Many of us will be doing a lot of training on the rowing machine in these coming weeks, and it’s important to understand the impact of sweat and proper hydration. This article by Andy Blow, provides good insights and tips for all of us using the Concept2 to train indoors.
Gavirate Rowing Club 2020. Photo WH Chambers.
Original article by Andy Blow, BSc Honours degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath, Precision Hydration (2020). Precision Hydration support our newsletter subscribers with 10% off all purchases, when you use the discount code; Faster10 at checkout. www.precisionhydration.com
Indoor training can be viewed as an unfortunate but necessary evil by some athletes, while others relish the opportunity to get in the ‘Pain Cave’ and log those hours on the turbo trainer or treadmill.
There’s often an impressive (and slightly dangerous) pool of sweat on the floor whenever I’ve finished an indoor training session. So, does that puddle mean I sweat more when training indoors than outdoors? Let’s find out…
The effects of heat on sweat rate
The body controls core body temperature (CBT) to keep us alive and functioning, and we sweat when our CBT rises above a certain point.
The heat given off by working muscles has the greatest influence on CBT when exercising, so how hard you’re working has a massive impact on your sweat rate and more so than body fat, weight and overall size. This was emphasised by the findings of a recent study.
So, the average indoor workout is probably more intense than an outdoor session because we generally go for ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’ (unless you really enjoy being in your ‘pain cave’ for hours and hours on end). Therefore, this results in a higher sweat loss per unit of time.
Air Flow and Temperature
Two other important factors which will impact on how sweaty you get when training indoors are Air Flow and Temperature:
Air Flow
When outdoors, you’re moving through air so you get some airflow past the skin. Air movement causes heat to be drawn away from the body’s surface more effectively (via convection and sweat evaporation) and this cools you.
On a static bike or treadmill, you lose this airflow and the sweat tends to drip off you, making you more aware of it. And as there’s no natural cooling effect, you probably actually do sweat a little more to compensate too (unless you attempt to mitigate the lack of air flow by adding a fan to your indoor ‘Pain Cave’…).
Temperature
Your body tries to offload heat to the environment when you’re training. The bigger the gradient between the air temperature, and the lower the humidity, the easier it is for heat to be evaporated away. As many places we train indoors are already quite warm and humid, the gradients for heat loss and evaporation are less pronounced than outside, and this further hinders thermoregulation and drives sweat rate up.
So, whilst you don’t necessarily sweat significantly more indoors than outdoors, there are reasons why total sweat loss might be higher some of the time.
Tips for staying hydrated during indoor training
There are five simple steps you can take to ensure that you are well hydrated for your daily indoor training session…
Before: Arrive well hydrated
As we mentioned earlier, most people’s indoor training sessions are short and intense as we go for the old ‘quality over quantity’ approach. So, it’s important to make sure you start hydrated by doing some form of preload as this will maximise your ability to thermoregulate by sweating.
Aim to drink around 500-750ml (16-25oz) of plain water mixed with a strong electrolyte drink (we recommend PH 1500) a few hours before you start your session. Use a bit of trial and error over the course of a few sessions to refine this approach.
Before: Don’t overdo your fluid intake
Having said that, there’s no need to go overboard on fluid intake in the immediate build-up to your session. Just try to stick to good hydration practices on a day-to-day basis.
Before: Add sodium
If you do find yourself low on fluid leading up to a session, it’s a good idea to add additional sodium to your drinks in the preceding hours as this maximises absorption of the fluids you do consume.
During: Drink to thirst during the session
This comes back to the ‘don’t overdo it’ point. Ultimately, don’t interfere with what you’re actually there to do (i.e. get sweaty on the turbo or treadmill) by trying to taking on unnecessary amounts of fluid.
Don’t forget to stay on top of your hydration when training indoors and following these simple steps will help keep you hydrated correctly and able to perform at your best.
Former head of high performance at British Rowing Mark Homer offers his expert guidance. Original article published on Cycling Weekly, December 12, 2020.
The opportunities to excel in more than one sport are few and far between, and in this age of increased professionalism and specialisation, such chances are becoming rarer. But there is one sporting switch that seems to be eminently possible and, in many cases, extremely successful. A swelling number of elite athletes are making the switch from rowing to cycling. The question is, why? What makes rowing and cycling apparently so complementary?
Male and female athletes alike have transitioned from boat to bike very successfully, suggesting that years spent rowing can contribute to cycling excellence. Having worked as an exercise physiologist at British Rowing for 12 years, I have a solid understanding of rowing — and now I want to find out why being good with a pair of oars can equip you well for a career in the saddle, supporting or even enhancing your cycling performance.
