Three Biggest Areas of Physical Improvement for Rowers

Where do I see the most improvement the fastest with strength training for rowing?

A rower asked a question at my recent Craftsbury camp strength training classroom session: Where are the biggest areas of technical improvement I see with rowers from strength training?

I always tell the story at my sessions of how I started coaching rowing, which at first was just riding along with the head coach of the Western Washington University program at the time, Jack Marolich, and listening to what he was coaching the rowers to do. I noticed the same few things coming up again and again, which were the same things I always struggled with as a rower in high school too. I tried to think about how we could improve those elements with strength training to carryover to rowing. Could we make it easier for the athlete to achieve the goal technique?

“Sit up straight!” “No lunging at the catch!” “Connection!” “Strong at the release!”

We can coach these as technical problems with cognitive-directed instruction involving drills, video review, and slower, focused rowing. We should always try to improve understanding first. If rowers can perform in the focused condition but regress under time (fatigue), pressure (intensity), or rate (speed), the errors are likely to be more physical in nature than cognitive. This is where strength training can have a great effect by improving the physical coordination and capacity of the rower beyond what they need for rowing.

Connection at the front-end happens from the shoulders. Whether you’re erging, sweeping, or sculling, we want the shoulders to stay in a mostly neutral position without excessively shrugging upwards or rolling forwards. I see a great positive effect from the shoulder-strengthening retraction and depression training that we do in the gym. Good technique (shoulders down), tempo control (2:1 lowering-to-lifting ratio), and full range-of-motion (ROM) shoulder and upper body pulling exercises build the entire upper back area to be a strong transfer system from the lower body power to the handle.

Power in the early drive comes from the legs. Rowers often go for deadlifts as the priority lift, because it looks and feels more like the stroke, but I find more performance transfer from squats. For one, squats are an active mobility exercise. Getting to the bottom position of a squat with thighs at or below parallel to the floor in good positioning tends to result in better ability to get into the compressed front-end position at the entry of the stroke. Start with bodyweight squats with good technique, tempo control, and as much ROM as you can safely and effectively manage. Add load with the goblet squat (new demo coming soon) and then progress to the front squat when needed or desired. Include single-leg squat exercises as well.

We need strong abdominal muscles to hold all the power from the early and middle drive phase through the release of the stroke, extraction of the blade, and reversal into the recovery. Before you start long plank holds and crunch exercises, consider the specific demands of the rowing stroke. We want a stable, maybe even rigid, spine that acts as a lever around a mobile hip joint rotating from anterior tilt at the front-end to posterior tilt at the back-end. Planks deliver the stable spine, but make the hip rigid too. Crunches are a lose-lose with a mobile spine, and also often a mobile hip with contribution from the hip flexor muscles pulling the hip forward in a way we don’t want to do when rowing.

Many rowers have “strong cores” when measured with planks and crunches, yet still slump at the back-end and exhibit sloppy release technique. Back pain is common in rowing, despite the notion that strong cores are protective of back pain. These should be hints that conventional rowing core training isn’t doing what we think it is!

You knew it was coming…get the seated rockback exercise into your strength training to train the abdominal muscles to be that “braking system” of slowing torso swing into the release and reversing it into the recovery. The seated rockback is a great way to teach this technique and train the correct muscle sequencing to transfer to erging, rowing, and sculling. I rolled this out last week to our first group of summer GRP U23 rowers, all from top college programs with year-round strength training, to unanimous challenge and even some abdominal shaking with just the isometric hold variation.

Shoulder strength, leg strength, and trunk strength relevant to the rowing motion are my three main areas where I see the most improvement with rowers who add good strength training to their training. Of course, we do more than just these three things and there are more areas of improvement beyond. We didn’t get to hip hinge, horizontal pulling, or upper body pushing exercises, all of which offer value in technique, performance, and reducing injuries. Stay tuned for a future Part 2.

Photo by Sarah Risser