We wrote last week about a couple of free Rowing Coaching resources available online. And thought we’d ask the strength training expert, Will Ruth what he thought of them.
Looks okay as far as a free online resource goes. No “print and go” program will ever be as good as actually understanding the programming basics yourself and being able to tailor your strength training to your rowing training.
Best you can hope for with most free online resources is just “better than nothing,” which this definitely is. It’s why
I avoided providing something like this in my Rowing Stronger e-book–regardless of how many times I said “DON’T just run this program, it’s just an example,” people still would.
One difference that I think makes my program successful is not doing 3 sets of 15 as “strength maintenance”. The intensity of that is so low (~65% 1RM) that it isn’t going to do a good job maintaining strength. Maintenance is much better done with low volume (low total reps, not 45) and just briefly touching higher intensities. Look at the maintenance phase in my book and it’s mostly sets of 1-3 reps working quickly up to ~85%. Low fatigue, low muscular damage to the athlete means they’ll be less sore, and it actually works maintaining their strength. Strength maintenance is more about nervous system coordination than local muscular ability.
You may also be interested in these other resources
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“The Perfect Rowing Programme” (should be good for some controversy anytime you call something “perfect”)