Hamish Bond’s national velodrome 4,000m pursuit record and gold medal, following his switch from time trialling (he won TT bronze at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games) to the track, was another exciting twist in the double Olympic rowing champion’s athletic career. Previously half of New Zealand’s dominant men’s coxless pair — undefeated for eight years — the 32-year old has now decided to return to the boat in an attempt to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
Bond is not the only example of the successful rowing-to-cycling transition at the highest level. After winning a silver medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics and World Championship gold the following year in the women’s quadruple sculling event, Rebecca Romero won the individual pursuit cycling title at the Beijing Games in 2008.
With rowing events always taking place during the first week of the Olympics, rowers can spend the second week soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying other sports as spectators. It was here Romero was reintroduced to cycling. “The atmosphere in the velodrome was wild,” she recalls watching Bradley Wiggins race in 2004. “A contact of my [now] husband suggested I would be good at the pursuit.”
What happened next?
“Following the 2005 rowing World Championships, I was out of the boat with a long-standing back injury, and I’d fallen out of love with the sport so I made the decision to leave rowing.”
British Cycling got wind of Romero’s interest in track cycling, and the coach tasked with developing a women’s squad for the Beijing Games called her and invited her to Manchester to get tested — the rest is history.
Other talent transfers include Olympic silver medallists Chris Bartley and Katie Greaves who ride for the Athlete Services Test Team; Rosamund Bradbury who sculled at the London 2012 Olympics and recently won the inaugural British Cycling Zwift eRacing Championships (and her brother Edmund, who rowed at Cambridge, now rides for JLT-Condor). An honorary mention too, to Cycling Weekly’s own Michael Hutchinson, who competed as a lightweight rower while studying. Some coaches have also made the crossover, with Team Sky coach Tim Kerrison competing and coaching rowing in his pre-cycling days. Of course, we can’t ignore the high-profile attempt by Wiggins to make the switch: he finished 21st at the 2017 British Rowing Indoor Championships. However, Wiggins abandoned the idea of rowing in Tokyo, citing other commitments.
All of this evidence points towards the possibility that rowing is a good background for a cyclist — and the follow-on suggestion that it might be an effective cross-training activity. Are there lessons that cyclists can learn from rowing? And could adding rowing to your training help improve your cycling?
Why do rowers make good riders? First up, physiology. Rowing is classified as a strength-endurance sport, and rowers, like cyclists, possess some of the highest aerobic capacities in elite sport. Absolute VO2max values as high as seven litres per minute are not unusual. Adjusted for weight, the values are less impressive, naturally — rowers are relatively heavy. Being heavier doesn’t much matter in rowing — you’re fighting the drag of water, not gravity. Lightweight rowers with VO2max values in close to 80ml/kg/min are not uncommon. The high-volume nature of training to improve aerobic capacity prepares rowers well for the rigours of cycling.
Having to overcome water resistance, and needing the ability to ‘change gear’ during a race, rowers must be powerful. Whoever can complete 240 power-clean repetitions with the most weight will win. This highlights the high-strength demands of the sport. Training for track cycling is similar — with time spent in the gym alongside high mileage on the road and intensity work on the track.
Only lightweight rowers have a realistic chance of making a successful switch to road cycling. With a maximum weight of 70kg for men and 57kg for women, these athletes are trained to produce high power outputs from relatively low body weight. Australian Cameron Wurf rowed lightweight at Athens 2004 before riding for the Cannondale road team, then switching to triathlon [and spend the past season riding with Team Ineos]. Chris Bartley retired from rowing in 2016, having won silver at London 2012 in the Lightweight Men’s coxless four — and last year he finished second in the British 25-mile TT championships.
Development and technique
The main reason why rowers find the switch to cycling more straightforward than vice versa is the technical demands of the sport. I mentioned the 240-repetition power-clean demand, but that was too simple. Imagine having to execute that set of repetitions on the deck of a wobbling boat, balancing a loaded tea tray on either end of the weights bar, synchronised with up to seven team-mates. Balance, timing, and ‘feel’, among other factors, require several years of dedicated practice — but can be picked up surprisingly quickly.
Rowing has a unique development pathway: while many rowers learn at school or as youths within the club system, many — including several Olympic champions — came to the sport as adults, taking up the sport at university. Double Olympic champion Helen Glover started rowing in 2008 aged 22 and in 2012 became one of the first British women to win an Olympic rowing gold medal. Glover competed at football, hockey and cross-country running before rowing but was considered highly ‘coachable’ and ‘trainable’ in her early rowing days.
Romero likewise competed in several different sports before finding rowing. A varied, multi-skilled background may make it possible for rowers to quickly apply their fitness to a new sport. Cyclists tend to be purists, spending many years solely riding their bikes. Rowers seem to be better equipped to transfer their skills.
Rowing training at elite level is very different from cycling training. Cycling is low-impact and a low-force/high-cadence exercise, so high-volume training is essential. Rowers have to overcome greater resistance in water, absorbed by the back, ribs and forearms. While textbook form and technique will reduce the risk of injury, fatigue and loss of form are hazardous. Hence, rowers rarely train for longer than two hours (including the occasional rest). Rowing training is supplemented with non-specific cross training — and cycling is the number one choice. Many national programmes include a weekly low-intensity long bike ride and winter training camps.
