Training Tip: Nervous System Cross-Training

Archive post from 9/5/22

This is an idea I picked up last summer at Craftsbury from coach Kevin MacDermott, and came up again recently this season. Kevin told us that when his son was a toddler, Kevin decided that he would re-learn with his off-hand all of the motor skills his son was learning from scratch. Writing, throwing, eating, etc., and he found that the challenge really benefited his sculling.

Scullers exist in a perfectly ambidextrous environment: The left and right hands have to be able to do the same task as closely as possible. Kevin and I tried to think of other sports where this is true, and didn’t come up with much outside of other endurance sports like swimming and skiing with simpler hand movements than sculling.

Rowers at Craftsbury frequently comment that they have trouble with their starboard side oar, and tend to accidentally steer toward starboard (the shore side, on our lake) as a result of the right-handed port oar overpowering. I drive the launch to record video of rowers twice per week, and notice consistent "wonkiness" with the starboard blade, especially in more novice scullers. If you aren’t left-handed, then that’s natural and an inherent challenge of the ambidextrous sport in a non-ambidextrous life, and even more so if you're coming to the sport as a masters rower later in life.

I am left-handed, so I learned most things by watching right-handers, and I’m reasonably ambidextrous as a result. I throw, write, and eat lefty, but I played guitar righty, swing a bat or golf club righty, could play both hands pretty equally in lacrosse, and I scull pretty equally port and starboard.

This made me think of opportunities here for strength training, too.

For one, filling rest interval time! Rowers often complain about having to rest between sets of exercises. If you want high output during the set, you have to take rest after the set and before the next one to recover and recharge. If you can’t bear to just stand around for a minute or two, incorporating some standing balance drills or eye-hand or off-hand coordination activities can fill this time in a way that doesn’t detract from recovery and the next set. Learn to juggle (like Kevin).

This is another good reason to do single-limb exercises for the upper and lower body. Correcting and preventing imbalances at a muscular level is already good, but there are also imbalances in coordination that can reduce power output. Split-stance squats like the reverse lunge, walking lunge, and rear-foot-elevated split squat are always a part of my strength training programs. I also use one-arm rows with dumbbells, kettlebells, or pivoting barbells, as well as the alternating bench press and one-arm overhead press and push press (see videos here). These exercises offer a basic coordination challenge for the dominant and non-dominant sides of the body, as well as strengthening.

I will also plug jump ropes again here. I started talking about jump ropes more this year in my long-term athlete development materialsfor the USRowing American Development Model. Jump roping offers a similar challenge to sculling in that both left and right hands have to perform the same subtle movement in a way that is not the explicit focus of the whole task. Anecdotally, I have yet to find a rower who can do double-unders and crossovers and still feels that they struggle with their non-dominant handle.