This episode is packed with useful pointers for navigating the beginner rowing process as well as how to make it an enjoyable and productive experience. Lachlan and Ken Davey discuss how to put a training program together. When putting a plan together, it is essential to understand the goals of the people involved and their ability. All too often, coaches are guilty of trying to make individual rowers fit into a training program that may not suit them.
One crucial aspect which is oft forgotten is the training load. Too much work on a muscle or group of muscles can be as detrimental as not enough. Remember, keep it fun.
This episode is packed with useful pointers for navigating the beginner rowing process as well as how to make it an enjoyable and productive experience. Lachlan and Ken Davey discuss how to put a training program together. When putting a plan together, it is essential to understand the goals of the people involved and their ability. All too often, coaches are guilty of trying to make individual rowers fit into a training program that may not suit them.
One crucial aspect which is oft forgotten is the training load. Too much work on a muscle or group of muscles can be as detrimental as not enough. Remember, keep it fun.
So welcome to number four, podcasts of the decent rowing podcast series. I'm Lachlan Davey. I'm here with my dad, K en D avey, and together we have decent rowing. Today we're g oing t o talk about beginner training programs and more importantly, how you put them together, what things you should focus on and what things you should leave out of a training program. So I'd like to hear what you think a, a beginner program should look like and let maybe let us know. A couple of the things th at c oaches, mistakes coaches make when they are setting a training program for their, you know, be ginner c rew, li ke o ne who's not technically sound yet, they're still learning the process of it. Yeah, sure. The biggest,
Speaker 2:the issue I think is that most of the beginner programs don't have a lot of time. They feel they've got to get a lot of work done in a very short period of time. The athletes don't know how to ride much at all. And so they put them on the water and try and teach them how to row. And then at the same time they try to get them fit by running on the water. And the trouble with that is that
Lachlan Davey:if you're a picture back when you're a beginner athlete, you probably weren't running very well. Most beginners aren't. Yeah. And you wouldn't really know. I mean, it's one of those things that there's always all that specialist equipment that's designed specifically for wrong. So the rowing club will have like boats and ergos and I'd be really attempting to use them all the time. But uh, in reality, I think most most, uh, athletes haven't got the, the training under their belt to be able to perform well on those, on those things. And for session after session after session, like he really overload yourself, don't you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. And what happens is that if you get an athlete that's learning to ride and I, I started out and, and you decide on as a coach and say, right, we're going to row and we're going to do in 10 15 kilometer row and they can't row very well, then what happens is you're just ingraining a bad habit and doing a repeating over and over again and not good techniques, so we're much better off with beginners to teach them how to ride on the water shore and on an ergo supervised of course, and get them to ride really well and only then you can get to the point where you say, okay, now we're going to do some hard work and get fit on the water. Much better to get fit on on the land. Well, most beginner athletes like to run or swim or bike or rock climb or do circuits or something. Often you'll find that no one likes to do the mall. Yeah, but as long as I do something that's a cardio type strength combination fitness, then I think you'll find you get really good outcomes from a fitness perspective. Then on the water teaching the row really well and then by being fit, yes it's not rowing fit but they're fit and they know how to ride, then you'll find you get and you get
Lachlan Davey:pretty good outcomes if they can row well. And I think what you're sort of getting, well one of the problems with that is I think that people always, when they are learning to row, they want to go rowing. So like it'd be hard to a junior athletes I'd imagine to go for a run instead of going for RO because they're there for rowing and they'll just want to roll as much as possible. So you sort of have to hit that middle ground between overdoing it on the water and you know, and grading bad habits and all that, but also keeping them interested in fostering that sort of love for the sport.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well I think you'll find in most cases though, there's limited time when they can row. If you think about school athletes then generally only get three sessions a week where they are on the water rowing. And so I use all of those. Yes. Coz techniques onsite. This level is more important than fitness. Being able to ride a well a boat or run really well if you do it, do it right. Yep. And so I'd teach them how to run. I'm not saying you don't go out for a fair lengthy ride and that's okay. It's just we're not looking for distance. We're looking for skills development technique. As long as it's not too cold, then you can spend a lot of time just refining technique, doing drills, break it up, different sorts of drills focused on different things, but, but do it really carefully and you can have a long time in the water. The only caveat to that would be that generally younger athletes have a short attention span and so if you go out for a ride for an hour, you'll probably get away with it and get good attention for most of it depending on the athlete. But if you go out for two hour row at that age group, you probably find that far too long because they won't, they just won't be listening after a while.
