Jack Burns - Edge Rowing

Watch the chain on your erg and you’ll see it dip on the way forward, then lift again in the last few inches before the catch.

That last second lift is why your back opens early.

Your hands and your shoulders travel together.

If your hands come up at the catch, your shoulders come up with them, and shoulders that are rising can’t stay in the down and fixed position while your legs push.

So the load goes into your back instead of your legs, and your back opens as you drive.

On the erg only, come into the catch at the same height you drive at.

Do that and your lats are already loaded before you move, and the pick up is smoother because nothing has to change position at the front.

Carry your hands higher as you slide forward.

Put a small piece of tape on the cage of your erg at the height the chain runs on the drive, then keep the chain on that line the whole way forward.

Your shoulders will feel a bit odd carrying your hands up there for the first week or so.

Follow for more of the small things on the erg that cost you speed.

How does rowing shorter make you row longer (time in the water)

How does rowing shorter, make you row longer?

At the root of this issue is the idea that length is about how tall you are, how far you reach forward and how far you lean back.

Length is about time applying force in the water.

And yes being taller or reaching further can help you do this, it can also compromise true length - length in the water.

You can have rower A is reaching further and leaning back more than rower B…

But rower a is in a weak position and rower b is in a strong position - rower b is going to be able to apply force better.

Which will allow them to push on the footplate for longer

Which will mean they have a force curve that extends further

Which means they row longer

And if rower a is lunging or slumped - they wont be able to connect to the footplate as they drive (and they also risk injury)

So, one of the things you can do to stay in this strong position is gym work or focus on posture or rigging…. But one of them is also simply don’t reach as far at the front.

I learned this stuff from getting into the GB team as a short rower, and it’s the stuff we teach our athletes and its the stuff put in some content…

So if you want more insider knowledge from someone who made it to the top of the sport, follow me for more.

When I was 2 minutes off of first place at trials, my attention was going onto one thing, and it was why I was stuck.

When I reversed that attention, I came back and won those trials and pulled a 5:51.

This same flawed thought process is why you are feeling anxious on race day, nervous on the start line, and shying away from pushing harder in the middle of races.

The problem is your attention is going to things that you cannot control.

You tell yourself that for you to perform on race day, you need:

To feel physically good

To have minimal wind

Your competitors to have a bad race.

You cannot control one single element of that.

And when you are thinking about that before the race, you think about that during the race.

Instead of focusing on controllables during your race, your mind has built a reflex of paying attention to your ranking, your splits, your competitors.

When your mind thinks about things it cannot control, stress increases.

Stress blocks focus.

And focus makes you row well and push your hardest.

So stop valuing outcomes and external factors.

Today, develop a process focused mindset in training - that will be ready to perform on race day.

If you want tips on how to actually train your mindset, then follow my account for more.

Low intensity UT2 is the hardest session in rowing.

Harder than intervals, harder than rowing square blades.

Intervals hurt your legs for fifteen minutes, tops.

UT2 hurts your ego for an hour plus.

Every stroke, the temptation is there to push a bit harder and get a little more run on the boat.

To chase a slightly faster split than yesterday, or to stay ahead of your training partner.

But let that creep in, and the intensity builds and builds.

You speed up to feel fast today, but you never properly build your engine.

So take the ego hit today and go slow.

Or you’ll take a far bigger one on race day, when it actually matters.

Most rowers over 40 respond to a plateau the same way, they train harder, and for most of them, they are missing out on the easy fixes.

Here’s why.

If you’ve been training three or six times a week, consistently, for years, those hours have already given you most of the fitness they’re ever going to give you.

And while there are always gains to be made in your fitness…

The easiest speed you’ve got left to find is technical, because fast rowing is about doing less wrong.

Most people on the erg just zone out and treat it like a workout, so every stroke practises the same faults.

Treat every erg like a technical session instead, and your numbers start to drop without adding a single hour.

That’s how it went for me.

Having a technical focus is what helped me take over a minute off my 2k, after I’d been told I was too old and too short to make it.

I actually got slower for two or three months before I got faster.

The hard part is knowing which faults you’ve got and which one is costing you the most.

So we’ve put together a free technical checklist that breaks down every single technical point there is to improve in your stroke, so you can work through it and find out.

If you want it, comment the word “checklist” and I’ll send the free document over to you.

If you’ve been training consistently, you’re probably already fit enough to be faster than you are. Comment checklist now.

At one point are you too strong in your back squats for rowing? Reference sprinting vs body weight percentage study and guess for rowing.

Can you squat be too strong for rowing?

At what point of strength do you become at risk of ripping the blade through water.

Water is liquid after all, so surely a blade could cut through it at a certain point?

