Fall: Rebuilding Season

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.

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