New Article: 5 Priorities in Exercises, Technique, and Program Design
Archive post from 2/13/23
The last few months of coaching with the Craftsbury GRP has had me thinking about overarching principles and major priorities of strength training for rowing.
The coaching I’ve been doing with them is similar in many ways to the coaching I’ve done with all other rowers. However, the pressure of time was on in a big way. We had just eight weeks between concluding fall training and leaving for winter training camps to prepare for early spring racing. The short turnaround time forced me to be really clear in my coaching on what they needed to do and how they needed to do it to get the most benefit from the training and be able to take those skills with them on the road.
I’ve summarized these priorities in my new article, with five specifics in three major areas of strength training and additional details:
Exercise selection: What to do
Strength training performance: How to do it
Program design: Organizing the what and the how
In exercise selection, I coach all rowers with some form of squat, hinge, upper body pull, upper body push, and specific minor exercises for the hip, shoulder, and core. These exercises train for specific performance elements of rowing and also fill gaps in physical development created by only rowing and erging.
When strength training, I coach good technique, tempo control of the lowering and lifting phases of each rep and exercise, as much range of motion as the rower can effectively control (with a few exceptions), and achieving the appropriate strain targets for each set and exercise. Only after these four factors is the load or weight of the exercise important for progression.
The rowing strength training program design factors that I’ve found most important are knowing when and how to individualize training, having an off-season building phase for general physical development, planning a transition phase to prepare for in-season training, a maintenance plan for the in-season or race prep, and making time to rejuvenate following the final race.
Read on for more about the why, how, and specific recommendations for each of these areas and priorities: https://rowingstronger.com/2023/02/12/rowing-strength-training-program-priorities/
