lack of power

[tewbz]

right now im a sophomore in high school have been rowing for 3 years and doing fairly well. my problem is this, in the past 3 years since starting rowing I have continued to grow tall like I should be but I haven't gained any weight at all since I started high school at around 140 lbs and still weigh in at 139-140. my biggest problem is that I seem to be lacking the power to drop my 2k time much more. im thinking that is if I put on say 10lbs of muscle that it would help me take alot of time off my 2k. the reason that I think that power is the problem is that i have guys on my team that pull 2ks around 6:55 that I can beat on longer distances but they destroy me when it comes to low rate/high power and sprints. so, would putting on muscle help me? and if so can someone help me with a program to do so. I am going to ask the same question from my coach tomorrow.

[caustic]

In short, putting on muscle will help - but you're growing, which is ultimately to your advantage. you gotta eat like its a job to be able to grow as fast as you're growing AND put on weight. But ultimately, I wouldn't lose TOO much sleep over it - you're a sophmore in HS, and if you're growing as fast as most sophmores are, you will be in a good position by the time you're a senior, so long as you eat enough.

[LiquidMercury]

Lift and eat for performance. Increasing your maximal strength is going to have a strong correlation to your ability to produce higher wattage, especially at lower ratings. You think you eat a lot? Double it. 99% of the kids I coach that say they can gain weight simply have no clue how to eat. Increase the amount of meat and starches you are taking in. It's going to be hard for rowers, with fast metabolisms, to really pack on the pounds, especially in season due to the caloric output that is inherent with rowing. Add that to the fast metabolism and gluttonous amounts of food are going to need to be ingested to be able to get some weight on you.

Regarding lifting, take a look at my blog, in particular at "The Viking Program". I will be keeping that up to date with daily updates and daily workouts as part of a systematic program. The workouts will change but have a 16 week end goal of increasing your maximal strength and work capacity. Feel free to follow along!

[tewbz]

how much should i be eating calories wise? im proboly eating about 3500 most days some days more some less, i feel like that might be a bit low for the amount i do though.
as for weights ive been looking around at differnt stuff and one of the things that looked pretty interesting was a 5x5 workout with bench press, squat/legpress, bent over rows, dead lifts, and shoulder press, doing that twice a week with 5 sets of 5 reps of each but alternating the bench press and shoulder press and the squats and leg press, and trying to add weight on each week. any one have a lifting program that i could have a look at?

[hbh1636]

Drink milk. A few glasses/day. Anything else that comes from a cow is also good. Eat immediately following workouts, high calorie/high protein/high carb. This is pretty important.

As for caloric intake, 3500 calories a day is quite a lot more than most people realize. Try using an online calorie calculator one night to find out how much you ate that day and then figure it out how much you need to eat from there on out.

[black night]

If you are 16-17 and want to put on muscle that'll move the boat, keep it simple and don't skimp on rowing (no matter what T-Nation/Elite FTS tells LM to tell you).

Get as fit as you can doing as much low intensity (HR <150) work on the ergo as you can tolerate. You can do this every day if paced properly (read: easily enough). Work toward doing most of the work at 76% of goal 2000 m speed (in m/s).

Lift 2-3x per week doing squat, overhead press, and deadlift. 3 x 5 reps (1 x 5 on deadlift) per exercise, add weight each week in a linear progression focused on proper form.

Build specific rowing power by doing 3-5 20 stroke max power (in W) pieces (with 3-5:00 rest in between) 3 times a month starting in December.

That's it. No pull-ups, no bench press, nothing else. Do as much easy work on the ergo as you can tolerate, lift consistently, and eat HUGE. Don't worry about counting calories, just eat lots of real food.

Avoid foods that come in boxes. Avoid 500 m, 1000 m, and 5:00 pieces. Avoid "AT" work. Avoid spending more than 20% of your training time lifting weights.

My $0.02

[LiquidMercury]

If you are 16-17 and want to put on muscle that'll move the boat, keep it simple and don't skimp on rowing (no matter what T-Nation/Elite FTS tells LM to tell you).

Get as fit as you can doing as much low intensity (HR <150) work on the ergo as you can tolerate. You can do this every day if paced properly (read: easily enough). Work toward doing most of the work at 76% of goal 2000 m speed (in m/s).

Lift 2-3x per week doing squat, overhead press, and deadlift. 3 x 5 reps (1 x 5 on deadlift) per exercise, add weight each week in a linear progression focused on proper form.

Build specific rowing power by doing 3-5 20 stroke max power (in W) pieces (with 3-5:00 rest in between) 3 times a month starting in December.

That's it. No pull-ups, no bench press, nothing else. Do as much easy work on the ergo as you can tolerate, lift consistently, and eat HUGE. Don't worry about counting calories, just eat lots of real food.