Can rowing boost cycling?
The successful transition of rowers into track cycling suggests that rowing training may have some tricks to offer to cyclists. Despite the relatively short event distance and times, rowing training has evolved to comprise high volumes of low-intensity training, combined with short, sharp intensity, roughly following an 80:20 polarised intensity distribution. International-level rowers train approximately 20-25 hours per week and clock 5,000-6,000km per season. Over the course of a four-year Olympiad, this equates to approximately 7,600 strokes in training for every single stroke of an Olympic final!
The unavoidably flat nature of lakes and rivers is comparable to the velodrome: it is consistent, and effort can be precisely measured (weather conditions aside). Rowers, therefore, programme training sessions with clear single training zone targets. Long steady-state rowing or ergometer sessions are the norm in international squads, with a tight range of intensity based on heart rate or blood lactate responses.
Whereas cyclists often include multiple efforts of different zones of work within a single training ride, rowing programmes timetable up to four shorter
In-your-face stats: there’s nowhere to hide on the indoor rower sessions in a day (including resistance training and core stability). The intensity-based ‘race-preparation’ sessions include isolated efforts to ensure quality.
The strength-endurance demands within rowing performance requires athletes to complete up to three weight training sessions per week, particularly during the winter months. Making improvements in strength and power alongside endurance is difficult, owing to the ‘interference effect’, where gains in strength are lessened by endurance work. Rowing coaches alleviate this by programming resistance training as the final session of a given day, to maximise strength adaptations.
Correct nutrition helps to maximise the effect of such strength training with emphasis placed on protein intake before, during and after such sessions. While strength training for track cycling is well established, and its use for road athletes is increasing, most cyclists would benefit from more weight training to improve their economy, with corresponding improvements in nutrition. Rowers are famous for their high-calorie intake. While macronutrient status has little effect on a six- to eight-minute race, meeting the demands of high-volume preparation means consuming up to 6,000kcal per day. As covered in these pages, many cyclists under-fuel in an attempt to lose weight and stay lean, putting their bone health at risk. Core stability is also critical to maintaining good form and effective rowing. Rowing places high force through the trunk, and common injuries include lumbar spine and rib problems, often caused by poor stability. Producing power on a bike requires a stable base too, so this is another way in which cyclists could benefit from training more like rowers.
As we have seen, rowers tend to switch quite easily to cycling because they’ve already been used to cycling as a cross-training activity. Cross-training is highly valued in many endurance sports but is often neglected in cycling. Of course, cycling is low-impact and relatively non-intense, so cross-training might not seem vital, but mixing things up can have a powerful effect.
Will doing some rowing help your riding?
It’s tempting to keep your training specific and only ever train on the bike — but you might be missing out with many clubs offering taster sessions. The technical nature of the sport takes time to develop, and it is difficult to register meaningful physical training during this time. A quicker and more convenient solution is indoor rowing. The stability and reduced technical demands mean you are quickly rewarded for your efforts and, in short, yes — there may be some advantages to including some rowing in your training programme.
Rowing is a whole-body exercise, so with correct technique, your legs, trunk and arms are subjected to an aerobic training stimulus. The quads, glutes and hamstrings should contribute the most to each stroke. If your training is mostly cycling, there is no harm in taking some of the pressure off the well-used muscle groups and involving the upper body too. Keeping the resistance low will allow more of a low-force/high-cadence approach, targeting the cardiovascular system rather than strength.
Dr Nicky Keay, who has published several studies investigating bone density in athletes, believes rowing is an excellent spine-loading exercise for those at risk of low bone density, whether through past under-fuelling or the lack of weight-bearing from cycling alone.
As previously mentioned, rowers need a strong and stable core, and good rowing drills and sequencing should enable you to sit stronger on your saddle too. It is easy to lose shape, but with a constant reminder of your split and effort on the screen on a rowing machine, the influence of technique on speed is clear. You can work hard, but a weak position will mean you leak power and quickly slow down.
Finally, rowing provides an experience that cycling cannot: a level of teamwork rarely called for in cycling. I am told the feeling of team cohesion and rhythm when you are part of a crew moving a single hull in perfect synchronicity is unbeatable. Like a team time trial without the option of losing a man, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.
