Winter Training: Sucks but it is the FOUNDATION of your Season!

So you get up. It’s 5am. It’s dark and cold. You drag yourself out of bed and into your car, and your car’s temperature gage says 1 degree Celsius and in case you didn’t think that was cold, a little snowflake is seen just to the right of the temperature reading. Great.

You get down to the club, and it seems that you are the only one braving this weather and cold to train. You probably are. I know right now I am the only girl in the Youth Women’s squad coming down to train religiously during this winter.

This is the dilemma and challenge that ALL rowers face when they finish their season proper in March and head into the ‘off’ season. Now I say off in quotation marks, because if you play your cards like the perfect rower, you won’t really have an off-season.

In order to progress each season in rowing, it is a lot more beneficial for you as an athlete to limit the time you spend away from training. You MUST use the winter season to your advantage! If you train during the winter, come the season proper, you will be MILES ahead of your competition for boats. Use the winter season to increase your physical and mental fitness.

To chart your fitness accurately, enter the most hated erg test: The 30min. Now, I can hear the groans from here, but trust me, the 30min erg does not have to be the torturous task that you make it out to be. The only reason you think it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, it WILL be. However, if you decide that you will approach the test with a positive outlook and a PLAN, you will see your results skyrocket! Because of this, you have increased your mental hardness.

Another way your mentality will harden over the winter season is by not hitting the snooze button when your alarm goes off, because, let me tell you, it takes a tough as nails person to come down to rowing when it’s 0 degrees Celsius outside, jump out in a scull and bash out 20km. Come the season proper, you will be fitter mentally and physically, so when your coach says you have to do 120min of T2 (aerobic) rowing, YOU will do it, when others give up around 60min.

The winter season is also the PERFECT time to accomplish training sessions that are out of the norm. Do you think the 3 of us would have done a marathon erg in the racing season? No way! So do stuff you wouldn’t normally do. Is the Tour de France being on making you want to get out on the bike? Do it! Make the ride to Mordialloc and back a normal second session on Saturdays. Mix it up! It is very, very important to make your winter season training INTERESTING! If it is not interesting, you will very quickly lose interest and stop.

So get on your bike, jump in the small boats, bust out on the erg and most importantly, DON’T WASTE YOUR WINTER SEASON!!