TRAINING SCHEDULE

Before you go into your weight lifting land training it is always  important to remind ourselves that we are starting our training session not to break any world record nor personal best! We do go and train with weights to BECOME BETTER ROWERS!

In many cases, lifting the absolute most that you can is NOT actually making you a better rower, so always ask yourself "am I using this activity correctly to become a better rower?” How do we answer this question?

Always look at how the exercise you’re doing is linked to the movement you make while rowing! For example, one of the common exercise in land training is DEADLIFTING; a correctly performed deadlift teaches the rower to apply force through the legs while maintaining a braced torso to transfer power through the shoulders and arms to lift the barbell so it’s important that during the whole exercise it is the legs doing the job and not other muscles of the torso; the big mistake in deadlift is turning the lifting into a pull with the back rather than a push from the legs and hips! Rowers who are proficient in deadlifting know how to put power down with the legs while keeping a tight braced torso, the deadlift should look similar to a half-slide rowing stroke hence avoid too much knee flexion but also too much knee extension and keep your torso braced with a neutral spine (avoid spinal flexion!) - we want to replicate the rowing stroke motion and not turn the deadlift into a squatting exercise.

IT’S NOT ABOUT LIFTING BIG

IT’S ABOUT REPLICATING CORRECTLY THE RANGE OF MOTION

Nowadays there is plenty of information on the web relatively to rowing technique and exercises so without wanting to reinvent the wheel, I will be making references and linking to material available on internet which I consider to be of great value and easily understandable also by a junior beginner.

One web-page which I have been keeping as my 'rowing bible' when it comes to  rowing exercises is rowingstronger which I highly recommend you have a look to; in this section of our website I will be linking to this and other internet resources to describe and give additional information about the exercises which I will be using to design our training sessions.