This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly. https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/why-do-so-many-elite-cyclists-have-a-background-in-rowing-486088
Sharing with you some of my Go To Ergo sessions from the last 6-months. Each of these sessions can be done done on the Concept2 Dynamic, Model D static or RP3 machine. I use a polarised 5 zone heart rate model to guide training intensity. More information of how to train with heart rate can be found on my online courses page, and include easy to use heart rate zone calculator tools. I like to use the Citius Remex seat pad and recommend it for those that don’t want a pain in the backside and legs after long sessions. Citius Remex offer our readers 10% discount at checkout with the code: NoAssPain2020
Long Endurance Base Building Sessions
Target heart rate in zone 2
3 x 20 minutes – stroke rate 18-20 in zone 2
4 x 20 minutes – stroke rate 18-20 in zone 2
Strength Endurance Sessions
Target heart rate in zone 2 & 3
4 x 15 minutes
First 15 minutes at stroke rate 18-20 in zone 2 at fan normal setting 3-4
Next 15 minutes at stroke rate 18-20 in zone 3 at fan setting 8-10
Next 15 minutes at stroke rate 18-20 in zone 2 at fan normal setting 3-4
Final 15 minutes at stroke rate 18-20 in zone 3 at fan setting 8-10
5-10 minutes cool down
Progressive Intensity Pyramid
This is a good work out to stimulate your zone 3 and zone 4 heart rate zones. I like to do this work out in spring time, to prepare for the harder, longer zone 4 intervals.
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
5 minutes stroke rate 22
4 minutes stroke rate 24
3 minutes stroke rate 26
2 minutes stroke rate 28
1 minute stroke rate 30
2 minutes stroke rate 28
3 minutes stroke rate 26
4 minutes stroke rate 24
5 minutes stroke rate 22
5-10 minutes Cool down
Long High Intensity Threshold Intervals
Build up your capacity to collecting 30+ minutes in heart rate zone 4. It is not unusual to take 1-2 minutes in each interval for your heart rate to adjust and move into zone 4. I generally aim to maintain a maximum pace that I can sustain for 8 minutes, yet manage the intensity not to go into zone 5.
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
3-5 x 8 minutes – stroke rate 28-32 in heart rate zone 4, with a 4 minute rest between intervals.
5-10 minutes Cool down
This is a longer and harder workout, and designed to develop your anaerobic capacity.
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
3-5 x 10 minutes – stroke rate 28-32 in heart rate zone 4, with a 5 minute rest between intervals.
10 minutes Cool down
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
5 minutes of alternating 15 seconds on (100%) 15 seconds off (50%)
5 minutes rest
Repeat 5 times
10 minutes Cool down
Tabata style High intensity intervals 30:30
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
5 minutes of alternating 30 seconds on (100%) 30 seconds off (50%)
5 minutes rest
Repeat 5 times
10 minutes Cool down
Tabata style High intensity intervals 40:20
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
5 minutes of alternating 40 seconds on (100%) 20 seconds off (50%)
5 minutes rest
Repeat 4 times
10 minutes Cool down
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
Race Pace Intervals
Great workout to get used to race pace. I like to incorporate the start sequence and transition into race pace. I also like to start at race pace and accelerate into the finish burst.
10 minute progressive warm up to heart rate zone 4
This episode of the Faster Podcast, will help you to better understand the Oar range from Concept2.
Meredith and Kevin explain all there is to know about the different blades, oar shaft and grips from Concept2. We discuss how Concept2 started to where they are today. Key differences between the different blade shapes and oar shaft. How to set up the boat with different oars. How to care and maintain the equipment. To ideas and best practice on how to test which set of oars/scull are the best for you.
Meredith Breiland
Meredith started rowing in high school. She quickly fell in love with early morning practices, erg tests, blisters, and track bite. She continued her rowing career at Cornell University. After graduation, she switched her focus to running and triathlon.
At Concept2, Meredith is a member of the marketing team. Her passion is working to diversity the sport through social justice initiatives. She currently rows with Green Mountain Rowing, a sculling club founded by her husband. They stay active with rowing, running, skiing and chasing after their two daughters.
Kevin Stevenson
Kevin is a mechanical engineer at Concept2, having worked on rowing oar and ergometer development for 13 years. A collegiate rower and graduate of Hobart College, Dartmouth College, and the University of Vermont, he’s a Vermont native, and work at Concept2 allows him to combine his love for product development and rowing while taking advantage of all the area has to offer. When not rowing he can be found with his wife and three kids skiing, biking, tinkering, or maple sugaring in the spring.
Speed Testing Oars – Concept2 Testing Protocol
Conducting the Test
Peter and Dick use the following procedure when conducting speed testing:
During testing, row at least six pieces, switching between the two oars or sets of sculls for each piece. Do as many pieces as possible to see if a pattern evolves.
Do not change anything other than the oars being tested. If you change other factors during a test, you will not know which change made the difference.
Row all pieces at maximum effort, because it is easier to be consistent. Avoid testing with longer pieces, as they require pacing and other factors that could skew your testing results.
Timing accuracy is critical, and timing a fixed number of strokes (versus timing a distance) is the most accurate method. Set the speed meter so that you have 10 strokes to get up to speed, then start recording speed data for the next 40 strokes.
