Great video Aram, it’s a subject that many coaches overlook. In my experience rowing coaches usually assume all of their rowers are endurance athletes and coach accordingly. When I rowed for my university boat club I was always mediocre at the 2k and pretty awful at long distance tests. On the 100 metre or 1 minute, however, I was always either the fastest or one of the fastest. Low rate high power as well, always one of the fastest. And extremely quickly tired out as well. Sometimes we’d do 5 x 20 seconds erg sprints before a low intensity steady state boat session to train both explosiveness and endurance and I’d be pretty much a zombie already after the sprints. Very different than most teammates.
Mixing modes of training has been studied quite a lot, there can be interference when mixing strength (sprints) and endurance (steady state) in the same workout. If the goal of the workout is to improve either strength or endurance, the entire workout should focus on just that for optimal outcomes. Here's a more recent paper looking at one such scenario: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950732/
I just point this out because too often a coach will send a boat out for a nice long hour+ steady state row then have them do a 1 minute sprint heading back into the dock... drives me nuts to see that. XD
David Garcia Oh, it wasn’t really sprints like that. It was 20 second bursts and then sitting still for 2 minutes. So it only focused on using creatine I believe.
real world challenge is the limited amount of rowers you have and then it is getting harder to sort out cause a four needs 4 rowers. But it is good to know and to reflect what kind of athlete you are or you have to identiy the roadmap needed to develope the missing pieces or to develope the same passion for the longer pieces ... if you are a lover for short but tough sprints. The things get complicated if you have both kinds of athletes together in a boat especially unequal numbers like 3 sprinters and 1 endurance guy cause that makes it really hard to get things done and progress achieved. Put them in the small boat might help but in the double and the quad you will need all of them together. Therefore here all the more or less kids get into a boat and will be trained the same as a quad or eight cause it will be to hard to explain the other group why the endurance guy gets lower weights but higher numbers ... We had also a lot issues due to different body preposition like the sittting giant with short legs and long upperbody. His head is as high as the 200 cm guy but is just 181 cm tall ... which leads to very high weights in the leg training area and more or less issues in the back cause his back must become able to hold the high power from his legs from the catch ... and there the training gets tough too at least if your are lucky and have 6 guys fighting for 4 seats ... and you have to make decision that each and every one can understand and respect ... Finally you have the single results and what do you do with the strongest athlete that has something you might call terrible technique ... It gets tough to keep all motivated when the fastest of all is not in the quad but wants to be part of the quad and has the greatest results except his back that is not stronger as the back of others but has to be to benefit more from his strong legs. For single athletes only I can understand the approach to become aware of what type of rowers I have or I am but in any crew it gets a lot more complicated and with different training plans it would get even get more complicated or would lead to far more discussions why A gets this to do which is so much easier than that what B has to do today this evening. Add size / body ratio then you will have 4 different training programms for your 6 athletes and it would get hard to counterargue a conspiracy theory when the number 5 or 4 or 6 are getting suspicious ... why they are out or better "why am I not in the quad ?" Therefore we tend to go for 1 plan for all of our kids (juniors) in the club (similiar performance level), also to have a comparable scale ... cause finally as a school club we have to give grades in this sport based on same scales ...
Aram is right on the mark with my training plan. I am getting stronger with endurance improving everyday. We think I am an explosive athlete that has always been endurance trained. A bit of a puzzle to plan for, but Aram has figured it out very quickly.
How to adapt the training plan accordingly if you are an explosive/endurance athlete in rowing? What are the main differences in volume, load, intensity when planing for these 2 seperate athletes?
Interesting video! It's funny, I can't tell what kind I am. On one hand, I can do well on hour peices if I'm in the right mindset and I'm really bad at getting to full power really quickly. But on the other hand, I often feel like I need a day to recover, at least from race peices, and I hate doing 15+ reps for lifting. Lots to think about.
