A quote from one of our rowers while reading Part 1 hit on a key theme for masters rower strength training: “At our age, one of the main goals of the training cycle is just to get to the starting line, not just fit, but also uninjured.”
Health is Performance-Enhancing
Health and performance-enhancement is a "yes-and" proposition. This is true for all rowers, but I think the importance increases as total training time and the consequences of a setback increase as well. After 10, 20, 30, and more years of training, the amount that you can improve from one intense session is just not that much. Your base is already so high, that just being able to show up and "go pretty hard” year after year builds a great amount of performance ability.
Strength training offers tangible benefit to performance, and maybe plays an even bigger role in preserving that ability to show up each day. Are you able to get out there, train hard, and perform for another session, day, race? We’ve had a few back and knee tweaks over the two years with the trio, but nothing that has derailed more than a week or so of training.
Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) was a new addition in their strength training, instead of a percent-1RM system. RPE helps adjust the output targets on each exercise to the athlete’s readiness on that day, instead of attached to an earlier, perhaps irrelevant standard of performance.
We use more variety in their strength training than they did before, especially in the assistance work exercises. For example, we use one-arm dumbbell rows, two-arm landmine rows (towel grip), one-arm landmine rows (side or front handle), and bodyweight rows in different amounts at different times of the year. This keeps training engaging and focused on comprehensive muscular development, while also avoiding overtraining individual exercises physically and mentally. Assistance work variety helps keep the effort on the input (muscular effort), less on the output (weight/reps). They also all do a lot of off-season aerobic cross-training, including biking, running, and skiing to further reduce overuse risks.
Another key addition was regular deload weeks in strength training, at least every 8-12 weeks and sometimes down to 6-8 weeks. Deloads had previously been more incidental or forced due to some other factor. I find it helpful to schedule them, push hard up to them, and stay just ahead of recovery needs. We’re usually able to line these up around times of busier employment or pre-planned vacations. They often do an erg/row test week during a strength training deload, which also kept the volume low on the rowing side.
“With ad-hoc self-training, we would be less likely to deload, more likely to try to ‘do more,’ and ultimately someone would hurt themselves…”
Mistakes
Evaluation is a challenge in online coaching, and we should’ve done more earlier. There were some lifting technique problems that we could’ve caught earlier with more use of video. I’m now more encouraging of rowers to use video review more often within the first few months of working together, to make sure that our ideas of the exercise and good technique align.
We started working together just before the canceled HOCR 2020, with HOCR 2021 as the main goal. 13 months was too long for a continuous, mostly single-goal training cycle. A better use of time has been to spend the first 2-3 months after the race in the lower load, cross-training environment before building up around 10-11 months out.
We now take a whole month of rejuvenation time after HOCR, and then two months of more flexible off-season programming before settling back into more structured training around February. Strength training consists of a smaller amount of main work and more assistance work, with more variety, higher volume, and an emphasis on unilateral and lower-load strength training. This easier “on-ramp” phase of training is still very productive in the big picture, and leaves us more room to increase with each block closer to race prep.