If you choose to time a distance, make sure it’s at least 500m. This minimizes the effects that result from differences as to when a piece begins and ends relative to the stroke cycle.
Do not look at any results until all pieces are complete, as knowing the results during the test may affect your performance. Cover the speed portion of the display with a piece of tape during testing.
Only test during calm conditions, and row all pieces in the same wind direction. Changes in a tailwind have less effect than a headwind.
Evaluating Results
Peter and Dick use the following principles to evaluate results:
Graph the results and calculate the difference in speed as a percentage.
Because day-to-day variation is too great, stick to comparing trials that were done on the same day.
Test the same variable several days before making a conclusion.
Keep in mind that test results only apply directly to the crew doing the testing.
Success loves preparation, and it’s not uncommon to see athletes heading into the last months of the year, without a clear goal for the next year, and an understanding of what they need to do to achieve their goals. With the off season in Europe and America and with at least 6-months to racing in most of the world, we have an opportunity, to reflect on results from 2022, what went well and what can be improved for next year. Question is, will you take time to reflect and plan?
I thought I’d share the approach I use, along with the approaches from super successful masters athletes and coaches, with the intention of inspiring and even challenging you, in your approach to setting up, and preparing for the year ahead.
First, take some time off
Many rowers feel that they shouldn’t take a break at the end of the season. I like to take at least 3-weeks off, and sometimes 4-weeks. Rest the body and mind. Build up an appetite to get back in the boat, gym and ergo, to train through the off season. I use this time to build up my reserves, and to reflect what I need to do to go faster next year.
Review the year
Take some time to reflect on the year to date. What did you do this year, and how has it worked out?
What I review
Total training hours vs. prior year
Total annual training stress score (TSS) and total TSS in the last 8-weeks leading to a target race vs. plan vs. prior year
Percentage of time spent in high vs. low intensity vs. target
Number of strength sessions and progression in power to weight
Online and actual regattas, how’d you go? What were your results?
What blocked you and what would you do differently in hindsight?
New things you tried out during the year. Technique or equipment, how’d it go?
S Seiler & E Tonnessen (2009)
Some points to consider in reviewing the year
How did you do on the basics; sleep, nutrition and training consistency?
Did you complete all the sessions you planned, or did you miss some due to injury, fatigue or work etc…
Did you advance your technique (ergo & boat) to go faster? It’s noticeable at all intensities/power output, when rowers improve their technique. How’d you go? Are you getting the right advice? Have you consulted someone to help you? Are you focusing on the improvement or did you just go through the motions.
Did your aerobic efficiency improve over time? e.g. more power (watts) at your aerobic threshold. Did you measure this?
Did you improve your power at your anaerobic threshold?
Did your power and strength improve with training? Is this something you track and manage?
So What! Identify areas for improvement
Now that you have the what identified, i.e. data points from the season, a good question to consider is, so what? With good data from the year, you can start making informed decisions, on where to focus in the year ahead.
In my interview with multiple HOCR winner, Greg Benning, this is what he had to say about planning the year.
Goal #1: Do it better every year
Accretive: Start with prior year, try new stuff, keep best ideas
Incremental Gains: Keeping a list of strengths, weaknesses, measuring
Faster podcast interview with Greg Benning (2020)
If your power fades and you can’t last in a race, you may need to spend time building your aerobic base?
If you find that your power to weight has decreased, it will be time to get into the gym and build the strength over the months of Nov – Jan.
You have good times on the ergo yet this doesn’t translate to speed on the water in comparison to your peers. Time to get some technical advice and engage a coach.
Use the off season to invest
I use the time now to plan forward for next year, with a strong focus on what I need to do in the off season, to be ready for the base training in 4-months time.
Systems and tools to help me track and analyse performance
Getting crystal clear on the main target events, and how these fit around family and work
Identify clearly the gaps I need to close and the plan to close them
Planning out the main training phases.
Complete a strength and power block. Targeting an increase in lean muscle mass, before the high volume endurance work starts
Close the gaps in weak areas. For example, I may want to work on a specific area for strength improvement or flexibility.
Review and Plan are key aspects of success in life, business and sport. I hope that some of the points I have raised, challenge and inspire you, to review what you have done, and identify areas that will help you to go faster.
I am very lucky to live only 2 hours drive away from Lucerne and what the locals call ‘God’s Lake’ the Rotsee. So when World Rowing came to town, twice, it was a great opportunity to go and watch what the world’s best row, and share some observations from the two weekends of great racing.
Great organisation around weather & viruses
Moving the finals at the FOCR. The finals were planned for the Monday, always a strange arrangement, yet the weather conspired to bring the finals forward to the Sunday. Superb collaboration between the Lucerne regatta organisation and the Meteo team. The predicted weather that would’ve resulted in unfair racing early on, they debated, decided and took the decision fast. Unlucky for the TV crews that were unable to set up a day in advance, yet superb organisation for the athletes and teams.