Lachlan Davey:Yeah. I, even when I, I go for Rose, like a generally speaking, yeah, the training sessions are like an hour and a half to two hours. That's the sort of standard. But you know, I really find that I only have a good row for maybe an hour of that. And then after that it becomes harder to, you know, focus on your technique and, and have a good time. You're just really out there spending hours and so, so maybe it'd be better spending now if you want to do more training, come back and go for a run. Absolutely. Or all get on the bike or something like that. Just to mix it up.
Speaker 2:If you've got time for that too. There's a couple of tricks you can use. If you have a group of athletes and they're with you for say two hours and you've got your click to get on the water and it's efficient and it works, then uh, I'd be suggesting initially do the technique work first while they're fresh. Yup. And then come back in and then do some exercise. Like go for a run or some circuit training or some game that's entertaining but, but reasonably physical and you'll find that that works pretty well. It's actually handy sometimes to do it the other way around. So when you've got the athletes who are reasonably okay at running, then you can do the fitness hard work first and then get on the water because everyone's going to be tired and it'll be easier for harder for them to ride properly. And therefore good lesson.
Lachlan Davey:Yeah, harder thumbs are out properly. But also, you know, if they get down to training they usually full of beans and you know, you probably need something to tie them out before they're in the right sort of head space to take in the rowing. Otherwise they'd be too jacked up though we talking, you know, just really off focusing on the task at hand so you know, or Ron could tone them down a little bit. It gives them the gain and also give you a chance to plan what you want to do with the rest of the session and be really concise with a whatever you're teaching.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think, I think it's very important to manage that, that side of it, but if you try and get the athletes to get on the water and go for a really long ride, it's meant to be hard work, then you'll find that the natural rowing technique will suffer and so definitely not a thing to do. The other thing that I think is really important to add coaching at that level is that the athletes, particularly athletes these days, really want to understand why they're doing something, why it works, what's the purpose, and so I think education is a really important part of it. What I've been doing recently with programs that I'll put out is I would put her in the program. I'd put on say five times a week, I'd put a link to a video, and so if we're going to deal with the catch today and we're focusing on the catch, then I'd give them a video or two a day or two before. So they actually understand what we're trying to achieve because I think that the more an athlete understands what they're trying to do and why they're doing it, the better the outcome you will get because they, they are there to learn and they want to write well and write fast because any roll we'll tell you Ryan in a boat that's going well, it's a great feeling. And so the quicker you can get them to have that feeling, then the quicker you're going to get good performance. So education, I think
Lachlan Davey:there's no doubt that, you know, if you could get them to watch a video or read something about, you know, about Rome before they go to the session, that would be good. Uh, I can't imagine a lot of people, people doing it, um, leaning out. Like you said, you might, if you had a school crew like a, you know, senior aide or an under 16 eight or something like that. Um, yeah, that's, that's asking a lot of them.
Speaker 2:It is. But if the video is short or if it's a two or three minute video, then it's not a big hardship. And if it's on their phone, in the program, in a PDF format and they can watch it on their way
Lachlan Davey:and just, uh, just watching it before you go out on the water. So, and so, you know, instead of asking them to do it off their own, but just having as much as, you know, supervised learning or, or even training, like it'd be much more beneficial I'd imagine for those crews if instead of, you know, saying go for a something. Yeah, 30 minute run. If the coach was there to send them off on that 30 minute run. I mean it's not always possible, but I think you'd get a much more consistent results and people trying a bit harder, perhaps much better.
Speaker 2:And then the wild suggestion is having in the program so that they can watch it. Cause you'll find some athletes who are really keen to watch it and they want to get more knowledge and, and tell them where to go on the website to find things in their life. I think that's great. And then when you get to the shed a really good buy to focus on the session, it's the sessions about the catch. And I is nearly, I'd suggest not having too many focus elements in each session because they'll get confused. But if you've got a session on the couch and I'd suggest you get them there, show them a video of the catch the w, one of the educational videos to say this is how we want execute the catch. And then if you can show them a bit of footage of them as a crew doing the same part of the rowing process, like for example, the way that they take the catch. Yeah. I had a great experience with a crew last year where I filmed them in an H taking the catch and then I'll put that up on the screen and I showed them a film of a good athlete taking a catch one of educational videos. I actually did it the other way. I showed them and have the video of the glue one first and I showed them a video and one of the, one of the girls in the courage just burst out laughing because she could see that the way her blade went into the water, she didn't finish rowing by the time it got into the water, pretty much the strike was over. And so it really reinforced for them what we were trying to achieve and and they understood how to go about doing it. And then when you go out onto the water you can have a really good session cause they know what they're looking for. Yeah. And I think it's really, so education I think is vital to getting good performance.
