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    Day One SIRA Photo Gallery

    Here are a few of our favorite photos from the first day of racing at the 2017 SIRA Championship.

    Washington Holds Top Position in Third USRowing/CRCA Poll

    PRINCETON, N.J. — University of Washington had a strong weekend of racing and was the consensus pick as the top Division I program in the third USRowing/Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association Division I, II and III Collegiate Rowing Polls, presented by Pocock Racing Shells.
    Washington won all seven of its races against UCLA, University of Oregon and Washington State University Saturday morning on Dexter Lake, Ore. to earn all 25 first-place votes.
    The University of California, Berkeley ranked second after winning 13 of 13 races at the Lake Natoma Invitational. Following last week’s rankings, University of Michigan was third, the Ohio State University fourth and University of Texas fifth.
    In the DII poll, Western Washington reclaimed sole possession of its number one ranking and earned three first-place votes. The Vikings are looking to take home another win Saturday, April 15 at the Covered Bridge Regatta.
    Ranked second in the DII poll was Florida Institute of Technology who’s winning finish in the club eight at the Knecht Cup on Mercer Lake, N.J. earned them two first-place votes. University of Central Oklahoma and Humboldt State University maintained their places at third and fourth respectively. Barry University rounded out the top five, moving up one place from last week’s poll.
    Division III Bates College took six first-place votes, leading the pack after its top two eights swept a four-team field on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass. Bates beat Wellesley College, Worcester Polytechnic, and Trinity College.
    Wesleyan University ranks second with three first-place votes and Williams College finished third. Wellesley College and Ithaca College (one first-place vote) completed the top five.


    Women’s NCAA Division I Team Rankings

    Rank  Team Total Votes Prior Ranking
    1 University of Washington (25) 490 1
    2 University of California, Berkeley 463 2
    3 University of Michigan 436 3
    4 Ohio State University 378 4
    5 University of Texas 375 5
    6 Princeton University 352 8
    7 Stanford University 346 6
    8 Yale University 333 7
    9 Brown University 314 9
    10 University of Virginia 291 10
    11 University of Wisconsin 259 11
    12 University of Iowa 244 13
    13 University of Southern California 184 12
    14 Washington State University 150 15
    15 Harvard University 143 14
    16 Michigan State University 97 16
    17 Syracuse University 89 17
    18 University of Louisville 64 19
    19 Indiana University 62 18
    20 Duke University 44 20
    Others Receiving Votes in Alphabetical Order: Gonzaga University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Tennessee

    Women’s NCAA Division II Team Rankings

    Rank  Team Total Votes Prior Ranking
    1 Western Washington University (3) 180 1t
    2 Florida Institute of Technology (2) 167 1t
    3 University of Central Oklahoma 162 3
    4 Humboldt State University 122 4
    5 Barry University 72 6
    6 Mercyhurst University 60 8
    7 University of California, San Diego 50 7
    8 Nova Southeastern University 45 5
    Others Receiving Votes: Philadelphia University (42)

    Women’s NCAA Division III Team Rankings

    Rank  Team Total Votes Prior Ranking
    1 Bates (6) 146 1t
    2 Wesleyan University (3) 134 1t
    3 Williams College 132 3
    4 Wellesley College 119 4
    5 Ithaca College (1) 114 5
    6 Tufts University 94 6
    7 Pacific Lutheran University 83 7
    8 Hamilton College 73 11
    9 WPI 66 9t
    10 Rochester institute of Technology 57 8
    11 Washington College 47 12
    12 William Smith College 44 9t
    13 Colby College 34 14
    14 Lewis and Clark College 17 15
    15 Franklin & Marshall College 11 NR
    Other Receiving Votes: University of Puget Sound (9), Smith College (9), Trinity College (7), Mount Holyoke College (4)

     
    Click here for past poll results.