The COVID-19 plan was clear to all attending and well executed. Athletes and teams were in front of the rowing centre with uninterrupted access to the water. The entire area was cordoned off, with all athletes requiring their accreditation to enter the area, and a laser temperature scan at the two entry points. Unfortunately for locals that wanted to watch, there were no big screens and no food stalls. That said, the Rotsee is an ideal place for a picnic and most spectators were watching the action on their phone up until 750m to go and then it was full HD Live action in front! Nice commentary from Martin Cross.
Boats & Equipment
Over the course of watching all the heats and finals, and after peering through the security fence into the boat yard, I was surprised to only see three different makes of boats in the finals. Filippi, Empacher and Hudson. I only saw one Hudson boat over the regatta (maybe I missed another) used to great effect to finish 2nd in the woman’s single scull final A. Empacher appears to be the choice by most nations for the eights, however more and more nations are choosing Filippi, with 104 boats, 61% of boats used in World Cup II and 69% of total medals (31) with crews rowing in a Filippi.
I noticed more and more stroke coaches being used by different a crew members in the boat. No longer reserved for the cox or the stroke, you can see the stroke coach strapped the the stroke man’s rear wing rigger for the bowman in the Romanian men’s pair, and just in front of the coxswain in the Dutch eight.
Use of the stroke coach throughout the boats. Photos taken from World Rowing live feed 2021.
Riggers
Rigger set up in the men’s eight final (what a race), the German & Netherlands crews were using the rear carbon wing and the winning crew, GB using a front carbon wing, with rear carbon support. The GB crews used the same set up in both their fours. Surprisingly, the Italian men’s four decided on a front aluminium wing set up, the only boat in the race to do so. On closer inspection in the boat park, Filippi are making a big statement with their new carbon wing design. This new design looks to be thinner and very aerodynamic.
Different rigger materials and location. Photos taken from World Rowing live feed 2021.
Integrated cables
The newer boats appear to be integrating cables and rudder mechanisms under the deck. Looks very tidy and must help with aerodynamics, and save the cables catching on boat trailers and storage racks. It looks like boat manufacturers are following the lead of road bike manufacturers, with tighter cable management and integration. Would make sense.
Steering cables integrated below deck on the Dutch woman’s 4- and Romanian men’s 2-. Photos taken from World Rowing live feed 2021.
Shoes
Boat manufacturers are taking on the BOA fixation system, first started by Bont Rowing and borrowing from cycling technology, now with Empacher bringing out their own version (made in Italy) and soon Filippi. This makes sense to me, as the BOA system helps to secure the foot in place, more so than laces or Velcro, and designed correctly, the release system is very effective.
Fins
Most of the crews were using the classical aluminium fin, and not the thinner elliptical fin. This fascinated me, as the Rotsee is known for its calm and fast following conditions with very little waves. According to the Australian Boatman, Mr Urs Graff, some of the crews were feeling the effects of the side wash from the returning TV crew boats and umpire boats. The wash was disturbing them, hence the choice to swap out the elliptical dagger fin for the more conventional aluminium fin.
Blades
Didn’t see many crews using the new Comp Blades from Concept2. In fact these blades we the unicorns at both regatta. It looked like most crews were sticking to the tried an tested Crocker oars or Concept2 blades, with a high proportion or crews using the skinny shaft option. Reviewing Dr Kleshnev’s data on the wind resistance of regular oar shafts vs. the wind cheating skinny’s, (see below) the advantage over 2,000m is about 2-3 seconds with the Skinny shaft.
How to START hydrated and why that’s so important.
Sharing original article from Andy Blow, Precision Hydration. Medically reviewed by Dr Tamara Hew-Butler. Precision Hydration support our newsletter subscribers with 10% off all purchases, when you use the discount code; Faster10 at checkout. www.precisionhydration.com
The benefits of starting exercise hydrated
Much of the literature on hydration has focused on what athletes should drink during exercise, but your hydration status before you start exercising can have a huge impact upon your athletic performance…
When people talk about hydration, most of the time it’s about what and how much athletes should drink during exercise.
These are clearly important questions, but your performance is also massively influenced by how hydrated you are when you start exercising in the first place. Drinking a strong electrolyte drink to optimise your hydration status before long, hot or really hard training sessions and events can significantly improve your performance.
We call this “preloading” and the practice has been widely studied in the last 20 years or so, both with astronauts and athletes. Whilst there’s not a completely bullet proof consensus on the subject – there rarely is – there’s strong evidence that taking in additional sodium with fluids before you start sweating is effective in promoting increased acute fluid retention and in improving endurance performance, especially in the heat.
This blog aims to give you a more solid understanding of what you can do to arrive at the start of your next event optimally hydrated.
What are the benefits of preloading?
