by GRP Row coach Steve Whelpley

When I started my post-collegiate pursuit of rowing in Philadelphia, I wound up befriending a local who always posted up on Midvale Avenue outside of the rower dormitory known as "The Monastery" (that's another story unto itself). John would make relatable small talk with anyone that would talk to him. If you know me, then you could guess we had more than one conversation.

One day, I expressed a challenge about knowing if I was moving forward or not. John told me that he had just started a humble process since his stroke. He was walking half a block from one corner to an alley and both counting his steps and measuring his time as he went. His goal was to reduce his time and decrease his steps. The task and objective was so clear and so simple that it made tracking improvement very straightforward. As I went into the weeds with my own journey, this was a refreshing reminder.

No matter what chapter of rowing you're currently on, utilizing the objective aspects of our sport can be a helpful tool towards progress or even sensation. At Craftsbury, we're fortunate to be surrounded by multiple endurance sports. Hearing and experiencing the boons and banes of nordic skiing helps me to more deeply understand our own. In skiing, you have more variable conditions: more equipment choices, snow conditions, temperature, terrain, and more. These variables are equally present in training. As a result, heart rates fluctuate even at a level effort and speed charts go out the window. The boon? Skiers race to race and feel to feel. The bane? Skiers train much more by perceived exertion and spot checks. More importantly, progress is a bit harder to define. 

In contrast, rowing can train in steady zones with knowable internal and external outputs. Additionally, we can track progress both on and off the water. There are banes to this in how we perceive the thrill of a race or if we equate effort with feeling too often, but for this tip, I'll focus on the progress.

Rowing offers the opportunity to measure effort in an objective sense through heart rate data. Rowing also has stable enough conditions and refined enough tools to observe and compare speed from piece to piece or session to session. In concert these two elements in unlock a powerful tool for change and progress. One example of this is the lore passed around 2016 of Gevvie Stone enjoying stints of 14 at 14. This refers to 14 meters per stroke at 14 strokes per minute. Another version of that would be former sculling director Troy Howell seeing how few strokes it would take him to get from end to end on the Hosmer.

A less dramatic example would simply be trying to go faster at the same or lower heart rate. Many of us can go faster by applying more effort, but can you go faster without increasing effort? If heart rate is one measure of applied effort, then decreasing or maintaining it while going faster would point towards an effective change in technique that was more efficient for both you and the boat. If you want validation of technical improvement, you can't get better feedback than that. All that being said, you must set the stage for the experimentation as John did with his metered distance. You need to assess and understand the conditions on your body of water.

There are things that exist throughout the rowing world called "Split Charts" or "Speed Charts." These charts suggest various speeds at various rates with the assumption that it all scales as a percentage of your race pace. I am not suggesting the use of these. While their existence may have interesting and productive applications, they scale based on the arbitrary philosophies of different coaches and physicists. Here is one such example:

As already mentioned, this is an arbitrary delineation of speed that is often achieved more explicitly by effort than technical adjustments. I'm suggesting that you utilize the objective and measurable qualities of our sport in order to assess technical and/or physiological progress. 

If you don't have a means of measuring speed and heart rate, then what? Do as John did. Distill the experiment down to something even simpler: a knowable distance, the number of strokes, and perceived exertion. Try to maintain the same perceived exertion and cover the same distance on a regular basis to see how you cover that distance in terms of both speed and number of strokes.

At some point, you might find it best to defenestrate the numbers, row without any gadgetry or counting, and isolate yourself towards the pure sensations of feeling and listening. However, with every bane, there's a boon, and we'd be foolish not to use ours at times.