After every championship, many of the crews and coaches who did not finish on the podium are left to wonder, “How were those winning crews so fast?”, “What was their rig?”, What was the average 2K erg in the boat?, and “How often do they train?”
In our community we have a reticence about sharing things like erg scores and training volume. Certainly a quick Google search will offer broad ranges of data, but rarely anything specific. Coaches can be frustratingly opaque, and will sometimes even coyley engage in misdirection about how fast their crews are (or aren’t). I find this behavior odd considering that rowing is an entirely offensive sport. If you know every piece of data about the other crews (height/weight/2K/hat size), what are you going to do about it? What are your competitors going to do if they know everything about your crew? I remember as an NCAA Division I Head Coach, laughing with other head coaches about our conference’s “no-scouting” rule. The idea of secretly watching another team practice to gain a competitive advantage seemed absurd. You can only control what your own athletes do; how they train and how they perform.
I am going to break precedent here by publishing a detailed review of the training time, erg performances, biometric data, and boat rig of this silver-medal (and very near first) crew to share with the entire rowing community. Why? I believe we should pull back the curtain on training data. I believe the lack of transparency around things like training volume and erg scores does little favor competitively, and limits the growth and development of coaches in our community. How many athletes with amazing potential were limited because their coach really didn’t know or understand how hard to push (or not push) an athlete? How many potentially great coaches left the sport because they just hadn’t learned yet what it took (by the numbers) to be competitively successful? How many coaches were run out of town by parents because they didn’t know they were asking more from their athletes than they needed to?
The four athletes central to this article have all consented to having their training and performance data shared publicly. I will also refer to them as Rower A, Rower B, Rower C, and Rower D. I will also leave the team name ambiguous, as I do not find it relevant although all of this information is publicly accessible.
Reminder: This data is presented to inform and educate. It is not offered as an opportunity to second guess, evaluate performance or engage in “Monday morning quarterbacking”. Every piece of data presented here is a variable and has a context behind it. These athletes (and their coach) are human, potentially had other priorities and challenges they were constantly balancing with rowing. There are a million contingencies to consider of what might (or might not) have made a .6 second difference. Don’t waste your time trying to digress into the “what ifs” or “should haves.” The result is the result and should be left at that.
A promising start with some early data: Head of the Charles
This exact crew raced the Youth Four at the Head of the Charles in October, 2021. They placed 3rd and finished with a time of 17:21.775. They were 6.6 seconds behind second place, and 12.976 seconds from 1st. Their biometric and performance data is as follows:
| Athlete | Rower A | Rower B | Rower C | Rower D |
| Height (m)/Weight(kg) | 1.88/83.96 | 1.83/82.09 | 1.84/76.78 | 1.87/89.4 |
| 6K score – (10/7/21) | 21:20.1 | 22:27.01 | 22:03.2 | 20:55.0 |
| Training Days (up to race day) | 39 | 39 | 36 | 39 |
Base rating for the piece was a 34 and the four was a large Pocock K4+ rigged at 85/115 and oars were C2 Fat2 at a length of 369. Pitch was 4 degrees.
This result led me to believe that this specific crew had considerable potential at the Youth National Championships level.
Our schedule and weekly/daily plan for the 21/22 training year:
The training schedule at the club has been fairly consistent for several decades. Athletes meet Monday through Friday at 4:15PM and walk out of the boat yard no later than 6:45PM (Total time 2.5 hours). On Sundays we would also host a shorter training session from 7AM – 9AM (2 hours). This was a maximum training time of 14.5 hours weekly. Each week had one dedicated erg/land training day. Typical training sessions would start with a short meeting to discuss the plan for the session, some mobility warm up exercises, running and time for stretching, and the athletes would have hands on boats by 5:50PM. On-the- water sessions would start with another brief rowing-specific warmup and commence with the workout/drill plan for the day. Land sessions would follow the same pattern, with the added exception of strength training (kettlebells) circuits mixed in with the ergs.
Total training time for each athlete:
At the end of the regular season (ending with the Regional Championships on May 8), each athlete had logged the following training days starting from September 7, 2021:
| Rower A | Rower B | Rower C | Rower D |
| 150 | 151 | 117 | 143 |
The number of years of experience also counts, however I can offer only estimates. A substantial amount of team training was missed due to Covid; our club completely shut down (no access to the facility or equipment from March 20, 2020 until re-opening for limited access in April 2021). Two athletes participated in summer competitive club rowing (Penn AC etc.). When they sat at the start line, all four athletes had been rowing for 4-5 years, with a substantial year long gap between years 2&4.