Another great video. I had one ordinary looking light weight athlete that was not very good on the erg for both long and short duration pieces. He was ok in the weight room. But when it came to calisthenics he was phenomenal. He could knock off muscle ups and pistol squats with ease. His great muscle control displayed itself quite well on the oar and he was able to beat even heavyweights with much better erg scores in a seat race. Sometimes I wonder if his calisthenic strengths had more to do with his nervous system rather than his muscle type. A number of American football players (not to be confused with soccer) are moving away from isotonic and and isometric training and are instead are doing more isokinetic training to improve their nervous systems. Isokinetic equipment is expensive but most moves can be done fairly inexpensively with a Bodyblade, a rebounder, and bands. When it comes to cardio it is hard to get rowers to accept doing some 50% effort training. According Japanese researcher, the late Hiro Tanaka, training at 50% effort ensures that most athletes will not recruit any lactic acid producing fibres. It is at 50% effort the heart reaches max stroke volume. When the slow twitch fibres are isolated to do the work a number of the fibres will transition their characteristics to behave more like fast twitch fibres. The advantage of this adaptation is that during a race fewer debilitating lactic acid producing fibres will need to be recruited. Final and most importantly the doctor proclaimed 50% effort is also the point which the body reaches maximum endo-cannabinoid production. According to the doctor the cannabinoids produced by the body seem to improve mood, lower inflammation, and have a general anaesthetising effect on the body. I personally believe that 50% effort training allows the fast twitch athlete to train at volumes similar to their slow twitch twitch team mates.
Definitely an explosive athlete, I always had a better 2k than 5k + 10k. I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether this needs to be coached on the water or just on the ergs.
I love the longer workout sessions and I find it hard to sprint but when I weight train I find it "easier" to train with heavy weight and less reps, and I also find that I recover better with a full day off in my training weeks. Is it possible to have slow twitch during endurance and fast twitch during weight training? I know that slow and fast twitch is the type of muscle but I have been stumped on how to build my workout plans.
You can put best of both worlds together by doing hundreds of calisthenics reps and when you ar emoreadvanced to them plyometrically. Your stamina and power will go off the roof
I can't tell if I'm explosive or endurance. On Monday I'll do an hour, then Tuesday ill do 30 minutes of higher intensity, then Wednesday I'll do an hour of very light work, and then Thursday I'll do another hour of slightly faster but still light. I'll take day 3 days off and feel amazing when I come back. So I try to do a bunch of volume but then I also benefit from huge rests.
Great video Aram, it’s a subject that many coaches overlook. In my experience rowing coaches usually assume all of their rowers are endurance athletes and coach accordingly. When I rowed for my university boat club I was always mediocre at the 2k and pretty awful at long distance tests. On the 100 metre or 1 minute, however, I was always either the fastest or one of the fastest. Low rate high power as well, always one of the fastest. And extremely quickly tired out as well.
Sometimes we’d do 5 x 20 seconds erg sprints before a low intensity steady state boat session to train both explosiveness and endurance and I’d be pretty much a zombie already after the sprints. Very different than most teammates.
Mixing modes of training has been studied quite a lot, there can be interference when mixing strength (sprints) and endurance (steady state) in the same workout. If the goal of the workout is to improve either strength or endurance, the entire workout should focus on just that for optimal outcomes. Here's a more recent paper looking at one such scenario: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950732/
I just point this out because too often a coach will send a boat out for a nice long hour+ steady state row then have them do a 1 minute sprint heading back into the dock... drives me nuts to see that. XD
David Garcia Oh, it wasn’t really sprints like that. It was 20 second bursts and then sitting still for 2 minutes. So it only focused on using creatine I believe.
real world challenge is the limited amount of rowers you have and then it is getting harder to sort out cause a four needs 4 rowers.
But it is good to know and to reflect what kind of athlete you are or you have to identiy the roadmap needed to develope the missing pieces or to develope the same passion for the longer pieces ... if you are a lover for short but tough sprints.
The things get complicated if you have both kinds of athletes together in a boat especially unequal numbers like 3 sprinters and 1 endurance guy cause that makes it really hard to get things done and progress achieved. Put them in the small boat might help but in the double and the quad you will need all of them together.
Therefore here all the more or less kids get into a boat and will be trained the same as a quad or eight cause it will be to hard to explain the other group why the endurance guy gets lower weights but higher numbers ... We had also a lot issues due to different body preposition like the sittting giant with short legs and long upperbody. His head is as high as the 200 cm guy but is just 181 cm tall ... which leads to very high weights in the leg training area and more or less issues in the back cause his back must become able to hold the high power from his legs from the catch ... and there the training gets tough too at least if your are lucky and have 6 guys fighting for 4 seats ... and you have to make decision that each and every one can understand and respect ...