An interesting study was done on sprinters and their top speed in relation to how much they could back squat

They found that once they got to a weight threshold, any strength on top of that didn’t result in more speed. It was just more muscle mass.

That threshold was squatting 2 x their body weight

While there aren’t any studies for this on rowing - does the same idea apply?

No

It doesn’t

Because 1 I don’t know any rowers that can squat 2 x their body weight and 2 if there was a rower that existed that could rip through water, all you would simply need to do is change the rig of their blades.

Stop using reasons like “I don’t want to get bulky” or “rowing is an endurance sport” to ignore weights training.

Learn how to lift safely, then start lifting heavy s**t.

It’s increases your fitness and it increases your health.

Your feet are barely touching the footplate on the way forward.

Film yourself from the side and you’ll see a gap open up between your foot and the plate as you come up the slide.

Here’s why what you are doing is wrong.

At the finish you’re leaning back, so your weight can only be on the back of the seat.

The rockover is your chance to move it forward onto the footplate, and most rowers leave it on the seat the whole way in instead.

So you arrive at the catch with nothing loaded, and the first part of your leg drive gets spent finding the plate rather than pushing off it.

Get that weight forward and you’re connected to the footplate before the blade goes in, you use your legs more, and your centre of gravity drops, which makes the boat easier to balance.

As you rock over, bring a bit of downwards pressure onto the front of the footplate.

Imagine there’s a piece of paper you’re trying to hold between your foot and the plate, and keep it there the whole way up the slide.

Pause at the rockover to check it, then hold that pressure as you slide forward.

This feels counterintuitive, like you’re pushing yourself away from the footplate as you go forward.

Like this video if you found it useful, so that I know whether or not to make more of them.

If you’re a rower over 40 with four or six hours a week to train, and you want to be sure none of them are wasted, watch the next 60 seconds and claim our free tool linked in the comments.

Around 80% of your training should be low intensity, UT2, and the rest of it, put simply, going as hard as you can.

That means most of your week is easy rowing, so the whole plan lives or dies on your easy pace being right.

Get your UT2 too slow and you’re wasting hours you can’t afford.

Get it too hard and you stop recovering, and every session starts to feel lethargic.
Now here’s the part people get wrong.

You can roughly work out your max heart rate with 220 minus your age, but your low intensity zones don’t fall at the same rate as your max, so the standard formulas put your easy pace in the wrong place.

When we work with athletes we analyse their data and set these zones for them, but we obviously can’t do that one to one for everyone watching this.

So I’ve put together as much data as I could on rowers over 40 and built a free tool that takes your basic numbers and gives you the exact range your UT2 splits and zones should sit in.

If you want it, comment the words “over 40” and I’ll send it over to you.

You haven’t got enough hours in the week to waste any of them.

First off; I love it when rowing gets into the mainstream media. I don’t mean to criticise people newer to the sport. The more people getting exposed, the better. This is just a great example of a common misconception around what rowers should be aiming to achieve.

Fair play, hitting a target you’ve chased is a good feeling, but stroke rate was the wrong target.
Here’s why.

Rowers watch Olympic crews race at high rates and copy the number.

That’s like seeing a pro cyclist hold a high cadence, so you stick your bike in the easiest gear and spin your legs to match them. Same cadence, no speed.

Yes, a higher rate can make you faster, but you can also fabricate one, by rowing shorter, missing your catch, and rushing the slide.

If you’re an ambitious rower, three priorities come before rate.

One, a patient, connected, smooth catch.
Two, good effective length, with your weight suspended off the seat and pressing through the feet from the catch to the end of the finish.
Three, relaxed and still on the recovery.

If those three aren’t there, drop your rate, because all you’re doing is spinning your wheels, wasting energy, and winning the pi***ng contest for the highest rate with the shortest, most rushed, disconnected stroke.

And if you want to one day hit a stroke rate of 46, efficiently, then follow the account for the technique that gets you there.

This is how I used a rope to beat rowers that are nine inches taller than me.

Those tall rowers are only really connected in between the middle of the drive.

The big element of going fast in rowing is about how long can you stay suspended for?

The two hardest parts to get suspended at are at the front of the drive and at the back, at the finish.

If you can get more suspended at the front of the drive and at the back of the drive, you can effectively row longer than someone that is taller than you.

You can do this by using this rope and hooking it through the handle and through the cage.

Then practice this idea of squeezing and standing.

I’ve seen this drill done wrong when people think they just need to stand up all the way.

The real challenge of the drill is seeing if you can suspend with your bum barely coming off the seat.

Then do the same thing at the finish.

Stretch the rope out longer and see if you can hang and suspend and get your weight off here.

If you can apply that same concept of suspending at the front and suspending at the back into your full strokes, you’ll apply more power and you’ll go faster.

And if you want more technical tips like that, then be sure to follow my account for more.