Lachlan Davey:Yeah. But also as part of the training, you mentioned that, but you didn't really go into it about the importance of actually videoing the athlete and showing them afterwards. Oh cause I know that I went for a rode the other morning. I set up a GoPro off off my site. Rager just looking, you know, off a backstay or looking straight across straight across the boat. And I felt like at the finish, like I was tapping down and feathering like flat wrists. Yeah, yeah. Nice strong position. But in reality what I was doing was tapping down, dropping the wrists, and then by the time I got to about here, I'd somehow by some magic, you know, still, I don't know how it happens, move my hands back up to flat, flat wrists. And then I was fine for the rest of the stroke, but I felt like I was doing it right. But clearly I wasn't. And then this morning when I went for a row, I had that in mind. So I knew that when I tapped down I really had to focus on keeping them flat. I find it made it a lot more easy for me to tap out and keep my blades at a consistent height on the way forward. But you know, you've been out with out with me rowing, I've been out rowing and you know, to the naked eye it sort of looks okay. But when we slowed it down 60 frames a second, you could, it's very obvious what was happening. And you can still can't really tell how, how the, you know, the risks, but it moved the way they did know that it was happening. There's no doubt it happens and it's, it really makes it clear as day if you're trying to improve technique and it makes it clear to the athlete, they're like, well, you know, I felt like I'm fine, but then you're like, well obviously you're not and you can, you know, you have that in your mind that that slow motion footage when you go to the road next time it's there for you.
Speaker 2:The other thing it does too, if you do that, then the athletes see what's happening. They understand the difference because it's clear and visual and most athletes can understand that. And then that actually starts to get them more interested in understanding what they should be doing and why they should be doing it. Yeah. And then they're more likely to watch the videos.
Lachlan Davey:Yeah. Well, it's like any sport, the or anything really that if you don't know anything about a certain area or a certain sport or hobby or something like that, you're not going to be in it. You just, that's right. But you know, if you start getting little bits of information and more and more, you become really interested and um, you know, you, you know, you might end up sticking with that hobby or sport and yeah, I think wrong. It's one of those great sports where there's just so much, so much things to understand. Like it's just insane the amount of detail that you can go into with all different aspects and sort of fostering that learning experience with, with video. I think it's a really good idea.
Speaker 2:Uh, and I think most people will like doing something they're good at and uh, and the why to get good at something is to understand it, do it correctly and practice it. And if we can give them the understanding and the in the boat, make sure that they're doing it the right way so everything's done as best can be. Then without the workload, without all that pressure, then you'll find that when you do start to put the pressure on, we find that they, they perform really quite well. Yup. And we've all seen boats out there and a regatta where there's a boat that's miles didn't, we're not miles is, there's hundreds of meters in front. They were doing half the writing of the rest of the crews and the boat just seems to be going by itself. And everyone else was rushing up and down the slide and bashing away. But the reason is that those athletes generally aren't fitter. The generally aren't strong, particularly in the younger age records. Yeah. They're just rowing well. And so if they row well and they're reasonably fit, then they'll get a good experience and then I'll get better at it. And then I can use on water trying to improve their fitness and then they get better again because they're really focusing on that modality. So, yeah, I think it's critical to, to not, to, to make sure that the education component of what we're doing when we're coaching beginners is mostly about education and how to row on water and then and on the earth and the rest of it. People are pretty good at going for a run. They're not going to the techniques not so critical for this. Whereas if they wrote, they wrote badly on an ergo on the water, then that's going to cause longterm issues and I can run on their own. They can cycle, they can do it with their friends, they can do it any time they will. I need a pair of shoes. It's really good to encourage them to be fit and this, I understand that what we're doing and we'd tried to row well that's important and we're not focusing on too many things at a time and we're getting each of them right and not doing a lot of work on the water or the ergo until I can do it properly. And if they know and believes that they can do that and get fit separately and therefore be fast in a boat. Yeah. Cause I think a lot of them tend to think I've got a practice wrong
Lachlan Davey:HUD in order to be able to go first. Yep. And that's generally not the case. It's almost the opposite. The harder you try to row it is true at the elite level. But you know, there's a huge learning curve that uh, even the S you know, the sub elite, you know, pro is, they really need to get the technique right. Cause you can't, you can't win a race, you know, with, with poor technique, no matter how fit you are at a high level, you have to have good technique. You have to be fit. Yeah. It's a, it's not one without the words. What one of the things that makes a sport, you know, so interesting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So, so from a program perspective and teaching beginners how to row, I'd say separate fitness from rowing. They're two separate things.
