Traditionally, the fall season is the “non-traditional” season for rowing. It’s a time when the serious spring racing feels distant and what racing occurs is head-style and less consequential. While the racing results may not be as important, the opportunity to prepare for the spring is hugely so. Used wisely, the fall season sets up a team for spring success.

As soon as the athletes get going in the fall, begin to establish team culture. Doing so constructs a foundation to build upon all year long. Some think of culture as a list of rules and procedures. This is a good start but ultimately limiting because rules can’t cover everything, nor are rules always enforceable.

Culture consists of values, not just policies. It’s about how teammates respect one another, their opponents, and the challenge of racing. Ben Hunt Davis, an Olympic gold medalist, distills “culture” to “Will it make the boat go faster?” However you define it, be sure to communicate it at the beginning of the year and reinforce it all year long.

The fall season allows for building a base of endurance focused on aerobic conditioning. This means lots of lower-intensity work (U1) that trains the body to utilize oxygen, build more capillaries, and become more efficient.  Keep the rate low enough (less than 21strokes per minute) that the stroke requires some power and ratio. It’s wise to mix in about 15 percent of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). While this is beneficial physiologically, it’s even more important for teaching athletes to pull harder. The value of learning to row harder can never be overstated.

Every fall, the temptation is to focus on head races and do lots of simulated races in practice at higher rates. Too much of this threshold training at the expense of basic endurance will handicap the aerobic development needed for spring racing. It can hinder rowers also from learning to row a long stroke. Be careful of achieving fall speed at the expense of spring success.

Lower-intensity rowing allows also for more teaching of the rowing stroke. The fall is the best time for technical development. Take it slower and get it right. Teach everyone how you want them to row. Make sure each athlete knows how to take a stroke and move the boat.  Better still, help them understand why. Total team understanding is achievable in the fall, even if perfect execution is lacking, but without first understanding, you’ll never get sustained execution.

The fall should be less intense and a time for more overt fun. Get athletes hooked on rowing so they’re willing to do the arduous winter training. Alternating between sweep and sculling and across different boat sizes will help. Cross training—team hikes, soccer games, water-polo matches, running races—all serve the dual purpose of general conditioning and having fun.

So too will internal competition. It’s fun to race, and athletes become better racers doing so. Train and teach them all week and set up squad racing at the end of the week. This is standard practice in many collegiate rowing programs, and whether called “You-Pick-’Ems,” “PBR races,” “Friday Race Day,” or some other name, it generates terrific competition, good training, and great fun.

Programs that row in the fall typically have about 10 weeks of water time to work with. Used wisely, these weeks will help athletes build fitness, row better, learn to compete, have fun, and, most of all, set the team up for spring racing.

Come racing season, we all wish we had more time. That time exists in September, October, and November.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is a professional organization for sport-science researchers, exercise physiologists, dietitians, doctors, and athlete-care providers. Each year, at ACSM’s annual meeting, more than 3,000 sports-medicine professionals and scientists from around the globe gather to present their latest research.

At this year’s meeting in Denver, a lively session hosted by Professionals in Nutrition for Exercise and Science, a worldwide organization for sport nutritionists, addressed several topics that are currently hot, including some that may interest rowers:

Continuous Glucose Monitors

Continuous glucose monitors (CGM) can help athletes determine the best fueling tactics to maintain blood glucose levels within an energizing range and reduce needless bonking. This can be very helpful during endurance exercise such as long rows. Unfortunately, CGMs have yet to be perfected for athletes. The monitors can get dislodged from the body easily, and some studies show a failure rate of greater than 15 percent. The sport of cycling has banned CGMs during races, but many cyclists use them during training to learn how to “read” their body signals.

Pre-sleep protein

While extra evening protein is unlikely to offer a winning edge, it also will not cause harm or convert into body fat. Research to date shows that pre-sleep protein provides another opportunity to meet daily protein goals. More research is needed to determine if consuming pre-sleep protein will help enhance muscle recovery, tissue repair, sleep, or performance.

Free amino acids and bioactive peptides

When compared to the protein in whole foods, free amino acids are slightly less effective for muscle-protein synthesis. Consuming protein within its natural food matrix is best. Plus, free amino acids taste terrible (although they have improved over the years). Bioactive peptides (two to three amino acids linked together) are available for purchase but lack research to validate potential benefits. So why bother?

Bicarbonate supplementation

With high-intensity sports, sodium bicarbonate might offer a one-percent to two-percent improvement in performance. The standard dose is a third to a half gram per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight; the higher the dose, the greater the increase in performance—so long as the athlete can tolerate it. Capsules that bypass the gut help resolve gastrointestinal issues, and sodium bicarbonate encapsulated in a gel may provide further protection from side effects. Another option that bypasses the gut is sodium bicarbonate in lotion form. The athlete applies it 20 minutes before high-intensity exercise. The lotion feels nice, but how much gets absorbed specifically is unknown.

The lightest athlete is the best athlete.

While lighter and leaner enhances performance to a certain extent, being too light and lean can take a toll. The less food a rower consumes, the less protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, and minerals the rower consumes. This can hurt performance and recovery while enhancing the risk of getting injured.