    Get a Leg Up

    Social media makes it easy for people to ask me for training tips, workouts, or videos. Recently I received this message from a woman just getting started with indoor rowing. “I am an avid runner and purchased your WaterRowerGx rowing machine so I could have more of an upper-body/total-body workout. Here is the problem. I keep reading about how the power in rowing comes from the legs, but I don’t feel like I am giving my legs a workout. I have the order correct, pushing with my legs first and then using the core and arms, but I don’t feel any power from the legs. Any tips on what I might be doing wrong?”
    The leg drive—leg connection and leg power—is indeed the power player in rowing. Whether you are starting cross-training on an indoor rower or fine-tuning your boat speed, without leg engagement, you’re not going to get anywhere. Try these simple tips and workout to begin leveraging this most powerful muscle group.
    1. As you initiate the stroke with the legs, make sure your handle and seat simultaneously move backwards. If the seat moves by itself, independently of the handle, you are pushing with the legs first, but you don’t have the resistance or “grip on the water.”
    2. As you begin to push with the legs, pay attention to the tugging feeling on your fingers from the handle as the energy from your legs travels up through the core, out to the arms, to the fingers, and finally to the flywheel.
    3. Still not feeling it? Push harder and quicker with the legs right from the catch. On each drive, think like you are trying to jump off the back of the machine as far as you can.
    Warm-up: 5-10 minutes of easy rowing focusing on pushing with the legs first, then opening with the core/torso, and finally drawing the arms to the chest. On the return just reverse it and take twice as long coming forward as you do going backwards.
    Austin Meyer racing in the lightweight men’s single at last year’s World Rowing Cup in Lucerne.
    The Workout:
    6 minutes with 1 minute easy at a 20; 1 minute medium at a 20; 1 minute hard at a 20; 1 minute easy at a 22; 1 minute medium at a 22; and 1 minute hard at a 22. Rest for 90 seconds.
    Repeat the same sequence, upping the stroke rate to 24 and 26 strokes per minute respectively. Rest for 2-3 minutes.
    Repeat the 6-minute sequence, going back to a 20 and 22 respectively. Break 90 seconds.
    Repeat the sequence one last time, with stroke rate changes of 22 and 28 strokes per minute respectively. Maintain the leg connection at the higher rate.

    Core Curriculum

    Dear Doctor Rowing, I’ve been out of the game for a number of years but have recently begun to row a single. I’ve checked out a number of websites and watched a bunch of coaches on YouTube. Years ago, I learned the legs-back-arms method of applying power and it’s always worked for me. But lately down at the club all I hear is talk of “the core.” What’s with all this emphasis on the core?
    —Back in the Day
    Don’t worry. You’ll be OK because you’ve got the most important thing right, power. By focusing on power application and not some incidental thing like “the set,” you’ll move a boat. I know what you mean, though. The core is one of those terms that seems to have come out of nowhere, like gluten-free. Like mushrooms, suddenly it’s everywhere.
    While these new-fangled ideas can be annoying, I’m here to tell you that it makes sense to think about the core. When coaches and trainers talk about your “core,” what are they talking about? It’s more than simply the abs, the six-packs that look so great on the beach. You know how toward the end of races it gets harder to keep good body position, how you begin to feel like you are falling into the catch instead of floating into it under control? That’s because your core endurance is suspect.
    I heard an excellent presentation about exactly this last month at our annual league meeting. Tyler Page, a high school rowing coach in Stonington, Connecticut, presented a very informative lecture. He is also a chiropractor and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. I won’t try to recreate everything he said, but here are a few things I took away from his talk.
    The core is not just the muscles. Bone, cartilage, and ligaments also make up the core. These tissues are fraught with the possibility of injury, as we all know, and it is very important that the load that we place on them is neither too heavy, which could lead to injury, or too light, which could cause them to atrophy and weaken.
    Why do so many rowers have back pain? We know that rowing has both a forward lean (flexion) and a lay back (compression of the tissues). Page likened the tissues that make up the spinal column to a credit card. If you fold it back and forth in the same spot, eventually, that crease will deepen and crack. That’s not to say that rowing will cause your tissues to break eventually; a good coach should know not to overload or overdo these tissues. Perhaps the worst exercises that an athlete can do are the Roman chair (When you climb onto the device, hook your ankles under some padding, lie face down with a pad supporting the hips and then flex upward, a kind of opposite sit-up) and the Superman—the one where you lie face down, and raise the arms like the Man of Steel flying through the air while also lifting the legs. These both compress the lower back to an extreme degree. Having all the extremities raised creates the potential for too much compression in the spine.
    While doing core exercises, you should practice “abdominal bracing”—tightening your muscles like you are going to get punched in the gut. Don’t suck it in; tighten. When you breathe, let yourself “get fat.” Page emphasized that core endurance is the ability to sustain proper stability and control. This stability is what he calls “super stiffness,” but he stressed that one should keep a neutral curve in the lower back (lumbar). Do not try to flatten the lower back. The stick-up-the-butt posture is never what we are looking for.
    When doing core work, technique and execution are important, just like they are in rowing. Don’t speed through an exercise. Do your exercises with focus. Do them right. In order to emphasize endurance, he suggests timing them instead of doing reps. Start with 30 seconds on, 30 off and work up to 50 on, 10 off.
    Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned was that Page suggests not doing core routines on steady-state days. “They will already have done a lot of flexion extension cycles on steady state days. Do core routines after shorter, harder intervals.”
    By now we all know that there is no secret formula to training or to winning races. Smart, logical training of the important muscles will yield the results we want. I especially liked hearing that the best core exercise for rowing is…drum roll…rowing. It works exactly the right muscles. When the rowing deteriorates, and is bad, Page suggests stopping. That makes a lot of sense to this coach. Is this a new idea or an old one? Whatever the provenance, I’d suggest it is a good one.

