How to Crush 1st Year as a Rower

Although things may have been different this year, moving away from home for the first time is a challenging prospect before you consider balancing life, workload and training for rowing. If you are currently in your last year of school, or are on a gap year and looking to start rowing at your university next September, here are some tips to help you keep your head above water and even thrive in this new environment.

Before I dive in, I will briefly go over a couple of assumptions. I am assuming you have rowed competitively as a junior, either at a club or school. As part of this, you have completed a fairly comprehensive training programme for at least your final two years of junior rowing. You are also going to a university to row competitively, and as such will be looking to complete a typical university training schedule. Of course, these will vary depending on where you are, but all will require a similar commitment level.

Getting Ready for University

Whether it is out of anxiety or excitement, you might look ahead and want to know how you can make this period easier for yourself. In terms of training, look to complete your junior programme, the chances are it will prepare you very well for university rowing. The only difference might be a lower volume; however, junior programmes tend to be quite intense in my experience, so bear this difference in mind.

The main things you can do to prepare are to get comfortable with things like doing laundry, cooking, and travelling independently. Although they may seem trivial, it’s easy to get worked up over these and waste valuable time and energy down the road.

I would recommend getting in touch with the university boat club before you arrive, relevant details will likely be found in either their website or through social media. They might invite you to join preseason training, which is an excellent opportunity to get to know some fellow rowers before the madness of freshers’ week and term beginning.

Find Friends

When you first arrive at university, you might be overwhelmed by how many new faces there are. Even within your first year flat or house, you will have perhaps 20 people who you will be living in close quarters with from day one. Do what you can to get to know these people, work out if there are any athletes in other sports, who are also looking to commit to their training. Having this within your immediate living group will help you eat well, sleep well, and generally resist some of the traps that first years can fall into.

See if you can also get to know any other rowers in first year, you’ll be able to find each other if you have got in touch with the club before arriving at university, or if not, speak to the women’s or men’s captain as they will likely know about some other newcomers. Knowing other first-year rowers will be a massive help when commuting to training sessions, doing land training, or just meeting people. The chances are you will be rowing with these people throughout your time at university, so it’s a good idea to get to know them early on.

Being Independent

This challenge is not unique to rowing; however, it can make your rowing commitments much more difficult to maintain. As a junior, you might be used to having your meals cooked for you, having strict lesson times at school and all your training being at set times and facilitated by coaches or teachers. As a student-athlete, you will be left much more to your own devices both by your academic teaching staff and by your rowing coaches. At least, to begin with, you’ll find that everything takes a bit longer than it used to, cooking dinner could add up to an hour to your evening routine, for example. It will also be easy to fall behind with coursework, with no one breathing down your neck to get it done and put in the hours day by day.
Be conscious that this is new and honest with yourself that it may be challenging. In the first few weeks of term, learn what works for you, maybe find out what the older rowers do to manage their time and apply this to your daily schedule. At the weekend or when you have a day off training, bulk cook meals so that you can save time during the week, and do a couple of different dishes, so you don’t have to eat the same thing every day. I usually do my weekly shop on a Sunday morning and then do my laundry and cooking in the afternoon, ahead of the coming week (Saturdays being for training and relaxing).

Depending on your university’s layout, it might be easy to spend a typical working day (9-5) studying, with training sessions either side of that. This daily schedule is demanding but will help in the long run by making sure you don’t have to cram weeks of work into a few days leading up to deadlines or exams later in the year. The key to making this sustainable is to get enough sleep (could be upwards of 9 hours) and make the most of the time available to relax outside of training and studying. This will likely be Wednesday afternoons and weekends but specifically will depend on your training schedule.

Coping with Training

Training programmes vary significantly across clubs, although they will typically consist of two sessions per day for six days of the week. I would suggest for any new student rower that for at least the first few months, you just do what you can to complete the programme without getting ill or injured. This could mean only doing compulsory sessions, doing your UT2 a bit slower, or lifting lighter weights. Consistency is the essential thing in rowing, so there’s no point in crushing the first week of training to then get ill and miss a whole week. You might find the training doesn’t look too bad on paper, but combined with a demanding workload, the excitement of first year, and fending for yourself for the first time, it can quickly become too much.

If you are worried about this being an issue speak to the coaches and fellow athletes to see if they have any advice or can even allow you to take some time to recover and gradually build into the full programme.

That’s all for now. If you’re hungry for more, check out any of our other pieces from The Catch, listen to the latest podcast episode, or flick through our race previews.

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About The Author

John Laurenson

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