Jack Burns - Edge Rowing

Comment “strength guide” for our weights plan.

If you want to build rowing strength please dont do high rep circuit sessions or squat jumps.

Yes - they can be great for feeling the burn or mixing up training, but they do nothing to improve your strength or power.

But they physiologically the exact same as doing a mid intensity rowing session.

In order to build strength and power - you need to overload your body.

Doing slow paced high rep squat jumps or 25 back squats with a light weight does not overload your body.

And

You also need appropriate rest between exercises… and…. because most circuit sessions have short rest, you are not able to recover, which means you start to use oxygen in the energy cycle… which yes builds endurance,
but you might as well hop on the erg or bike and skip the 2 weeks of sore muscles and injury risk.

If you REALLY want to do circuit sessions or high rep squat jumps…. go ahead, but know that you are not building power, youre building endurance via a less time efficient vehicle.

If you want to build endurance, do proper UT2 training on the erg, boat or bike.

If you want to build STRENGTH and POWER to improve your health as you age and also make the boat go faster…

Comment “Strength Guide” and I’ll send you our free weights sessions.

Sinkovic fan boy over here 🙋‍♂️

When I achieved my dream that I dedicated a decade of my life to of getting into the GB Rowing team… I felt hollow.

My aim was always to be able to say I did absolutely everything I could do to get as fast as I possibly could.

And if I did that, I knew I could genuinely live with no regrets.

And after a decade of dedication, I had got to that point…

…yet for months, I wasnt getting my invite into the national team.

And I was sooo close to quitting.

But I just so happened to stick it out for a few more months, and shortly after that, I got my invite.

As soon as I did, congrats came flooding in - and my first feeling was hollowness….

…because I realised in that moment, people only really recognise what you have done when there is an outcome.

And the outcome of getting into the GB team was not was I was most proud of.

My pride came from the massive internal battles I overcame through years of peaks and troughs.

This hollowness made me realise, no one will be able to understand what you have gone through better than you.

It is because of that, that you have to be the one to find pride in that.

Only you truly understand.

And if I had quit a few months prior to getting selected, I would not of had those congrats. But I also would not of had that lesson.

So right now, take a look back on where you have came.

Remember your biggest challenges..

Or…

Realise that right now, maybe you are in one of your biggest challenges.

And how you handle it is going to be something you look back on in a year with pride.

Comment “pacing” and I’ll send you the link to get some last minute speed for your 1k races.

Katherine Grainger came 2nd at three Olympic Games in a row.

While she was rightly proud of her achievements…

The Beijing one nearly broke her.

Her crew was the favourite. And in the final, China came past her in the last few strokes and took the gold.

She seriously considered quitting the sport.

But she came back, partnered with Anna Watkins, and together they did not lose a single race for two years. Then at London 2012, at the age of 36, she finally won Olympic gold.

But here is the part that matters most for anyone who thinks their best years are behind them.

After London, she took two years completely out of the boat and stepped away from the sport entirely.

Then she came back again. At 40 years old, she got back in a boat and won Olympic silver at Rio 2016. Britain’s most decorated female Olympian. Five Games, five medals, across 16 years.

She did not win her first gold until 36. She was still medalling at 40.

If you think you are too old to improve, too far past your peak, Katherine Grainer stayed at the top of the world until she was 40.

Follow for more on the athletes who prove that getting older does not mean getting slower.

Comment “strength” for our new updated free strength guide.

At 61, Cathy found that out the hard way.

She thought she was just going to slow down with age. She had rowed her whole life, her splits had stopped moving, and she was starting to accept that getting older meant getting slower.

For years she had avoided the gym. It felt intimidating, lifting heavy felt risky, so she stuck to lighter work and mobility. And her boat speed paid the price.

We taught her how to lift properly. Heavy enough to build real strength, structured enough that she felt safe doing it.

Her 2k dropped from 8:36 to 8:10 in a year. Then she finished top 20 at the Head of the Charles. At 61.

Pilates or body weight circuits is not making you stronger for rowing. It is useful for mobility, core awareness, and body control. But it is not strength training, and if you are doing it instead of lifting, your rowing is going to suffer for it.

Strength in rowing means applying force through your skeleton under heavy load. That comes from compound lifts, not light controlled movements.

Most masters rowers avoid the gym because of fear, not laziness. But with a structured plan, lifting is one of the safest and most effective things you can do for your rowing.

If you want to get into lifting properly, comment STRENGTH and I will send you our updated free guide with an intro weights plan plus more advanced plans if you already lift.

What technical improvements can you do to drop your erg score?
Change the way you use your body at the front of the stroke.
Apply force at a more compressed position. This allows you to hang effectively
What can you do to achieve this?
Start lifting with mobility in mind.
But the most important part: Treat every stroke as an opportunity to improve!
Comment ”checklist“ for the full technical checklist.

Inger Seim Kavlie raced internationally for a decade with zero senior medals. Then in 2024 she won Norway’s first ever women’s medal in the Olympic boat classes - the single and the double

So what changed?

She came to rowing late through a local gym group in Norway that was obsessed with the erg. They sponsored her to go to CRASH-Bs in Boston, and that is where it started.

Then for years afterwards, she just kept showing up with no senior medals or media attention.

This is what she did:

She got into the single scull properly for the first time, which forced her to figure out what she needed individually to go fast with nobody else to lean on.

She got a coach who genuinely cared about her, who she said never stopped believing in their goals.

And she found the right partner in Thea Helseth. She described Thea as a nightmare to race against in the single but a dream to row with in the double.

She took everything the single had taught her about herself and put it into the double, and it clicked immediately. They beat Romania twice on the way to European gold and went on to win the overall World Rowing Cup that year.

If you have been training for years and feel like nothing is changing, it does not mean nothing is building.

Lean into what is challenging and you can transform your outcomes, even after a decade of seemingly no progress.

Follow for more stories from the sport that most people never hear.

Comment “over 40” - time to stop wasting your training time!

Do you feel like you are working hard, but not actually moving the boat?
(Nerves in the arms)

The reason you struggle with this is down to our anatomy as humans

We have more nerves in our upper body

So when we work our upper body, it feels like we are doing more.

When in reality you arent transferring force into your lower body

Which is stopping you from going fast.

So as you change your focus to finding connection in the legs, bear in mind that it may not feel more connected for a time.

But as you develop the neural pathways, you will start to feel it in the legs.

And you will start to go faster.