    The best in rowing announced in the 2017 Thomas Keller medal short list

    For immediate release
    Lausanne, 10 April 2017
    The most prestigious medal awarded in rowing, the Thomas Keller Medal, has been narrowed down to six finalists by the World Rowing Federation, FISA.
    The finalist list is dominated by two top rowing nations, Great Britain and the United States with a para-rower reaching the finals for the first time. Following public nominations, the finalists for the 2017 Thomas Keller Medal are (in alphabetical order):

    • Tom Aggar (GBR)
    • Caryn Davies (USA)
    • Katherine Grainger (GBR)
    • Eleanor Logan (USA)
    • Greg Searle (GBR)
    • Andrew T Hodge (GBR)

    Created in 1990, the Thomas Keller Medal celebrates athletes who have had an outstanding career in rowing. It honours those who have shown exemplary sportsmanship and technical mastery of the sport as well as having shown a legendary aspect both in and outside of their rowing career.
    Finalists Bios
    Tom Aggar – Great Britain
    Aggar is a legend of para-rowing. He first raced internationally in 2007 and instantly found success, beginning a winning streak that lasted for the next four years. This included Aggar winning gold in the para men’s single sculls at the 2008 Paralympic Games. This was the debut Games for para-rowing. Aggar continued through to the London 2012 Paralympic Games, but missed out on a medal. He persisted and came back to take bronze the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games before retiring.
    Caryn Davies – United States
    Davies is described as the epitome of the scholar-athlete. Having earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Harvard University in 2005 and a Doctor of Law degree from Columbia University in 2013, she also was twice Olympic Champion and a four-time World Champion between 2002 and 2012. She has stroked the USA women’s eight repeatedly since its winning streak began in 2006 and helped the boat set two World Best Times. Davies then went on to do an MBA at Oxford University in Great Britain and during that time she stroked the women’s Oxford boat to victory in the 2015 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.
    Katherine Grainger – Great Britain
    Grainger is Great Britain’s most decorated female Olympian with five Olympic medals including gold from the London 2012 Olympic Games. These medals show Grainger’s all-round brilliance and longevity in the sport having won Olympic medals in the women’s quadruple sculls, pair and double sculls. Grainger also has won eight medals at the World Rowing Championships. Off the water Grainger achieved a PhD in law and, now retired, stays actively involved in rowing.
    Eleanor Logan – United States
    Logan became the United States’ greatest Olympic women’s rower after winning her third consecutive Olympic gold at the Rio 2016 Olympics. These medals all came from being part of the formidable US women’s eight. But Logan has also competed in other boats including the women’s single, pair and four at World Championship level.
    Greg Searle – Great Britain
    Between 1990 and 2000 Searle raced at three Olympic Games and at seven World Rowing Championships. During this time he won Olympic gold in 1992 and Olympic silver in 1996 as well as five World Championship medals in a variety of sweep boat classes, from the eight to the four to the coxed pair, as well as in one sculling event, the men’s single sculls. Following a fourth-place finish in the men’s pair at the Sydney Games, Searle retired from the sport for nine years, only to come back and compete at the highest level of competition in his late thirties. He finished his rowing career by medalling at the London 2012 Olympic Games, 20 years after competing at his first Olympic Games in 1992.
    Andrew T Hodge – Great Britain
    A three-time Olympic Champion, Hodge has been a mainstay among Great Britain’s elite squad for 15 years. This was despite a bout of illness that saw Hodge having to fight to get back into his country’s top boats in 2016. He managed to swap successfully between the men’s eight, four and pair during his career which ended with gold in the men’s eight at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
    The winner will be announced on 29 June 2017 and awarded at the 2017 World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland on Saturday evening, 8 July 2017. During the award ceremony, an 18-carat gold medal will be bestowed by Dominik Keller, the son of FISA’s former president Thomas Keller, to the winner.
    For a full list of winners, please click here. http://www.worldrowing.com/athletes/thomas-keller-medal