BioMetric data for each athlete in the spring:
This was mostly unchanged from the fall, however Rower D did experience some slight weight loss in the 7-8kg range by spring time:
| Athlete | Rower A | Rower B | Rower C | Rower D |
| Height (m)/Weight(kg) | 1.88/83.96 | 1.83/82.09 | 1.84/76.78 | 1.87/81.65 |
Three of the athletes were seniors, one was a junior, but they were mostly over any adolescence-related growth spurts.
Erg progress and evaluations:
Our erg evaluation schedule was very consistent, with 2K evaluations scheduled on the first Thursday of every month, starting in December:
| Athlete | PR | April ‘22 | March ‘22 | February ‘22 | January ‘22 | December ‘21 |
| Rower D | 6:27.6 | 6:34.9 | 6:27.6 | 6:33.9 | 6:44.7 | 6:35.4 |
| Rower A | 6:28.9 | NTT | 6:28.9 | 6:34.7 | 6:43.4 | 6:30.5 |
| Rower C | 6:43.9 | 6:48.2 | 6:49.1 | 6:53.7 | 6:58.3 | 6:49.1 |
| Rower B | 6:46.4 | 7:00.2 | 6:59.9 | 6:52.4 | 6:55.9 | 6:54.6 |
Competitive Boatspeed Analysis:
While observing their progress through the training, I was acutely aware of what the optimal benchmarks were regarding actual boatspeed. For the last few years I have been employing a “blunt tool” statistical model of averaging finish times to understand how fast the boat actually needed to be to qualify for nationals at the regional championships, and presumably win.
Regionals (same venue every year):
| V4- | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Average |
| 2021 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | |
| 2019 | 6:49.0 | 7:02.6 | 7:15.6 | 7:19.9 | 7:33.4 | 7:34.3 | 7:15.8 |
| 2018 | 6:42.2 | 6:49.6 | 6:59.5 | 7:06.0 | 7:09.9 | 7:20.5 | 7:01.3 |
| 2017 | 6:22.2 | 6:24.6 | 6:32.4 | 6:32.8 | 6:45.1 | 6:52.1 | 6:34.9 |
| 2016 | 6:29.2 | 6:33.0 | 6:36.5 | 6:42.4 | 6:52.4 | 7:09.9 | 6:43.9 |
| 2015 | 6:53.3 | 7:01.3 | 7:07.3 | 7:13.0 | 7:52.5 | 7:13.5 | |
| 2014 | 6:47.4 | 6:52.8 | 6:58.3 | 7:07.1 | 7:25.3 | 7:31.0 | 7:07.0 |
| 2013 | 6:50.2 | 6:58.7 | 7:02.1 | 7:21.8 | 7:25.8 | 7:26.1 | 7:10.8 |
| Average | 6:41.9 | 6:48.9 | 6:55.9 | 7:03.3 | 7:17.8 | 7:19.0 | 7:01.1 |
From this data, I knew that in order to qualify for the national championships, the crew had to be able to at least go 6:41, or sustain a 1:40/500m split for ~six and a half minutes.
At the 2022 regional championships, the final for the four without coxswain was canceled due to high winds. The crew was able to place fourth (6:59.274, or 1:50.3/500m) in the time trial, and earned their bid to the national championships from that result. The time trial was a sub-optimal performance for the crew (two athletes raced in the 2- TT earlier), and they were forced to stop several meters from the finish due to boat traffic from the preceding event (U16 8+ time trial), adding anywhere from 5-10 seconds to their final time. From practice times observed empirically, I knew they were faster than what the time trial demonstrated.
Headed into the National Championships, the data was more questionable since there was only one year of recorded results (the four without coxswain was only just incorporated as a National Championship event in 2021):
| V4- | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Average |
| 2021 (NBP) | 6:26.1 | 6:30.5 | 6:32.1 | 6:34.2 | 6:36.8 | 6:41.4 | 6:33.5 |
My presumption was that since there was only a year of data, that the 2022 national championship final would be significantly faster; the 2021 final was a shallower event due to some parts of the country still limited by pandemic protocols. I set a goal for the crew of 6:20 or a 1:35/500m split as a potential gold medal winning time. Join me in part two to see how this unfolded and if the plan worked…
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