Lachlan Davey:Yeah. And sit down with the athletes and, and you know, talk to them about what you're thinking, what you know, your, what their, what their goals are and what you want to do. Cause uh, yeah, it's just one of those things where you, yeah. You don't really know what you're dealing with until you have that conversation. You know, they might only want to row two times a week on the water and, and not want to do any cross training. Yeah. Whereas you might have, you know, 10 sessions a week planned for them. You know, it's just not gonna work out and you need to, um, yeah,
Speaker 2:no way to deal with that. If you have heaps of sessions planned, then it doesn't fit with the athletes. It doesn't mean that you, you don't press on with the program. The idea really would be to say like, Hey, what sits with the athletes and what sits with me? And it may be that we do certain number of warm water sessions, get them right. And then for the rest of them, maybe they can do their own, they can be self-driven in what they do. And some of them might want to swim, some might've run some go and play a game of footy. I mean there's all sorts of different exercises that people can do to make this work well. But the fundamentals are, um, teach them how to do row well, teach them how to get fit. Two separate things and educate them.
Lachlan Davey:Yup. Well I, that's good. But I'd probably put one up on top of that is uh, make sure it's enjoyable no matter what it is, sort of top of the line. You know, it's very easy for a coach to focus on, you know, the things you just mentioned without paying any attention to, you know, is it going to actually be fun for them and you know, and if it's not fun, then you might as well forget about the rest of it. That's just going to be a pain for you. It's going to be a pain for them.
Speaker 2:No, I mean if you, if you can't make it fun, then doesn't work. Which means of course, that sometimes in order to keep it fun and still educational where you've got to sacrifice some thoughts that you've got. So I was a coach, you might say, we're going to do, you just have to work within sessions and we're doing this and this. Yeah, absolutely. And work with the athletes you've got. And you'll find too that some athletes a different from others or they, all of them are, they're all different. And so you may find that some crews want to do more work. Now one of the good things about separating the, the learning to row on the ergo on the water from the fitness aspect is that those athletes that want to do a lot of fitness work cause they're just mad keen to do it, then they can do it because they can go running by themselves or they can ride a bike by themselves. So all this stuff. So I think it's important to, to work with the athlete group to get the best out of everybody. Yeah. And just much easier. If you've got four people in a quad and they're the only four year coaching and you're going to do all the work on the water, then someone's not going to be happy. Whereas if you have less sessions on the water and get the people who really want to do more to do it in their own time and then you'll probably find you get better outcomes as well. So it's interesting, but, but the critical thing is to, is to do it well and make sure that they understand good technique and fitness as separate things.
Lachlan Davey:Yup. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they both things, uh, you know, in equal measures probably will, we'll hope you win races if that's your goal. Absolutely. And, um, you know, uh, it's one of those things where you don't want to be overloading any one part of it. So there's no, there's no good, you know, doing from someone who's done very little exercise, going to, you know, six on water sessions a week, you know, you'll get injuries left, right. And center. Likewise, if they're used to six sessions a week, you want to double it to 12, you know, no matter what the sessions, are you going to get injuries or trained? Absolutely. I like if you send them off for runs every day, they'll, you know, they'll have a foot problem within three days or a knee problem or you know, and it's the same with rowing. You really have to, whatever you're doing, just work it up. If someone has some time off as well, don't throw them straight back into the full training load. Makes sure you ease them back in. And you know, you have to have, it's a function of how long you've had off. So if you've had a lot of time off, you need to have a lot of time to get back to full training. Absolutely. And um, I think a lot of the time, you know, coaches just try and fit square pegs in round holes, you know, without any regard for the athlete. And they ended up losing the athletes because they're not interested in that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And you've got to know the athlete too and what's going on in their life. If you've got an athlete that's got a hard workload in a particular block of training, uh, but on water, off water, it just any athlete and at the same time they've got exams for example, or they've got a trouble at home or they've had a relative who's sick or in hospital, then all of those things are going to cause problems for that, for the training program. So if you're mindful of those, then you, you wouldn't want to have, for example, a hard time, a hard workload for school, for exams, et cetera and assignments and have a hard workload on the training because you'll find it. It's just not
Lachlan Davey:kind of work. So yeah, so to some art we've liked, you know, we've covered different parts of aspects of training, uh, different, different ways you can approach training programs and you know, a few key things to, to uh, you know, work out if you need to have a, you know, different, different sorts of different sorts of things. Absolutely. No program.
Speaker 2:But the, and the critical thing is I say is educate them well, make sure any exercise they do is done correctly. Yup. And you should get good outcomes.
Lachlan Davey:Next podcast, we're going to be talking about boats, speed. Uh, the critical parts. What slows it up, slows it down, what speeds it up, and how you should think about moving the boat. Um, when you're out there.
Speaker 2:Because there are a number of lots of different parts of the rowing strike that you can focus on. But, but the reality is that there's about four things that are really important. Yeah. And let's talk about those four things. Cause if you get those right, then everything else starts to flow. So let's do that.