Avoid foods that come in boxes. Avoid 500 m, 1000 m, and 5:00 pieces. Avoid "AT" work. Avoid spending more than 20% of your training time lifting weights.

My $0.02

Amazingly I didn't prescribe anything from elitefts, t-nation, or various other sites I am involved with, everything I suggest is due to observational data I've compiled over the years as a rowing coach. I also did not say forsake rowing for the sake of maximal strength. Good job on putting words in my mouth.

Yes I'm an advocate on getting stronger and increasing maximal strength and power via weights. Do I think it should be the crux of a rowers training? Absolutely not. Nothing will replace meters on the erg and water.

I do disagree with not doing any work outside the big 3. While building those three movements should be a primary focus for a rower, they are eventually going to lead to a variety of imbalances structurally on top of the large amount of sweep rowing that most high school rowers in the USA already do. Structural imbalances lead to injury. Instead of waiting for them to happen, be proactive in that regards, striving to fix them, as well as increasing mobility and flexility will allow you train harder, for longer, injury free.

[LiquidMercury]

how much should i be eating calories wise? im proboly eating about 3500 most days some days more some less, i feel like that might be a bit low for the amount i do though.
as for weights ive been looking around at differnt stuff and one of the things that looked pretty interesting was a 5x5 workout with bench press, squat/legpress, bent over rows, dead lifts, and shoulder press, doing that twice a week with 5 sets of 5 reps of each but alternating the bench press and shoulder press and the squats and leg press, and trying to add weight on each week. any one have a lifting program that i could have a look at?

A good start is 3500 calories for a high school male. For most rowers, especially ones with fast metabolisms this ends up being not enough calories. If after 2 weeks of consistently eating the 3500 calories, you haven't gained weight then you'll need to up your calories. Up it 500, eat at the new caloric level CONSISTENTLY, and see if your weight goes up. Keep doing this until you are steadily gaining weight in the range of 3-4 lbs a month.

Regarding the lifting - one of the issues with younger athletes is the lack of strength base they have. Many athletes - of all sports - get right into the Specialized Physical Preparation phases, when they are not capable of handling that type of training. In rowing SPP type work could be considered heavy damper settings on the erg, bench pulls, leg presses (all done in ranges of speed work such as 50-70% for moderate volume and low reps). While these things can and will benefit you at some point, getting a solid base level strength, or your GPP (General Physical Preparation), in order is paramount to your success and sustainability. The 5x5 program you're speaking of most likely is the program written by Bill Starr back in the 80's. It's a good program for foundational strength though I do agree with black night that the bench press for rowers is relatively unneeded. For the purpose of the sport it is nonfunctional, something like pushups will suffice to keep your body relatively in balance and minimize any possible scapular issues that may arise.

If you were to do something like that stick with the basic linear progression using the following exercises:
Squat
Overhead Press
Bent over rows
Unilateral work - lower body

Deadlift
Pullup
Mobility work focusing on increasing hip mobility and thoracic mobility in particular. Prehab shoulder work is also beneficial

Squat
Overhead Press
Bent over rows
Accessory work - unilateral work upper body

As said, feel free to follow on my blog as that program will be geared towards rowers in general, in particular those without much lifting experience. Either option is beneficial.

[rowonaut]

Let me be the crankiest guy in the room. There are no studies I have seen with highly trained(or even pretty well trained) athletes that are double blinded and radomized that suggest that weight lifting over the long run will improve performance for endurance athletes. If there are, would someone please post them. Also be carefull- as you can see from the posts here, powerlifting guys design power lifting routines, strength guys design strength routines, cross fit guys design cross fit routines. I tend to believe that weight lifting is helpful but you have to be careful to not build a ton of type 2 muscle that just sucks oxygen and builds lactic acid. I love watching the cross fit guys at CRASHbs. They tend to be huge "animales" that can pull the crap out of an erg at a 24 SR for a few minutes then crash.

So you may want to evaluate what you are trying to accomplish on your own. Go to various websites like pponline.uk, Gym Jones, Liquid Mercury's, Cross Fit and any others and design something for yourself. If I was going to do a crash diet of weight lifting I would tend toward something like Gym Jones which has an endurance quotient to it. Folks like Gman,TBFit, RoyleRow and the like tend to vary their rower workouts with times of the yr for strength, endurance, power and combinations of the the 3.

[LiquidMercury]

I'll go and pull some studies - most of which are Eastern Bloc manuals from Dr.'s Issurin, Verkoshansky, and Yessis who were very prominent in the USSR's success throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's at the olympic level. All three of them worked with the olympic rowing team at various times in their tenure with USSR sports before moving on to more research-based lifestyles - though Issurin and Yessis both still do consulting for a wide variety of national programs the old bloc. Verkoshansky unfortunately has passed away in recent years. Much of this research is directly affecting RoyleRow and others how they program a year long training cycle or 4 year training cycle using the block periodization instead of traditional western periodization.

