I worked with this athlete - aka 2K Ninja #1 - this summer (along with her counterpart, 2K Ninja #2). And then I realized: who better to hear this from than someone who's just done it in a big, game-changing way? I sat down to write about strategies for breaking through the no-PR plateau (when you're training and racing and should be getting faster but for some reason your 2K - or 6K - isn't showing it). Thanksgiving is over and winter training has officially commenced.
Each is linked to a video showing good form. If you're looking to add in bodyweight exercises that activate, warm up and strengthen some of the really important muscles for keeping your core strong and engaged, I've put together some good ones below. Current thought for rowers and all athletes says that it's important to warm up and strengthen your muscles through their functional range of motion (the movement range you'll be using during rowing).
HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER SERIES
Your coach may have a series of warm up or cool down exercises or stretches that you do as a team. Back fatigue or back pain that you only feel at the end of a training session can be different than back pain that you have all the time on the erg - if it's hurting from the first few strokes, it's a good idea to go see a PT or doctor. As you get tired, you stop sitting up well and using your core as much (because you're tired), and start having more flexion through your back. The gist is that your back can get tweaked either because you don't have good body position from the get go, or because you lose your good body position as you get tired - from a long session or from taking hard strokes. I'm not a doctor or a PT, but I can share some of my experiences and my teammates' experiences. Staying healthy and keeping your body feeling good is critical to getting in the training you need to succeed. Rowers on both coasts are off the water and onto the ergs ahead of 2K season, CRASH-Bs, and the important erg tests that start recruiting processes or slotting rowers into 1V, 2V and 3V. I ended up with a 19:02 5K, which I was pretty proud of, considering I'd had a baby less than 10 weeks earlier! Our gym was sponsoring a 5K erg contest, so I decided to step up my training - doing 5K steady state pieces, 500m and 1K and 1500m interval sets, and other prep workouts. I mostly walked for the first month, and tried to get a lot of sleep (not so easy with a newborn, nursing, healing, etc.) The second month postpartum, I started doing a little erging and some core. Thankfully, Ryan and I were both doing pretty well after she joined us, and we were able to go for a first family walk just a few days after we got home. I didn't want pain meds during labor or delivery, and thanks to having the support of my husband and a great doula (who's also the #2 Muay Thai fighter in Germany.what?!), was able to do that. I think being a rower helped with overall pain tolerance, but probably the best thing you can do to prepare would be those (awful) workouts where you're going for an unknown number of intervals, and you just have to keep going and not be able to tell that the interval you're on is the last one.
For those wondering: yes, it is harder than a 2K. Little Ryan came along at the end of a 24-hour labor, arriving at 3:33am. An interesting thing about the last months of pregnancy is that your body produces a hormone called "relaxin" that literally relaxes your joints - for me, that meant I got super flexible even though I wasn't actively trying to get stretchier. Lofgrens 1, 2, and 3 - just finished racing HOCR, 7 months pregnant!įor the last month or two of my pregnancy, I ran out of exercises to do that weren't really painful or uncomfortable, and ended up doing a lot of walking and light hiking, as well as some squats and stretching. I raced the Head of the Charles, in honor of my cousin Byron, with my mom at 7 months pregnant, and we actually went more than 2 minutes faster than our race a couple of years ago! (Shoutout to JL for hooking me up with a maternity unisuit!) Thankfully, rowing and erging still felt pretty okay for most of my pregnancy. It wasn't easy and I have a lot of respect for women who keep training at a high load while feeling like that! I also had to give up running after just a few months because it got really uncomfortable. The first four months of being pregnant, I was trying to manage all-day morning sickness nausea with doing some training.
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