Hampton School and the RP3

When the essence of rowing – being out on the water, blade in hand, sweeping across a dawn-kissed millpond amongst seven like-minded folk – is stripped away, how do you keep a group of young, ambitious athletes engaged? That is the challenge facing Josh Butler, Colin Greenaway and their team of coaches at Hampton School, whose boathouse location opposite Platt’s Eyot on the River Thames affords them both the best and worst conditions on offer.

Hampton has long been regarded as one of the country’s premier high-performance programmes, and not being able to row for long periods means that pursuing excellence becomes a tricky balance between indoor and outdoor training. “We’re fortunate that we have an excellent training centre, with weights and ergoes available on the school site for the kids,” explained Josh, who took over as Senior Coach at the beginning of the 23/24 season. “Generationally, young athletes have become increasingly data-driven. Rowing – via technology, telemetry, indoor machines – gives you a lot of feedback and our boys can see the arc of improvement. That is so helpful in keeping the current crop engaged when they can’t get out on the water.”

Alongside unpredictable water flow, Butler’s chief challenge in working with a team led by the ever-present force of Greenaway is revitalising a program that has struggled to reclaim the lofty heights previously scaled at the beginning of the last decade. Switching seats from Westminster – where he’d been a coach for 15 years – Butler immediately helped to engineer what looks like the beginning of a turnaround. The first eight made the National Schools’ Regatta A-final, whilst their J16s finished fourth in two decade-highs for the program. “We have a great crop of boys at the moment,” said Butler. “They’re incredibly focused and driven, and the school works hard to enable them to reach their goals. We have athletes in the program who want to row for Great Britain whilst others simply want to escape bankside reality for a couple of hours and pootle about in a boat with friends. Neither is more important than the other, and Hampton is focused on providing solutions for both.”

Such an approach is rare in high-performance sport but refreshing for a programme that aspires to be the fastest in the country. Are Hampton doing anything different to anyone else in pursuit of better results? “Our training program is fairly generic, and I don’t think we’re doing anything special. There is just a lot of consistency,” said Butler. “We have 64 kids in our senior squad and if you want to be in that group, you need to be training. With the challenges we face, we have worked to develop some cool off-water solutions that feed the group’s desire for self-improvement”

Butler regularly relies on the RP3 to aid his programme in pursuit of deeper and more insightful data. “The water is an Achilles Heel for us; it can go from unbelievable to unrowable almost in the space of a week of two,” he explained. “We want to create the closest possible simulation to on-water rowing. The school have created a facility with lots of ergoes and mirrors throughout the room, and the RP3 allows the group to move in a very similar way to the style in which we row on the water. We can then cross-reference that data with the telemetry and the two fit together pretty seamlessly.”

Some may remember the first flickering of a Hampton resurgence in their win on home water last year at the Hampton Head. “We had a solid month of rain and then this miracle week where the water fell and the rain stopped and the event went ahead,” remembered Butler. “We hadn’t done any rowing at all in the lead-up to that, but the boys jumped in the boat and actually won the event outright, beating some pretty good crews along the way. It was an interesting experiment in determining just how impactful the RP3 can be as a training tool.”

Butler continued: “It also helps that Paul – the UK RP3 rep – is incredible. You can text him with any issues and he’ll find a slot in the days following to come and sort it out.”

And to 2025? “I’m not going to stick my head above the parapet just yet,” he said. “There’s lots more to come and I want to see how the winter goes for this group. We’re an athlete-led programme and I want to ensure every athlete finds their specific aim and is given the best possible opportunity to enjoy the sport, in whatever way they can.

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