As well as those three, I believe Nolte put together statistical data of National team rowers and how their deadlift, clean, squat, and bench pull correlated to bodyweight. Many of which were having 3x bodyweight squats and deadlifts - which if you're not aware, would be very strong, regardless of what sport you are playing.

I agree that one must be wary of programs designed by powerlifters, strength guys, crossfit guys etc. etc. as they are likely to program for that sport.

That is one reason why I believe what I do holds so much value as there are very few strength and conditioning coaches that come from a rowing background. I have coached junior rowing for 5 years now (I realize it's not a huge amount of time coaching), rowed for 11, and tried a variety of different methods in regards to our lifting. Ultimately my main concern with my kids, is that they are fastest they can be on the water. I don't train them to be good at lifting weights, I train them to be fast rowers, a distinction that I think is very important, and sometimes is overlooked in the strength and conditioning world. In other sports I have seen S&C coaches get their guys/girls extremely strong, but lack in their ability to transition that new found level of strength into a usable asset in the specific sport.

Lastly, I believe that while maximal strength is important it is most definitely not the most important component of training in regards to weight lifting. The end-all-to-be-all in regards to rowing is the ability to produce sustainable power. So while it may be great that an athlete can hit a 3.5x squat, if it's "slow" (relatively) and the motor patterns aren't optimized to recruit as much muscle fiber as possible as QUICKLY as possible, then you have a lot of strength that isn't going to necessarily carry over to rowing very well. The ability to combine strength with speed and increase maximal power is the golden ticket in my mind as it relates to rowing. This is why a combination of many different dogmas are important increasing the area under the power curve as much as possible. Depending on where one's weaknesses lie, various methods may serve to be more important than others.

[southernrower]

LM- with all due respect, you will have to post that data from Nolte. I doubt there are any elite rowers that can squat or dead lift 3x their body weight. There are very few football players that can do this and they work on strength and power constantly. If you assume that an elite men's rower weighs 220# then they would have to squat 660#. I just do not buy it. Post the data. In Nolte's Book, Rowing Faster, there is data in one of the chapters that says elite men can squat or dead lift 1.9x their body weight for 1 rep. That seems more likely.

[fatboy]

One can do much worse than starting with the FISA training manuals. I can no longer find these on the FISA (upgraded?) website, but a quick google found them here:

http://www.rathburn.net/rowing/training ... nual_1.pdf
http://www.rathburn.net/rowing/training ... nual_2.pdf

[petermech]

May rethink the meat and milk products. Cardiovascular disease may be a problem long term with the fats of butter, cheese…… You may be “fit” but if your heart stops because you have clogged arteries it is not so good. If you are not worried about your heart then think about you penis if you have one. If the artery to it gets clogged it won’t go up. It can be a sign that you a getting cardiovascular disease. Save your…….

[skinny]

Let me be the crankiest guy in the room. There are no studies I have seen with highly trained(or even pretty well trained) athletes that are double blinded and radomized that suggest that weight lifting over the long run will improve performance for endurance athletes.

While this may be true for fully-grown elite athletes, studies have suggested that weight training (when DONE PROPERLY) can have a huge positive effect when done by growing athletes (i.e. athletes undergoing their major growth spurt in their teens).

Specifically, if an athlete does body-weight resistance exercises (push-ups, chin-ups, squat jumps, etc.) until they reach peak height velocity and free weights after PHV, they'll have a far easier time building the necessary muscle mass and strength than if they started weights at a later age.

[LiquidMercury]

LM- with all due respect, you will have to post that data from Nolte. I doubt there are any elite rowers that can squat or dead lift 3x their body weight. There are very few football players that can do this and they work on strength and power constantly. If you assume that an elite men's rower weighs 220# then they would have to squat 660#. I just do not buy it. Post the data. In Nolte's Book, Rowing Faster, there is data in one of the chapters that says elite men can squat or dead lift 1.9x their body weight for 1 rep. That seems more likely.

I was pulling from "Rowing Faster", it's been awhile since I read it though, I thought the chart said 1.9x was in relation to their ability to clean. I'll take a look sometime this weekend.

May rethink the meat and milk products. Cardiovascular disease may be a problem long term with the fats of butter, cheese…… You may be “fit” but if your heart stops because you have clogged arteries it is not so good. If you are not worried about your heart then think about you penis if you have one. If the artery to it gets clogged it won’t go up. It can be a sign that you a getting cardiovascular disease. Save your…….

Dietary fat isn't linked to cardiovascular disease directly, nor is saturated dietary fat. Saturated fat in the presence highly insulogenic nutrients (typical American diet) is what is linked to cardiovascular disease.

Refer to Di Pasqual, Lyle McDonald, John Berardi, and John Kiefer for more information.