Finally you have the single results and what do you do with the strongest athlete that has something you might call terrible technique ... It gets tough to keep all motivated when the fastest of all is not in the quad but wants to be part of the quad and has the greatest results except his back that is not stronger as the back of others but has to be to benefit more from his strong legs.
For single athletes only I can understand the approach to become aware of what type of rowers I have or I am but in any crew it gets a lot more complicated and with different training plans it would get even get more complicated or would lead to far more discussions why A gets this to do which is so much easier than that what B has to do today this evening. Add size / body ratio then you will have 4 different training programms for your 6 athletes and it would get hard to counterargue a conspiracy theory when the number 5 or 4 or 6 are getting suspicious ... why they are out or better "why am I not in the quad ?"
Therefore we tend to go for 1 plan for all of our kids (juniors) in the club (similiar performance level), also to have a comparable scale ... cause finally as a school club we have to give grades in this sport based on same scales ...
Aram is right on the mark with my training plan. I am getting stronger with endurance improving everyday. We think I am an explosive athlete that has always been endurance trained. A bit of a puzzle to plan for, but Aram has figured it out very quickly.
I’d really love to hear more on this topic from you. Great video!
How to adapt the training plan accordingly if you are an explosive/endurance athlete in rowing? What are the main differences in volume, load, intensity when planing for these 2 seperate athletes?
Interesting video! It's funny, I can't tell what kind I am. On one hand, I can do well on hour peices if I'm in the right mindset and I'm really bad at getting to full power really quickly. But on the other hand, I often feel like I need a day to recover, at least from race peices, and I hate doing 15+ reps for lifting. Lots to think about.
Another great video. I had one ordinary looking light weight athlete that was not very good on the erg for both long and short duration pieces. He was ok in the weight room. But when it came to calisthenics he was phenomenal. He could knock off muscle ups and pistol squats with ease. His great muscle control displayed itself quite well on the oar and he was able to beat even heavyweights with much better erg scores in a seat race. Sometimes I wonder if his calisthenic strengths had more to do with his nervous system rather than his muscle type. A number of American football players (not to be confused with soccer) are moving away from isotonic and and isometric training and are instead are doing more isokinetic training to improve their nervous systems. Isokinetic equipment is expensive but most moves can be done fairly inexpensively with a Bodyblade, a rebounder, and bands.
When it comes to cardio it is hard to get rowers to accept doing some 50% effort training. According Japanese researcher, the late Hiro Tanaka, training at 50% effort ensures that most athletes will not recruit any lactic acid producing fibres. It is at 50% effort the heart reaches max stroke volume. When the slow twitch fibres are isolated to do the work a number of the fibres will transition their characteristics to behave more like fast twitch fibres. The advantage of this adaptation is that during a race fewer debilitating lactic acid producing fibres will need to be recruited. Final and most importantly the doctor proclaimed 50% effort is also the point which the body reaches maximum endo-cannabinoid production. According to the doctor the cannabinoids produced by the body seem to improve mood, lower inflammation, and have a general anaesthetising effect on the body. I personally believe that 50% effort training allows the fast twitch athlete to train at volumes similar to their slow twitch twitch team mates.
How should endurance athletes train leading up to a 2k race? Should they do more harder sprint pieces?
Definitely an explosive athlete, I always had a better 2k than 5k + 10k. I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether this needs to be coached on the water or just on the ergs.
I love the longer workout sessions and I find it hard to sprint but when I weight train I find it "easier" to train with heavy weight and less reps, and I also find that I recover better with a full day off in my training weeks. Is it possible to have slow twitch during endurance and fast twitch during weight training? I know that slow and fast twitch is the type of muscle but I have been stumped on how to build my workout plans.
Hi Stephen, could you give me more details on what a sprint and what a longer session is for you? Time/watts and % of your max pace
You can put best of both worlds together by doing hundreds of calisthenics reps and when you ar emoreadvanced to them plyometrically. Your stamina and power will go off the roof
I can't tell if I'm explosive or endurance. On Monday I'll do an hour, then Tuesday ill do 30 minutes of higher intensity, then Wednesday I'll do an hour of very light work, and then Thursday I'll do another hour of slightly faster but still light. I'll take day 3 days off and feel amazing when I come back. So I try to do a bunch of volume but then I also benefit from huge rests.
Endurance. Wasn't always.