: LBP
  3. Injury Mechanism: RSI
  4. Risk Factors: LBP & RSI
  5. How Coaches Can Reduce Rowing Injuries
  6. How Strength Coaches Can Reduce Rowing Injuries
  7. How Rowers Can Reduce Rowing Injuries
  8. Wrapping Up

low back pain rib stress injuries rowers

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strength training circuits for rowing
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Strength Training Circuits for Rowing

Strength training circuits for rowing can have a place in a training program, but they’re often overused or used for the wrong reasons. We can improve training with an understanding of when, how, and for what kind of rower we should use circuit training, clearer goals for circuit training, and methods beyond simply working stroke muscles in fatiguing conditions. In this article, I’ll suggest solutions to common problems in circuit training design and provide guidelines and examples of how I use strength training circuits for rowing under different goals and conditions.

strength training circuits for rowing

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mental skills rowing
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3 Steps to Coaching Mental Skills for Rowing

By Madison Keaty, MS

Note from Will: This article is a guest post from Madison Keaty, assistant coach at Gonzaga University women’s rowing. Madison rowed for Gonzaga University before attending Ithaca College to study sport psychology. We met at the Joy of Sculling Conference in February and had a great time talking about how to get more resources on coaching mental skills for rowing into the hands of rowers and coaches. In this article, Madison provides some excellent and accessible advice for incorporating mental skills training for rowing into a daily practice plan.

Is mental toughness necessary to row?

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