Rest Day 11/25:If you want to be your best you’ll need others to push you and help you be your best in training. Checkout how the Renegade Rowing Club pushes and supports each other even in their warmup. Surround yourself with good people and the possibilities are endless.
Share your team to comments even if it’s a solid training partner. They’re priceless!
Renegade Rowing Club getting after some 500’s
As we get going with more intervals, higher intensity training, and higher volume in general, it is important to recover. Every now and then you should be taking a day completely off where you enjoy the time you normally would be training. Go read a book or have a coffee with a friend. However, most recovery days should involve some sort of active recovery. If you have some weaknesses in your posture or need to improve flexibility then yoga may be a good activity. Other active recovery ideas include going for a walk/hike, riding the bike, and most important of all, working on mobility.
Today, take some time to get in that active recovery. Grab a friend and go enjoy the day!
Rest Day 11/11:Below is a great holiday nutrition post from Alex Black of Wicked Good Nutrition. Check it out and post your thoughts and favorite recipes!
It’s November! Which means the holidays are fast approaching. And often times it’s not just the individual occasion of Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Eve festivities to worry about, because everyone can afford a cheat day here and there. It’s the stuff leading up to the holiday, like work pot lucks, holiday parties, and cookie baking.
So, to help you get through the holidays with fewer cheats and keep you wearing your skinny jeans into New Year’s eve, I’m starting a recipe thread for “healthy holidays”. Each recipe will be either low-calorie, lower carbohydrate, or made with all natural ingredients.
Body Preparation
Preparation is the key to reaching peak performance. To be prepared is to consistently have your thoughts, feelings, and bodily responses at the right state at the right time. The consistency that is required to reach peak performance and compete day in and day out will never happen if practice and competition behaviors are left to chance. By creating a systematic approach to how we think about, feel, and react to different situations we can reduce the fear of the unknown and the stress associated with it. The goal of preparation is to create processes that we can employ daily, weekly, seasonally, yearly, in a warm-up, at practice, in a race, and after competition to improve our readiness to perform.
The first step in preparation is goal setting. Goals provide direction and purpose. While it’s important to set goals at the beginning of the season keep in mind that goal setting can be performed whenever we need to focus, to increase motivation, to decrease anxiety, and to increase confidence. Good goal setting involves a team vision, a mission, or set of values as the ultimate goal. (The goal of the Renegade Rowing Club is to give rowers the resources, knowledge, and experience needed to compete at CRASH-Bs and then compete on the water come the spring.) After that there are both long-term and short-term goals. Last come smaller targets that when reached bring us one step closer to the long or short-term goals.
The Goal Setting Dam
Goal setting can be thought of as a dam that creates a body of water for us to row on. The targets are small rocks and pebbles that fill in the gaps and support the short-term and long-term goals. The short-term and long-term goals are larger boulders that provide support to the concrete slab that is the vision, mission, and team values. When we set goals we pour the concrete slab first, then we set the boulders, then we fill in the small rocks and pebbles.
In order to always have a body of water to row on the dam must be maintained. Goals only work if they’re looked at regularly. If targets aren’t being reached or serving a purpose, remove them and replace them with better ones. The same goes with short-term and long-term goals. Set goals, but continually reassess them. We will aim to set and reassess our goals once every month.
When building the dam and setting goals it is important to remember there are two types of goals, process-oriented and outcome-oriented goals. A process-oriented goal would be getting body preparation by half slide or maintaining a tight lumbar curve through a squat. An outcome-oriented goal would be winning a championship or squatting 300 lbs. Our dam should be filled with both, but the more process-oriented goals the stronger the dam. Process-oriented goals will help us reach our outcome-oriented goals.
Most importantly, all goals should have three things in common. Our goals must be positive, specific, and controllable. Positive, meaning they “add” and “do” things instead of avoiding them. Specific, meaning they’re focused, tangible, and not vague. If needed they could be measured. Controllable, meaning it is up to us to achieve and manipulate our goals, not some outside force. We should have the power to affect change and control the goal. So, start setting goals. While you do, always ask, are my goals positive, specific and controllable?
Melissa from CFB demos the setup for a Deadlift
In a 2,000m race the pain really starts to kick in after the first thousand. If you can be prepared with mental thoughts to stay strong and Fight for your goal split, every stroke for 750m after that first 1k, then you’ll be able to open the flood gates and sprint at 250m to go. A key to having solid mental thoughts is building confidence in your training leading up to the race. Have cues to repeat, especially cues that you can attach to specific moments in time or sessions you crushed like today.
Drive through the heels!
In today’s Rowing WOD build and settle to your current 2k split right away. You want to be in full control of your stroke rating, breathing, and split. Hold solid, consistent pressure every stroke of each 750m piece. Know that when things get tough and the pain tells you to stop, you can hold strong and fight for every stroke. Bring that same focus to your Deadlifts. Keep a neutral spine and focus on efficient movement through the hips. Push through the heels and build the speed on the bar as you extend your hips. Focus on keeping tight abs and feeling the connection of the hips and hands as you pry the bar off the floor. Try to bring the feeling of a solid deadlift to your rowing and use the cue “heels down” as one motivational thought during that 75om Row.
Post your time to comments and share your mental cues!
Fully extend the hips at the top
Renegade Rowing 