A study with elite race walkers reported no performance advantage, or disadvantage, among dieting athletes in a training camp who lost two kilograms (about four and a half pounds) during the two weeks before a 10K race. The dieters and the non-dieting control group carb-loaded during the 24 hours before the race, and both performed similarly, with no significant benefit gained by having lost about four to five pounds pre-race. The ideal:  Rowers should fuel well to support optimal performance instead of dieting to become lighter.

Carbohydrates 

Despite popular belief, hungry rowers who consume a sports diet rich in quality carbohydrates do not get fat or become diabetic. The advice to limit carbs might be appropriate for unfit people, but fit rowers metabolize carbs preferentially and convert them into a winning source of muscle fuel.

Iron supplements

Iron supplements are absorbed better at 6 a.m. than 11a.m.; ergo, taking iron on an empty stomach is best. That said, iron can upset the stomach, and some rowers cannot tolerate iron if taken without food. For them, the best time to take iron is either before or 30 minutes after exercise, before the post-exercise elevation in hepcidin (a hormone that hinders iron absorption) diminishes its effectiveness. If a rower takes an iron supplement two hours after a hard exercise session, elevated hepcidin levels can reduce iron absorption by about 36 percent.

Sustainable sports diets

To perform well, rowers need access to good food and clean water, both of which depend on a healthy biosphere. We all need to honor the global dietary guidelines that integrate the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Living a sustainable lifestyle means eating adequate—but not excessive—protein; consuming at least one-third of protein from plants; minimizing food waste (for example, after team buffets, take home leftovers for the next day’s lunch); eating locally grown food (to reduce transportation emissions); and choosing food with minimal and biodegradable packaging (no Styrofoam!). A rower who advocates for a sustainable environment need not be vegan but should be mindful about dietary choices.

Vegetarians

Do vegetarians have a reduced risk of chronic disease because they eat less red meat and eat more plants? Plants are rich in phytochemicals (which reduce inflammation), dietary nitrates (which improve blood flow), and many other performance-enhancing nutrients. A vegetarian diet imparts no obvious advantage, or disadvantage, for athletic performance. Meat eaters looking for a path toward vegetarianism can honor Meatless Mondays and enjoy a plant-based diet with smaller meat portions the rest of the week. Small steps can indeed have an environmental impact.

Alcohol

BORG drinking (Black-Out Rage Gallon drinking, in case you’re unfamiliar with the fad), is a mixture of water, alcohol, sweet flavorings, and electrolytes, which supposedly offer hangover protection, in a one-gallon plastic jug. The concoction is popular on some college campuses because it’s easy to drink and over-consume. An ounce of alcohol takes about an hour to break down, and too many ounces can hinder training and performance as well as sleep. When it comes to conferring a competitive edge, BORG drinking is good only if the other team is doing the indulging. 

Head-racing season is upon us, and with it a new set of challenges to manage and skills to perfect. While it’s fun to focus on the perfect line down a course or the ideal angle to approach a bridge, it’s important to remember the basics, especially if you’re newer to head racing.

This fall, don’t take the humble skill of passing for granted. Any seasoned watcher of head races can tell you that a surprising variety of clashes and collisions is caused each year by coxswains and crews not executing a pass cleanly.

The foundational element of passing is understanding how your boat is traveling through the water—how fast and how predictably it moves and how easily it turns.

First, you need to assess how fast you’re approaching the boat ahead of you. To overtake cleanly, you need to anticipate both how quickly you’ll be able to overtake as well as where on the course the pass will occur so that you can account for any obstacles—buoys, boats, or the left-hand abutment of Weeks Bridge. You also need to know what kind of pressure that passed boat is going to be able to apply to you once you’re ahead of them.

As the overtaking boat, you get to select the line you want. Make sure as you approach that you keep your bow pointed to the side you want to take. Once you’re a length and closing in, make the call to the coxswain in front of you to yield off the racing line, preferably using the team’s name. There’s a lot going on during races, so you might have to repeat yourself. Ensure that you’re projecting confidence to your rowers, even if the other coxswain doesn’t respond immediately.

Remember your earlier assessment of any potential obstacles? This is to ensure that you won’t make the mistake of asking the other coxswain to yield off the course or into a bridge. No matter how much you may want a particular line, the other boat can’t disappear into thin air. Leave enough room for the blades of both boats; clashes slow you down. If you’re passing around a turn, make sure you know your rudder and your rowers so that you can make your inside turn confidently. It’s always best to leave a margin for error between the boats in case your opponent’s turn is sharper or shallower than you anticipate.

If you’ve come off your preferred line to make the pass, make sure that your stern is clear of your competitor’s blades and bow before you pull back directly in front. Awareness of where your stern ends and how much it swings is more challenging in a bowloader, so this is a skill worth practicing if you’re coxing a four.

Once you’ve completed the pass and established yourself fully on the racing line you want, be sure to continue moving away from the boat behind you. Every opportunity to pass should be fun, so let that shine through in your coxing. Use that momentum to help keep up boat speed after you’ve completed the pass to shut the door firmly.

Sometimes in life you’re the passing boat and sometimes you’re the yielding boat. If you must yield, do it quickly, quietly, and with minimal disruption to your race plan or rhythm. Don’t let the speed of the boat fall off after the pass. Give your boat a goal and a focus, and provide the crew with the feedback and energy to reach that goal.