It’s to easy during the winter months and during training in general to become narrow-minded and trapped in a routine of the same old, same old. Sometimes we need to break the cycle, even if the cycle is going well, to refocus and make even more progress toward our goals. Today’s challenge is to enjoy some active rest and recovery. Get out of your gym or house and do something different. Go for a walk/hike, cross-country ski, run, bike, swim, play a game/sport, try yoga, walk up and down the stairs in your building, treat a friend to a hot meal, or simply stop everything, lay down for 5 minutes, and do nothing but relax and focus on your breathing without thinking about anything else.
If you have any revelations, great experiences, or you simply had some fun, share it with the community in a comment!
Today’s Rowing WOD is a 2k Row. It’s a test of how much pain and glory you can endure over seven to eight minutes. Grab some friends and get after it. This is our first test of the winter season and will give us a baseline to work off of and use in pacing future workouts. Be in the moment, execute your splits, smile, have some fun, breath, and get after it!
Rowing is a beautiful sport in that you create the resistance and determine how fast the boat moves. That being said, keep in mind that you get out what you put in for things like strength, conditioning, and Rowing. Ease into this workout for the first four minutes by finding your rhythm and breathing. However, as the stroke rating goes up make sure you’re putting in the effort to bring the 500m split down and keep consistent pressure.
Set the monitor for 10 minutes of work and 4 minutes of rest. During each ten minute piece follow the prescribed rating shifts.
Why is rowing fun? One reason is that it provides a challenge in learning technique to be as efficient as possible while working everything from your head to your toes. Elsewhere in sports and training, if you’ve tried the Pose Method of running you may understand the beauty of focusing on technique and the perception of what your body is doing in space. Focusing on form and technique gives your mind something to work toward rather than complaining about how much your legs burn.
Today’s Rowing WOD is a good opportunity to focus on one or two form fixes but get after it as well. Set the monitor for Intervals Variable and enter the work/rest accordingly. This WOD has the potential to build your confidence in the 2k. Come up with a plan and execute. Be consistent with your splits and stroke ratings for all three. If possible go a little bit faster on each piece. Vets might try for a pace of 2k+5, 2k+4, 2k+3 for each successive piece with a stroke rating of 28-32. Find your efficient stroke. Novices should focus on one form fix for each piece and work hard to maintain a consistent split.
Post your Average 500m Splits to Comments along with an answer to this question…
From time to time it can be beneficial to look at yourself on camera. No we don’t care about the aesthetics or the fashion. We’re looking to gain feedback and a mental picture. We’re looking for just one or two cues that might give us a smoother, more powerful stroke. What’s going right? What’s going wrong? What can we do better?
You should be asking yourself, “What do I look like now? How do I move now? What could use some extra focus and improvement next time?” Don’t dwell on to many things at a time, just find one or two things that might make your life on the erg or in the boat a little better. Go work on them. Then reassess in a couple of weeks.
The Renegade Rowing Club has agreed to help everyone by taking a look at their strokes. If you’d like feedback similar to this, post a 20 second clip of you rowing to YouTube and share it with us in the comments of this post. I’ll do my best to give you a couple of things to work on!
For each of the following videos I’ll be ranking each rower on their posture, control, and connection. I’ll use a five point scale where 1 = poor and 5 = perfect. When dealing with posture we’re looking for the torso to be stacked and strong at all times. When talking about control we are looking at the smoothness of the recovery and how the seat moves toward the catch. Does it rush forward for the next stroke? Is there control in the last few inches of the slide to change direction without pushing the boat backwards? Last and most important, connection, are the seat and handle connected and moving together into and out of the catch as if connected by a belt.
Take a look and share what you might focus on next time you row!
Posture: 3, Control: 3, Connection: 2
Feedback: Nice job getting the body over. Don’t let the seat stop at the catch. Be ready to push with the legs the second you hit the catch and keep the seat and hands connected.
Renegade Rowing 