Once you begin sweating you’re generally going to be fighting a losing battle against fluid and electrolyte loss, so starting off properly hydrated can be extremely beneficial. When you’re properly hydrated you have a larger reservoir of fluid to draw from over time than if you’re dehydrated.
Starting well hydrated has other benefits too. Optimal hydration maximises your blood volume and this helps general cardiovascular function and your ability to dissipate the heat produced by your working muscles. This reduces fatigue and enables you to maintain your performance for longer.
Despite the relatively obvious benefits of starting exercise well hydrated, a recent study of over 400 amateur athletes showed that around 31% of them were turning up to training sessions (and, in some cases, competitions) dehydrated!
In amongst the data there were strong indications that this was very likely to be compromising their performance. This will probably seem like common sense, especially if you’ve ever tried exercising when you know you’re a bit ‘dry’. Who in their right mind would want to start exercising hard in a dehydrated state if they’re trying to perform at their best?
The problem with starting exercise dehydrated
This study certainly backs up previous work I’ve read on the subject and the kind of things we’ve seen over many years working with athletes in different scenarios. It’s certainly not uncommon to see people only really thinking about hydration once they turn up to a session rather than preparing in advance.
Often this just happens because those of us who are not full time athletes are running around flat out between workouts and aren’t always able to think about preparing properly for them 100% of the time. That’s just life.
But it can also be a problem for full-time athletes when training two or more times a day, or at times when they’re just under a very high total training load. That’s because uncorrected dehydration from a prior training session can make it’s presence felt when the next session gets underway. This blog addresses how to optimise your recovery by hydrating properly.
Although athletes turning up to training a bit low on fluids is relatively common, it’s generally less of an issue before major competitions. That’s not to say that turning up to an event dehydrated never happens, I’m sure it does.
The dangers of overdrinking and hyponatremia
But, because most athletes care a lot about their performance in big events, there’s a tendency to increase fluid intake before the big day because extra priority is placed on all aspects of last minute preparation.
The irony of this extra emphasis on pre-event hydration is that quite a lot of athletes can go from slightly under-drinking before training to significantly over-drinking pre-competition and this can lead to a different set of problems!
I’ve written about the common tendency to over-drink before races in the past and the bottom line is that it’s a very real problem that can potentially lead to hyponatremia (i.e. low blood sodium levels caused by inadequately replacing the sodium lost when sweating and further dilution by drinking plain water or weak sports drinks), something that can be pretty catastrophic for health and performance if it goes unchecked. A recent study found that 10% of athletes tested at the Ironman European Championships had hyponatremia, which shows you the extent to which hydration issues might be impacting performance.
The idea of carb loading – i.e. maximising the amount of glycogen you have stored in your muscles and liver before a strenuous activity – is one that’s well researched and essentially universally accepted as a performance-enhancing tactic.
OK, so sports scientists love to argue over exactly what and how much you should eat, and when exactly to shove it in your cake hole, but few sane athletes would argue with the principle that consuming additional carbohydrate calories (often combined with a tapering off in training load) in the final days before an event is a good idea.
That’s because you can store up and subsequently use a lot of this energy later on when you need to dig deep and burn through large amounts of fuel during a long or hard effort.
With hydration things are less clear cut than with carbs. As we’ve seen, many athletes do tend to increase fluid intake prior to important events or hard training sessions, with the vague notion that having more in the tank should result in better performance. But many unfortunately over do it in the process and this is harming their performance.
The importance of sodium for hydration
But, can you actually store fluid over and above being normally hydrated and, if so, does it help to do so?
The answer has a lot to do with not just how much water you drink, but with how much sodium you consume with that water as it’s this electrolyte that plays a key role in retention of fluid in the body and in the bloodstream in particular. For more on why sodium is crucial to staying hydrated and maintaining your performance, you may want to read this blog.
In a nutshell though, without the right amount of sodium in your pre-exercise drinks, drinking lots of water will do you a fat lot of good. The importance of sodium to hydration and maintaining your performance was further proven by research conducted at NASA at the end of the 20th century.
NASA astronauts hydration study
NASA’s astronauts were commonly found to be suffering with low blood pressure because they were losing bodily fluids (and therefore blood volume) during their time in microgravity. One NASA paper I read suggested that astronauts live with as much as a 3-4% deficit in total body fluid levels during a typical mission. It was causing them to feel weak, light headed and even to black out on re-entry or once they landed back on terra firma. That’s not something you want to be dealing with when you’re trying to land a rather expensive space craft!
To combat this, NASA tested lots of drinks containing different carbohydrates and electrolyte mixtures and found that the more sodium you put in a drink, the more effective the drink would be at being retained in the body and bloodstream and correcting dehydration.
On top of the work by NASA, there have been a number of scientific studies conducted into the idea of athletes ‘preloading’ with sodium and fluids prior to exercise in the last few years and the key findings from this work were summarised in a paper back in 2013.
