Getting back in the rowing boat
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When returning to rowing after a long absence, it can sometimes be a little daunting trying to decide what are to work on first. In this video, Lachlan shares his process for getting back into the boat and the techniques and checklists he uses.
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Video Transcript
today i'm going to be having a look at uh what it's like to get back into rowing so i've taken a bit of a break over the last year i've focused more on coaching and not been doing so much in the boat myself and i've decided it's time to get back in the boat for real and i want to do a video of all the little bits and pieces that i'll be looking at in order to improve my rowing this is the first real session i've had back and i'm going to take you through my process of trying to work out which bits are important to look at which bits are not so much and so i've got a little list that i'll go through so the three main areas that i'll be focusing on are rigging technique and fitness and so each one of these has an important role to play rigging is easiest to change technique and fitness are harder to change but it's where you're going to get most of your speed when it comes to rowing so to start with i want to have a look at the rigging so i lent my boat to someone during this period and a lot of the settings weren't the same as when i when i when i gave it up so um yeah i had a bit of a guess of where to put things back into place so just having a look at the the foot structure position so you can sort of see here that my shins you know that they're over vertical and i'm
not no need of having that much length so i'm going to raise my feet probably about two centimeters so that'll get my shins a bit more vertical let's have a look at other rigging so coming through the stroke get the blade in the water quite nicely it's quite comfortable to get the blade in the water i just want to see if my handle heights are right so what i'm looking at here is is my blade and when it starts to come out of the water so in order for me to maintain connection to the water it needs to be at that height or less
and you can see that
drawing through the handles to that height is going to be quite unsustainable so i reckon i can get a little bit of benefit just by getting the gate and dropping it down probably i'll start with half a centimeter because you get a magnified effect at the hands so i think i'll just drop it down one of the red washers i think the position is pretty good finish position is okay you can see here that i'm running into my gut a little bit you know obviously i want to lose some weight around the midsection make that finish a bit easier and then when i when i've done that i'll probably move my feet a little bit further towards the stern of the boat to give myself a greater catch angle but at the moment it's better to be more comfortable um especially when i'm rowing i don't want to be getting caught up at the back and the back turn because of my stomach before i lose that weight okay so let's have a look at a couple of other things let's have a look at the technique so it's been a while since i've been in the water and you can see here at the finish i'm really not sitting tall
not sitting tall with the pelvis so it's kind of slumped position the pelvis is is sunken down a bit what i really want to be doing is sitting up tall try and get like a little bit of extra length through my spine imagine someone's pulling my hair up a little bit so i think i just when i'm rowing i just need to be conscious of sitting a little bit taller and rocking over when i come forward so you can see when i come forward here
let's have a look at the position of everything so at the top here in my back having a curve in the spine isn't so bad in the upper thoracic spine it's designed for that what we really want to avoid though is the curve down here you can see that i've got quite a curve in the quite a curve around here ideally i'd want it to be relatively straight but it's it's got a big curve especially just just in this area here and this is a flexibility thing so i need to really work on my glute my hamstring flexibility also here into the catch you can't really see it but um just keep an eye on my heels so i've got a relatively flat foot stretch position as it is but if you look when i come into the catch my heels um it's really quite i'm really quite inflexible through that achilles area into my heel so i'm going to really work on my achilles tendon flexibility so as far as training load goes i'm going to be trying not to increase my training load by too much too quickly so i'm starting with a 30 minute row trying to do this most days if i can't go for a row during the during the day i'll jump on the exercise bike or or something like that i'm also doing weights as well but i've been doing the weights throughout so it's one of those things where i really need to be careful about overloading my spine especially a lot of rowers get lower back pain when they increase their load too quickly and knee pain as well so i'm only going to be increasing my session duration by five minutes each uh each week so starting with 30 minute sessions moving to 35 minute sessions and 40 minute sessions and um i'm gonna wait at least eight weeks before i start adding any sort of speed work in i'm really trying to make sure that my muscles have adapted to the new training load and that i'm not gonna end up with with injuries and um doing too much too soon so that's just a little guide of what i focus on when getting back into rowing i look at the rigging i look at the technique and i look at the fitness because these are the the main areas to improve on with your rowing stroke and you want to make sure you're doing small changes each time but it has to be enough of a change to have an effect so be conscious of that don't do too much but also you don't want to be doing too little with the changes with your rowing
not no need of having that much length so i'm going to raise my feet probably about two centimeters so that'll get my shins a bit more vertical let's have a look at other rigging so coming through the stroke get the blade in the water quite nicely it's quite comfortable to get the blade in the water i just want to see if my handle heights are right so what i'm looking at here is is my blade and when it starts to come out of the water so in order for me to maintain connection to the water it needs to be at that height or less
and you can see that
drawing through the handles to that height is going to be quite unsustainable so i reckon i can get a little bit of benefit just by getting the gate and dropping it down probably i'll start with half a centimeter because you get a magnified effect at the hands so i think i'll just drop it down one of the red washers i think the position is pretty good finish position is okay you can see here that i'm running into my gut a little bit you know obviously i want to lose some weight around the midsection make that finish a bit easier and then when i when i've done that i'll probably move my feet a little bit further towards the stern of the boat to give myself a greater catch angle but at the moment it's better to be more comfortable um especially when i'm rowing i don't want to be getting caught up at the back and the back turn because of my stomach before i lose that weight okay so let's have a look at a couple of other things let's have a look at the technique so it's been a while since i've been in the water and you can see here at the finish i'm really not sitting tall
not sitting tall with the pelvis so it's kind of slumped position the pelvis is is sunken down a bit what i really want to be doing is sitting up tall try and get like a little bit of extra length through my spine imagine someone's pulling my hair up a little bit so i think i just when i'm rowing i just need to be conscious of sitting a little bit taller and rocking over when i come forward so you can see when i come forward here
let's have a look at the position of everything so at the top here in my back having a curve in the spine isn't so bad in the upper thoracic spine it's designed for that what we really want to avoid though is the curve down here you can see that i've got quite a curve in the quite a curve around here ideally i'd want it to be relatively straight but it's it's got a big curve especially just just in this area here and this is a flexibility thing so i need to really work on my glute my hamstring flexibility also here into the catch you can't really see it but um just keep an eye on my heels so i've got a relatively flat foot stretch position as it is but if you look when i come into the catch my heels um it's really quite i'm really quite inflexible through that achilles area into my heel so i'm going to really work on my achilles tendon flexibility so as far as training load goes i'm going to be trying not to increase my training load by too much too quickly so i'm starting with a 30 minute row trying to do this most days if i can't go for a row during the during the day i'll jump on the exercise bike or or something like that i'm also doing weights as well but i've been doing the weights throughout so it's one of those things where i really need to be careful about overloading my spine especially a lot of rowers get lower back pain when they increase their load too quickly and knee pain as well so i'm only going to be increasing my session duration by five minutes each uh each week so starting with 30 minute sessions moving to 35 minute sessions and 40 minute sessions and um i'm gonna wait at least eight weeks before i start adding any sort of speed work in i'm really trying to make sure that my muscles have adapted to the new training load and that i'm not gonna end up with with injuries and um doing too much too soon so that's just a little guide of what i focus on when getting back into rowing i look at the rigging i look at the technique and i look at the fitness because these are the the main areas to improve on with your rowing stroke and you want to make sure you're doing small changes each time but it has to be enough of a change to have an effect so be conscious of that don't do too much but also you don't want to be doing too little with the changes with your rowing