The REAL Gains

It’s gym day – the most important day of the week!! Like the last 750m of a rowing race, you’re ready to UNLEASH that inner beast. You’re muscles are swelling, your veins are pumping, and you can taste that chocolate-flavored protein shake from a mile away.  Yes, today’s the day of all days! The day where a boy becomes a man, and a man becomes… well manlier. But unlike every other jack-headed gym-goer, you’re not here for the curls, or the girls.  No. You’re an athlete who trains with a purpose.

We all want to look fit and strong! But for an elite athlete, there’s a difference between LOOKING, and BEING. We train with SPECIFICITY. Yes we’ve all heard the word. But how many of us actually apply it? No matter how tempting it is, you’re never going to catch an elite rower mapping veins, grating cheese, or intimidating themselves in the mirror.

So what exercises do we do? Well it may come to surprise some of you that rowing is in fact 70% legs. Which is one of the reasons the squat rack is sometimes considered our second home. Squatting is ESSENTIAL in improving a rower’s leg-drive, as well as maintaining control up the slide. It’s also an exercise that puts a huge emphasis on TECHNIQUE. Yes it’s beneficial, but can also be dangerous if performed incorrectly. So don’t cut it short! No one's going to admire how much weight you can carry on your back. They already invented a movement for that – it’s called half-slide rowing.

Like in a boat, make sure you go for LENGTH, whilst maintain a strong core. ‘Ass to grass’ as some call it. No one cares if you can only squat the bar. Come race day, you’ll be tearing down the course with LENGTH, CONTROL and POWER.

Rowers torture themselves with legwork almost everyday. Pain is our best friend, and stairs are our worst nightmare. But whilst legs make up the majority of a rowing stroke, the arms and bodies are there to deliver the final blow. They’re only 30% of the stroke, but when a race is down to the line, they can be the difference between winning and losing.

The generic question going around a gym is “how much do you press?” But in the boatsheds it’s “how much do you pull?” Bent-over row, seated row and upright row are all exercises that employ SPECIFICITY. I mean it’s blatantly obvious: they all finish with ‘row’.  Like the squats, timing and technique are essential. EXPLOSIVE in the pulling phase, and CONTROLLED in the releasing phase. Cheating the exercise means you’re cheating yourself, and your never going to get those gains back.

Specificity is an essential word in the training program of an elite athlete. It just takes motivation and some common sense to figure out how to use it. We’re all presented with a choice at some point: dissolve amongst all the other gym junkies out there, or rise above the average being and push yourself to your very best athletic ability. I say it’s time to achieve a real goal, one that’s gold and hangs from your neck.