This review article essentially came to the same conclusion as NASA that sodium preloading with a drink strong enough to stimulate fluid retention in the blood stream, but not so strong that it caused other knock on issues, does seem to improve endurance performance.
As I mentioned, a higher blood volume means an easier time for your cardiovascular system when you’re exercising and also a bigger reservoir of fluids available to ‘lose’ through sweating if you need to cool down, as is the case when working your muscles hard and producing lots of metabolic heat.
However, due to the mechanisms that control fluid and electrolyte balance in the body, any attempt to preload with plain water inevitably just leads to more trips to the bathroom as your body tries it’s best to avoid an excessive dilution of your blood sodium levels, which would lead to hyponatremia if unchecked.
How to preload effectively
It’s about striking a balance between being aggressive enough to drive some extra fluid retention in your blood stream without this leading to gastro-intestinal issues or excessive fluid build-up making you feel bloated and sluggish.
Typical sports drinks – which generally contain ~200 to 500mg of sodium per litre – simply don’t cut it when it comes to preloading as they’re just way too dilute to make a meaningful difference to blood volume. The reality is it’s not vastly different from drinking water.
At the other extreme, most of the scientific studies that have been conducted in this area have looked at using extremely strong electrolyte drinks containing ~3,600mg of sodium per litre. That’s like drinking a bag of saline solution that would normally be put into you via an IV! Whilst this has been shown to be highly effective at boosting blood plasma volume, it’s has a tendency to cause upset stomachs, sickness or diarrhoea – something that is obviously very counterproductive when you’re trying to improve your performance!
One study back in 2014 looked at the effectiveness of 4 drink concentrations – Water, 1,380mg/l, 2,750mg/l and 3,680mg/l – to compare the effect they had on blood volume pre-exercise v how much sickness and diarrhoea they caused.
The athletes drank a set amount (17ml per kg of body weight, so about 1.2l for an average sized 70kg athlete) of each of the drinks and the more sodium that was in it, the more blood volume was increased, as you’d expect. But with the strongest drink, 6 of the 8 athletes experienced diarrhoea compared with zero issues with the 1,380mg/l drink and plain water.
That paper was of real interest to me as at Precision Hydration we’d already been experimenting with different concentrations of drink to use for preloading. I’d had lots of GI problems when trying 3,000mg/l+ drinks, so was already using less strong stuff and I was still finding it beneficial, so it was good to get some scientific confirmation that we were on the right track.
In the end we settled on a strength of 1,500mg/l (32oz) for our preloading drinks and these are available in the all-natural PH 1500 drink mix format as well as low-calorie H2Pro Hydrate 1500 effervescent tablets. 1,500mg/l seemed to be the ‘sweet spot’ in that it’s very palatable and easy on the gut (we never get comments about stomach upsets from using it) whilst still being effective at boosting your blood plasma volumes and getting you optimally hydrated before you start sweating.
If you want to test whether preloading improves your performance, follow this protocol before your next long/intense training session or B-race.
Preloading with PH 1500:
Drink 1 x PH 1500 with ~500ml (16oz) of water the evening before your activity.
Drink 1 x PH 1500 with ~500ml (16oz) of water about 90 minutes before you start. Finish your drink at least 45 minutes before you start to give your body time to fully absorb what it needs and pee out any excess.
Drink the PH 1500 in water you’d have drank anyway to ensure you don’t overdo it. The circa symbol (~) before the fluid total is key here as different athletes will drink differing amounts – for example, more petite athletes might typically drink less than larger athletes. One size won’t fit all, so use some trial and error with these guidelines to help work towards what is best for you when preloading.
DON’T just drink lots of water in the build-up to a race. You can end up diluting your body’s sodium levels before you start, increasing the risk of hyponatremia.
Why you should preload
Boosting your blood plasma volume before intense exercise is a proven way to enhance your performance, especially in hot conditions.
Having more blood makes it easier for your cardiovascular system to meet the competing demands of cooling you down and delivering oxygen to your muscles.
PH 1500 is very effective at increasing your plasma volume as it contains 3x more sodium than a typical sports drink. That extra sodium helps to pull water into your bloodstream and keep it there. This may allow you to get away with drinking considerably less in shorter/harder events where previously they would have had to try to consume more on the move (not easy when you’re flat out!). It can also help reduce the amount of times you need to pee before you start.
Preloading with PH 1500 can also help you avoid/alleviate muscle cramps, especially if you’re prone to suffering from them late on in events and especially when it’s hot. 89% of athletes with cramp who try preloading PH 1500say that it solves their problems.
You can’t preload anywhere near as effectively with weaker sports drinks as you’ll lose a large proportion of the fluid as urine. Or it’ll slosh around in your stomach without being properly absorbed.
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If you’re looking for a way to optimise your performance then testing sodium preloading is definitely worth a try. If you have any questions about how to preload effectively or need help optimising your approach, drop us an email.
