Category Archives: Rowing

Agility and Neuromuscular Training as it Relates to Rowing

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Rub your head and pat your tummy!  Just kidding, but really, your ability to do two things at once is something you can work on to improve your movement in and out of the boat.  Checkout today’s Daily Challenge and read part 2 of Judith Vogel’s post  on Agility and Rowing.

Daily Challenge 4/25:

Read the following post about Agility and Rowing, perform 10 Agility Jumps, and share your experience.

Agility and Neuromuscular Training as it Relates to Rowing

The ability to change directions, powerfully and almost instantaneously, is a key component to the rowing stroke. There are two parts of a rowing stroke in which an athlete is required to rapidly change directions; the catch and the finish. Time spent during these transition points not only affects the rhythm of the stroke but it also disrupts boat speed. Research could demonstrate in which ways agility training decreases time spent changing direction which, when applied to the rowing stroke, will allow the athlete to better establish a stroke rhythm as well as attain greater boat speed.

The conventional definition of agility is that it is determined by an athlete’s ability to de-accelerate, change direction, and accelerate once again in a short amount of time. Agility training has been utilized in many power-based sports to increase a player’s ability to change direction rapidly. A quick search of the Internet will result in a myriad of dodging and lateral sequences for sports such as football, soccer, hockey, and tennis.

It is thought that cyclical endurance sports do not require such training as there are few, to no, points in which an athlete requires such dramatic changes in speed and direction. In actuality the transition points of the stroke, the catch and the finish, are enormously complex combinations of horizontal and vertical movements. The athlete is additionally required to complete this sequence of movements in a very short period of time while, maintaining balance in a narrow boat and sequencing their movements with other athletes. The success of the transition points depends on the athlete’s ability to coordinate their movements and control their center of mass.

In rowing, there are two transition points within the stroke, which demand a very precise sequencing of movement over a very small amount of time. These transition points are the catch and the finish. Rowing takes place on a medium, water, which is unforgiving to very sudden changes in speed. With the aim of maintaining or consistently increasing hull speed over the course of a race, any delay in the transition points results in a dramatic loss in speed.

The rhythm of the agility exercises describes the rhythm of the “place” of the blade and the “press” against the foot stretchers to initiate the drive. The blade requires a bit of time to lock onto the water. Depending on the number of rowers and the size / speed of the boat, the relationship between the place and press will differ. If we were to consider rowing in an eight, the different rhythms would mimic the following scenarios.

  1. Exaggerated slow rhythm – rowing by pairs in an eight, at a 16spm
  2. Normal rhythm – rowing all eight at a 24spm
  3. Exaggerated quick rhythm – race pace in an eight

The rhythm ties into the catch placement by allowing the athlete to coordinate blade placement with the location of pressure on their feet. To avoid a debate about whether the rower should lift their heels off of the foot plate at the catch, or not, we should all at least agree that the pressure on the feet moves from the heels towards (or to include) the balls of the feet as the athlete approaches the catch. As the athlete feels the pressure move towards the balls of the feet, they place the blade into the water. The objective is to place the blade into the water before the athlete feels the pressure on the balls of the feet. This gives them time to arrive at the catch with the blade fully buried. The athlete can then press off of the footplates knowing that the blade is fully buried in the water.

The same rhythm can also be applied to the finish, with the first beat corresponding to the tap down and the second beat corresponding to the athlete arriving at the arms away position. The slower rhythms will match a slower boat speed and the higher rhythms will match the quicker boat speeds.

The application of land-based motor skill development exercises gives the athlete the opportunity to build an understanding of the rhythm required during the transition points in a stable environment.

Daily Challenge 4/24

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Are you excited to begin your day?  Rather than slump into your chair and trudge through emails change it up.  Step up your game!

Daily Challenge 4/24:

Tuck Jump To Start Your Day!

Whenever you first get into the office or back to your desk, do a Tuck Jump!

How do you feel?  Ready?  Fired UP!  Maybe you should do a few.  Get pumped for the day!

Agility and Neuromuscular Training as Motor Skill Development

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Check it Renegades!  Below is Part One of two posts by Judith Vogel.  She’s a fellow with me at the Institute for Rowing Leadership, among other awesome things.  Plus she loves the color Orange!  Let us know what you think of agility and rowing!  Post how you might use these drills in practice and check out the Tools page for more examples.

There is a considerable amount of available research on the positive effects of agility in power-based sports such as tennis, soccer, and skiing. Agility requires a combination of neuromuscular recruitment and a sense of timing, or coordination of muscle groups, in order to effect a change in direction. Agility is used to train powerful planned, and reactive, changes in direction. It is conventional knowledge that movements in endurance sports are too ‘slow’ to require a great deal of agility training. Most endurance sports are cyclical and the demand for change in direction may not necessarily involve enormous changes in power.

Steve Fairbairn, who completed his seminal [rowing] coaching in England in the 1930’s, describes all sport as dynamic and that they all require posture, control, timing, balance, and touch. All components of sport can be classified under one or more of these five principles. Agility can be defined as a kinesthetic rhythm, or sense of timing, as it applies to the sequencing of muscle groups.

Motor Skill Development

From an early age, children learn how to manipulate their center of mass in order to navigate their environment. This begins with very basic movements such as running, jumping, climbing, ducking, balancing, and rolling. Over the course of development the child learns how coordinate their movements in more complex, or sport specific, movements. Motor learning is highly dependent on kinesthetic schemas, which form over time. These schemas begin with a vocabulary of basic movements upon which the person elaborates as the complexity of the environment changes. Agility, balance, and rhythm based exercises give the athlete a kinesthetic vocabulary from which they can build complex movements.

Neuromuscular Training

Neuromuscular training determines the athlete’s ability to coordinate the movements of multiple muscle groups. Movement coupling has been utilized to train the athlete to respond in a dynamic environment. The incorporation of unplanned agility sequences requires the athlete to coordinate motor groups according to perceived degrees of freedom in their environment. As the athlete develops in their ability to coordinate movements their body is better able to complete the sequence by recruiting the appropriate muscle groups.

Rowing is predominantly a horizontal movement during the drive and recovery phases of the stroke. There is no dramatic change in spatial position, as compared to soccer or football, and the athlete applies power in a unidirectional manner. This consistency in movement is a sharp contrast to the transition points of the catch and the finish. During the transitions, the athlete must integrate both horizontal and vertical sequences of movement with in a very narrow time frame. Literature has supported the notion that agility is a trainable motor skill, which can be improved through progressive practice.

Renegade Rowing For All!

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Renegade Rowing is designed for athletes of all levels and backgrounds.  Whether you are a junior girl training for the varsity crew team or an elite level triathlete, Renegade Rowing can be scaled accordingly to push your boundaries, intensity level, and capacity to do work.  We focus on learning to move well first and then challenge each other through competition to reach our true potential.  Here’s a great example of how Renegade Rowing can be scaled for any athlete willing to push themselves harder while having fun!

Rowing WOD 3/28

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Today Renegade Rowing teamed up with CrossFit Boston to give the CrossFit Rowing community an idea of what the Rowing WOD for 3/28 looks like.  Coach Pat held Monica and Alex to a 20 minute time cap instead of the prescribed 30 minute cap, but they still ended up crushing the first two levels of the Shuttle Run Pyramid.  At the end of the workout they were certain they would have finished under 30 minutes had there been time.

Alex and Monica both shared some great feedback as to why they’ve decided to work on rowing.  Post your reason for rowing and your time or levels attained to the comments and let us know if you have what it takes to conquer the pyramid in 30 minutes!

Rowing Wod 3-28-12 from Coach Pat on Vimeo.