Crew training, from a Lydiard perspective

I rowed my freshman year and ran track my junior and senior year long ago. From my experience crew has a greater aerobic and smaller anaerobic component than distance running because you are not supporting all of your body weight. It is actually more of a leg sport than an arm sport. The major part of the pull is done with your quads. I absolutely think that Lydiard style areobic base work would help. I would suggest doing some heart monitor training to figure out optimal intensities corresponding to AT and LT runnning intensities.

The big boys of rowing do Lydiard type training. Crew was full year sport at my college - heavy base laid down for a relatively short spring racing season.

Note in rowing as in running intervals serve two purpose -- muscular/cardio physiology, and improvement in efficiency of motion. Balance and synchronization are harder in rowing, so that's one reason for more intervals -- easier to focus mentally on form (especially for new rowers) in intervals.

Lots of info at the link below -- the Norwegian exercise physiology site has info on rowing (and runing). In English. Maybe written by an American, I can't recall off the top.

P.S. Races are generally 2000 meters.

Right, I too thought that they were 2000m. He said 5000, who knows. In either case, same principles would apply.

I'll check out the link, thanks.

amateur, good call on the heartrate thing.

you race 5k in the fall, 2k in the spring

Crew coaches vary widely. We just got a new varsity

women's crew coach who's anything but dark ages. On

the other hand, one of her rowers (a friend of mine)

seemed pretty surprised at the training; apparently

it was the first time a coach had made her do longer,

easy workouts a few days a week, and also the first time

a coach had insisted that the athletes eat right after

training to replenish their glycogen.

I think the better coaches are very aware of good

trainig principles. But crew has a serious case of

"I can take more pain than you" going.

Are you at MIT? I'm down at Harvard.

Anyway, I figured that there were people who had put their heads around figuring out, good training, I just hadn't heard of it, so I wanted to find out what there was. Mission accomplished, this was pretty interesting.

> Are you at MIT?

Yup. I'm a purely recreational grad student runner, not on the track team. (Marathons are great training for

mountaineering, my true love. :)

If you're still curious about the crew training, two

of my friends are pretty serious rowers, one on sloan

crew (grad) and one on the women's varsity. I'd be

happy to put you in touch with them, and they'd probably

be very happy to share.

Drop me a note: dga - at - mit.edu.