Q&A from the USRowing Masters Conference

Archive post from 4/11/22

We did about 30 minutes of open Q&A in my “Fundamentals of Strength Training” presentation at the recent USRowing Masters Conference. Here are a few that I think are worth passing along. I’m not transcribing directly, but getting the gist and using the opportunity to add a couple links to more information.

Do you really expect masters athletes to be able to do single-leg squats?

I use the term “single-leg squat” to describe any kind of squat where the focus is on one leg doing the work, not both legs together at the same time. Many people, especially those coming from Crossfit, think of “single-leg squat” as a “pistol squat,” where the one leg is entirely unsupported by the other leg. I don’t use pistol squats in my rowing strength training at all, but I do almost always use a standing lunge, reverse lunge, or rear-foot-elevated split squat (RFESS), and I consider all of these "single-leg squats" in the general sense.

Plyos: Advice for masters with tweaky knees who can’t jump?

First, can you use a soft-topped plyo box or a mat to land on to reduce impact and make a jumping exercise tolerable? Let’s try it or at least think about it first.

That’s okay if not—can you throw? I like the overhead throw (don’t use a target, just throw as high as you can) and the backwards overhead throw. The backwards overhead throw in particular trains the skill of an “explosive long pull” in a way that I find carries over well to rowing in slower boats like singles.

If none of this works for you, then it’s good that rowing isn’t really a plyometric sport anyway. I don’t think plyos are required for rowers, but they are helpful if you can find a viable option. Power training with full explosive intent is a good way to train rate of force development without leaving the ground and adding an impact factor.

What are the biggest movement gaps that you find with masters rowers?

Hip hinge and shoulder coordination, plus squat-to-parallel. In my opinion, all are prerequisite land skills to be able to do the more complex on-water movements proficiently. We have to start at the “teaching the movement” level, not at the “loading” level. See here for hip hinge, and here for the shoulder. With the squat, I like to start at how low you can go (if above parallel) and then gradually working down the height from there with the goal of parallel, again treating it as a movement (quality) more than as an exercise (set/rep/load) until we achieve the goal range-of-motion.

What home gym equipment do you recommend?

We meant to come back to this one in the Q&A and didn’t, but I briefly mentioned my “Building a Home Gym for Rowing Training” article. I updated this recently with a few tweaks, but no major changes to my recommendations.

How different would this presentation have been for a ~20-year old audience?

Not hugely, but some. I focused a lot more in this presentation on identifying who the athlete is, in a way that I don’t with younger athletes. Masters athletes have much more diversity in athlete pool than high school or even collegiate rowers, so we need to think a lot more about what kinds of experiences the masters athlete has had in their life before rowing and what they want to get out of rowing and their training (or exercising). These answers determine what kinds of methods we use. Other than that, part of the fun of rowing is that we’re all doing the same sport, from junior to college to masters and para, so the training methods and fundamentals are generally more similar too.