Ready to Race? - September 2015

Physiology & Wellbeing

Photo: Glyn at Lovelylight Images

ready to race?

A Twickenham crew get ready to train

October’s Diamond Jubilee Rowing Championships offers a fabulous chance to compete at the Olympic regatta venue. How best to prepare for it though? The GB Rowing Team

By Craig Williams physiologists provide advice

S

o Henley Royal Regatta has come and gone, and the lessons from a particular style of racing have hopefully been learned.

For most, this represents the major peak in a busy domestic racing schedule. Physiologically your programme will hopefully reflect this, preparing your body to deliver its best performance sometime in July. The remainder of the season probably consists of some local regattas whilst the body is still in racing mode, before next season begins with the usual ergo and water mileage in an attempt to push the physiology to new heights for a faster Henley performance in 2013.

However, the 2012-2013 season provides a challenging opportunity at the start of the competition year with a strong field in the Diamond Jubilee Rowing Championships (DJRC), held from 20-21 October, and raced over 2000m on the Olympic rowing course at Eton Dorney.

In the aftermath of London 2012, the excitement of racing here presents some serious challenges to your training preparation in order to perform well

very early in the season. We will discuss some of the benefits / adaptations from typical training sessions and how they will add to your racing physiology arsenal.

In any stress / recovery relationship it is easy to focus on the stress aspect while not giving enough

volume phase (two to three weeks), with some UT1 intensity thrown in for good measure and then a move up the intensity scale including some over distance, step change 5k pieces finishing at close to race rate.

There will then be a build-up towards some more specific speed work over 2k pieces at increasing rate until the final run-in with some shorter, sharper pieces to work on top-end speed.

The physiological demands of the 2k race are still primarily aerobic, and it is this area where most training programmes seek to stimulate the greatest adaptation. You are essentially limited by the pumping capacity of your heart and the rate at which you can deliver oxygen to the working muscles. Think of your physiology as a transport to work scheme.

The workers (oxygen) need taking from their homes to the multitude of working locations (muscle cells). You can improve this by getting more vehicles on the road to move

Time for your body to recover is essential in order to meet the challenge of racing competitively in October respect to recovery. If your summer racing schedule has been busy it should contain a period of time off.

Time for your body to recover is essential in order to meet the challenge of racing competitively in October. You should return to winter training after a few days to a few weeks off, depending on when the season finished.

The main training focus over the five to six weeks before the DJRC is essentially a very condensed, periodised season. This will initially start with a

September 2012 | Rowing & Regatta | 57

Physiology & Wellbeing Make sure your body is well rested before the new season

people around, but you also need more roads – especially the little windy ones – so the workers have the shortest possible trip to work. Typically, the long, slow mileage approach tends to develop a better road network (blood capillaries) and your interval style training stresses the pumping capacity of the heart (gets more vehicles on the road).

That said, this picture oversimplifies the training intensity spectrum and we know that whilst aerobic abilities are essential, there are those more anaerobic engines who get by just fine. The suggested programme, even in its condensed version, targets all

performed somewhere between UT1 and Anaerobic Threshold (AT or 30-minute score) and contain more intensive pieces, so the focus of a single session is not always clear. This is essential given the time constraints. However, the programme through this period should still be periodised where the initial focus is aerobic developments (UT1/AT typically 60 minutes of paddling including spells of 8-15 minutes of intensity, with less rest for UT1 pieces and more rest for AT pieces).

As the regatta approaches move more towards sessions that include shorter, more intense pieces with limited rest. The final run-in (one week before)

Think of your physiology as a transport to work scheme aspects of the intensity continuum, hoping to exploit each one.

In the five to six weeks prior to the Diamond Jubilee Rowing Championships, the evenings will still be relatively light so a couple of late sessions may be possible – but probably no more than 10 sessions per week. There is little time or benefit to be gained from lots of UT2 sessions.

Interestingly, club UT2 sessions are often

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may include your sessions of repetitive 1500m, 1000m, 750m, 500m with a longer rest between pieces (work to rest ratio of 1:1 or 1:1.5).

A particularly important component to remember is weights, as a combination of targeting gains in absolute strength but also power and the transference of that power to a rowing specific movement – i.e. on the ergo with ergo sprints. Like the bulk of the programme you should periodise the

weights from some sessions of strength development, to power and then to specific power.

As with all the physiological advice, your training regime should include aspects of monitoring – both as a source of motivation that your intentions are being achieved and to provide a warning sign that you may be overdoing it and may need to back off somewhere or change the focus slightly.

The strength in any monitoring tool is knowing what’s normal for you – and in that sense the sooner you start collecting data, the sooner you’ll be able to identify when you are moving in the right direction or not.

Craig Williams Craig Williams has worked as physiologist to the GB Rowing Team since 2002, supporting the junior, U23 and senior squads including the 2012 Olympic squad. Prior to working within rowing, Craig conducted physiological testing on the RYA America’s Cup squad and Football Association referees. Craig completed a PhD in exercise physiology in 2005.