The most common cause of injury in rowers
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In this video, Ken discusses the leading cause of injury in rowers, training load. Most people don't understand what training load is.
Too little load on a particular area will lead to a decrease in fitness, but too much load will lead to injury. |
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Video Transcript
load is really important and what happens with load or changes in load more particularly is that we tend to get injuries
now a comment i heard the other day was that a crew were learning how to row sweep and they'd been a sculling crew for some time been road for probably three years and they took up sweet under 16 age bracket and the the issue was that they got the eight rigged and they got them all into the eight and they went out and they all had a good time and then they just rode in the eight and then after a short period of time back injuries started to appear now why would back injuries suddenly appear and people were saying oh the boat's not rigged right all these sorts of thoughts came into people's minds the reality is it's all about load now we think about load as being if we increase the load a lot then we're going to get injuries and that's widely known so if we go from doing no exercise and then all of a sudden we do a lot of exercise we're likely to get injuries general rule of thumb you only want to increase the load by about 10 a week and so once you've got a sensible base now if you think about load it's not about whole body load load is about an individual muscle and so if you think about it again back on the example of turning from sculling to sweep from scaling we've got a symmetrical action and we're very used to that if we've been sculling for a while then we take up sweep and all of a sudden we've got a different set of actions so if you think about the muscles in the body that are doing something that they haven't really been doing before those particular muscles have had their load increased dramatically because they haven't really been doing much at all some of them and now they're doing quite a lot because we're running sweep so if you take someone who's not used to rowing sweep and you say right are we rowing sweep three times a week now then that's a massive increase in load on those particular muscles so be very mindful if you're changing from sculling to sweep and educating people to row sweep or an athlete rowing sweep make sure that you don't overdo it and so the concept would be if you're scaring three days a week and you're going to take up sweep take up sweep for one day a week and then do that for a while and and don't do it aggressively to start with so when you take up sweep don't go out there and row hard rowing sweep because you're just overloading those same muscles even further and so you're almost guaranteed to get an injury so remember about load load is on a muscle by muscle basis it's not about the whole body so if you're going to make one muscle work more than another then i suggest that you should do that slowly and gradually build that muscle up so that it gets used to it so be very conscious load is about individual muscles not about the whole body so if you think about rowing and load in individual muscles often we'll try to make a change to our technique it might be by getting more reach at the catch or it might be a particular drill now be careful again with load if you're making a significant change to load for a particular muscle and you've got an athlete particularly that's very keen to make sure they do it really well and they try really hard then you may be they may be predisposed to an injury in that particular muscle if you do it too much for too long so if you go for a 20 kilometer row and say now we're going to make this change which is a particular loading change for a muscle and they do it for the 20 kilometers then you wouldn't be surprised if they get an injury because of that so the answer would be to make the change and then let it recover a little bit and make the change again and that's the way you'll get the change without the injury so load it's on a per muscle basis and be very careful to make sure you don't overdo it when you're doing just simple changes to technique i like to do a bit of running and i started to get a pain just here just underneath my knee and so i went and saw the physiotherapist and said why am i getting this pain and i thought that it was because i hadn't been training enough or i was increasing my load too much overall but in reality what it was is i was trying to lengthen my stride and by lengthening the stride i'd change which muscles and which tendons in my body were doing more work so it ended up that i'd loaded up overloaded a few muscles in my leg because i was trying to increase my stride and so if you think about that from a load perspective all i did was make a minor change to my technique i thought it was a minor change but in reality it caused an injury and so be mindful small changes if they're done in a rapid if you change quickly are going to make a big difference in my case i increased the load by going for a 10 kilometer run and trying to forcing myself myself to have a longer stride and did myself an injury if i wanted to do that more in a more sensible fashion i would have only done it gradually gradually and built those muscles up so that they were used to that different movement so remember loads about individual muscles and it's very important to remember that when you're coaching athletes or you're rowing yourself and trying to change your technique
now a comment i heard the other day was that a crew were learning how to row sweep and they'd been a sculling crew for some time been road for probably three years and they took up sweet under 16 age bracket and the the issue was that they got the eight rigged and they got them all into the eight and they went out and they all had a good time and then they just rode in the eight and then after a short period of time back injuries started to appear now why would back injuries suddenly appear and people were saying oh the boat's not rigged right all these sorts of thoughts came into people's minds the reality is it's all about load now we think about load as being if we increase the load a lot then we're going to get injuries and that's widely known so if we go from doing no exercise and then all of a sudden we do a lot of exercise we're likely to get injuries general rule of thumb you only want to increase the load by about 10 a week and so once you've got a sensible base now if you think about load it's not about whole body load load is about an individual muscle and so if you think about it again back on the example of turning from sculling to sweep from scaling we've got a symmetrical action and we're very used to that if we've been sculling for a while then we take up sweep and all of a sudden we've got a different set of actions so if you think about the muscles in the body that are doing something that they haven't really been doing before those particular muscles have had their load increased dramatically because they haven't really been doing much at all some of them and now they're doing quite a lot because we're running sweep so if you take someone who's not used to rowing sweep and you say right are we rowing sweep three times a week now then that's a massive increase in load on those particular muscles so be very mindful if you're changing from sculling to sweep and educating people to row sweep or an athlete rowing sweep make sure that you don't overdo it and so the concept would be if you're scaring three days a week and you're going to take up sweep take up sweep for one day a week and then do that for a while and and don't do it aggressively to start with so when you take up sweep don't go out there and row hard rowing sweep because you're just overloading those same muscles even further and so you're almost guaranteed to get an injury so remember about load load is on a muscle by muscle basis it's not about the whole body so if you're going to make one muscle work more than another then i suggest that you should do that slowly and gradually build that muscle up so that it gets used to it so be very conscious load is about individual muscles not about the whole body so if you think about rowing and load in individual muscles often we'll try to make a change to our technique it might be by getting more reach at the catch or it might be a particular drill now be careful again with load if you're making a significant change to load for a particular muscle and you've got an athlete particularly that's very keen to make sure they do it really well and they try really hard then you may be they may be predisposed to an injury in that particular muscle if you do it too much for too long so if you go for a 20 kilometer row and say now we're going to make this change which is a particular loading change for a muscle and they do it for the 20 kilometers then you wouldn't be surprised if they get an injury because of that so the answer would be to make the change and then let it recover a little bit and make the change again and that's the way you'll get the change without the injury so load it's on a per muscle basis and be very careful to make sure you don't overdo it when you're doing just simple changes to technique i like to do a bit of running and i started to get a pain just here just underneath my knee and so i went and saw the physiotherapist and said why am i getting this pain and i thought that it was because i hadn't been training enough or i was increasing my load too much overall but in reality what it was is i was trying to lengthen my stride and by lengthening the stride i'd change which muscles and which tendons in my body were doing more work so it ended up that i'd loaded up overloaded a few muscles in my leg because i was trying to increase my stride and so if you think about that from a load perspective all i did was make a minor change to my technique i thought it was a minor change but in reality it caused an injury and so be mindful small changes if they're done in a rapid if you change quickly are going to make a big difference in my case i increased the load by going for a 10 kilometer run and trying to forcing myself myself to have a longer stride and did myself an injury if i wanted to do that more in a more sensible fashion i would have only done it gradually gradually and built those muscles up so that they were used to that different movement so remember loads about individual muscles and it's very important to remember that when you're coaching athletes or you're rowing yourself and trying to change your technique