The reasons for declining performance are complex, but improving your ability to turn fat into energy, strengthening your central nervous system, and reducing muscle dysfunction from fiber damage all bolster your rowing in the final meters of a race.
Here are three workouts that will improve your resistance to fatigue:
1) Long endurance rows at low intensity (18 to 20 strokes per minute). This steady “conversational” rowing improves fat oxidation. It’s important that these aerobic-threshold rows are long enough to challenge your current endurance ability.
If you’re comfortable rowing 60 minutes, build up to 75 minutes, then 90 minutes by making at least one of your weekly sessions longer than normal. When muscle fibers begin to tire and glycogen levels drop, some of the workload is passed on to higher-power muscle fibers that adapt and become more efficient aerobically.
2) Add late-stage intensity to these long rows. During the final 15 or 20 minutes of a practice, increase the rate to 24 or 26 strokes per minute, a comfortably hard pace that’s closer to your anaerobic threshold. This helps train both your mental and muscular ability to row hard in the presence of fatigue.
3) Try the reverse: Row intervals, then add a long endurance row. For example, row 8 x 500 meters with three minutes rest at your 2,000-meter pace, then top off the session with 60 minutes of easy rowing and drills.
The intervals cause a high level of fatigue and glycogen depletion, which again create the conditions for those higher- power muscle fibers to adapt aerobically. Additionally, muscular-endurance intervals help build resistance to muscular damage.
These intervals above anaerobic threshold are challenging and require stronger efforts at lower cadences to increase the demands on your muscles. For example, 3 x 20 minutes with seven minutes rest at 24 strokes per minute, or 4 x 10 minutes with five minutes rest at 26 strokes per minute.
Maximal strength training helps develop endurance because increased muscle strength means muscle fibers are worked at a lower percentage of their maximum load, resulting in less muscular damage.
Marlene Royle, who won national titles in rowing and sculling, is the author of Tip of the Blade: Notes on Rowing. She has coached at Boston University, the Craftsbury Sculling Center, and the Florida Rowing Center. Her Roylerow Performance Training Programs provides coaching for masters rowers. Email Marlene at roylerow@aol.com or visit www.roylerow.com.
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