    On Rest and Recovery

    Sleep-deprived athletes compromise their ability to win. Why? Because coaches design stressful practices intended to generate physiological adaptations, and rest is a big part of the equation. When I coached juniors, I mandated they get a minimum of eight hours sleep a night. Whether they all complied is hard to say, but the rule helped make the point of the necessity of regular sleep in order to be ready for the next day. Generally, your rowers will know when they have not had enough rest. In addition to talking with my athletes about their sleep needs, I kept track of their resting heart rate when they awoke. Heart rates that exceeded the norm indicated either insufficient rest or the onset of sickness. Many rowers can improve their hours of sleep by organizing their days better and planning ahead. Procrastination may be sleep’s worst enemy. You can predict that you won’t get a lot of quality sleep the night before a big race. My oarsmen and women knew the importance of getting a good sleep “the night before the night before.” And for those who had a bad night’s sleep, a nap can help. Ten to 20 minutes is all that’s required to make you feel more alert and on your game. 

    Princeton Makes History While Mother Nature Wins Knecht Cup

    Today, in historic fashion, the Princeton Tigers beat out the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University to win the 2017 Child’s Cup for the 50th time in the annual events 107th iteration. The University of Pennsylvania came in behind the Tigers with the Columbia Lions trailing in third place in the varsity eight.
    Meanwhile, a few minutes from the racing on Lake Carnegie, Mercer Lake was getting blasted by heavy winds. Only nine races took place today at this year’s Knecht Cup before racing was suspended until Sunday due to high winds. Sunday’s schedule has been adjusted to make up for the postponed races. For a full list of results and the adjusted schedule visit http://www.regattaworks.com/knecht/schedule.php?id=139.
     

    Miles Make Champions

    Masters are known for their endurance—it’s one of the good parts of aging—so we should build on our strengths. If you have worked on general strength and endurance in the winter, your periodization focus in April should be on improving your endurance. Rowing long distances at low rates may not be exciting, but it’s what is needed. Rowing with a partner or partners can help with the tedium. If speeds vary among the group, work in some turns rather than adjusting your rate and pressure. To keep your focus, insert a few 10s or 20-stroke sprints. You can also use interval training to build endurance. Row any predetermined distance, such as 500 meters. Record the time. Paddle the same distance and then repeat the interval, only pushing harder. Keep repeating the intervals until your times slow or your rowing begins to break down. Next day out, return to long, low-rate rowing. Maintain this focus for the remainder of the month while working on technique. In May, begin incorporating speed work, followed by an even greater focus on speed in June. After this periodization training, you will be well-prepared for racing.