hello and welcome everybody thank you very much for watching arm training videos and welcome to the video about strength training i'm making this video because i got a couple requests you know what type of strength training is is ideal for rowers and so on now unlike many other youtubers who do a great job by the way i'm not going to jump in the gym and say do this and that and you will lose 10 kilos here and 20 pounds there what interests me is how it affects the overall training cleaning training cleaning and rowing technique are the two things that matter for me the most when it comes to working with athletes i'm actually re-recording this so i've spent the last three four days editing a video and by the time i was 75 through i thought what a blah blah i should redo this entire thing it's a very complex topic it's not like if you do this it will all be good because everything kind of belongs together all right good now let's get started i'm trying to structure this in a couple of questions so the question is going to be why do we do strength and training at all what types of strength training are there what type of exercises do work and what type of exercises do i avoid and this list will by far not be complete and then i'm talking about how many reps and how many sets and why and so on mail time i got something from toby toby send me a look at the card that is so nice can you see it let me send you a long sleeve shirt and a short sleeve shirt to try it out what a nice rolling shirt look at that oh it just feels you see this feels awesome it's very nice i really got to try this out then stick around at the end of the video i'm gonna try this shirt let's get back to the topic number one why first of all when we talk about strength there are a couple of things i want to achieve with strength training and full disclosure there are actually coaches out there say as a rower as an adult drawer you shouldn't need to do any type of strength training at all because hey you're grown up you already have the muscles you need so rowing is such a endurance slash strength sport then if you roll alone it will get the job done perfectly i think there's some truth to this on the other hand side i found that there are a couple of major major major advantages of doing strength training these are first of all a raw strength development this is something if you only do endurance and rowing is you know if you're one hour on the water one and a half two hours on water it's way more on the endurance side and on the strength side of course the raw strength becomes more just because you become older so i'm 39 now my raw strength is higher than it was than it was 25 or 20 working out 14 times a week so that's something that comes with age at the same time there are certain things you can only do when you are in a weightlifting room or if you do asymmetric core there are certain things you simply cannot do as well in the boat in rowing the the competitive distance is between three minutes super fast 1k even less than three minutes in an eight masters rowers up to nine minutes lightweight women's single uh over 2k and that's a very short distance so strength is a massive component and then if we talk about the new formats of coaster blowing 15 to 30 minutes typical race distance but coastal rowing has significantly more load on the entire body than stillwater rowing because a the boats are very heavy and b the c is usually very rough the requirement for your entire structure to be super stable are simply greater than in like cycling you don't need strength for cycling that much so strike for cycling you need an engine you need uh endurance strength may be important for some very specific disciplines but generally speaking rowing has a much greater strength component than many other endurance sports second point strength can also increase your total power output if we talk about asymmetric strength so asymmetric core strength you essentially link the peripheric muscle groups to functional units and it doesn't mean you become stronger in individual body parts but it means the individual muscles start to function together as functional chains functional training is a big name right now and therefore you become stronger overall the overall power output simply increases and that's something you can do with rowing but if you only do the same thing all the time the wrong stroke there's not much growth body economizes too quickly yeah that brings me to the next point strength should be done in a non-endurance environment you have to focus on the motion if you do 15 overhead deep squats not even with a lot of weight it's a different focus than doing um one hour of rowing that's and also the the mobility requirement is a different one so i like to get out of the of the motion pattern and if you wrote all the time you become numb to the motion you don't even feel the difference anymore and in your body you've got something that's called proprio receptors so essentially sensors in your muscle that tell the brain hey i'm in this in that position if they always are used to the same motion your brain doesn't sense any more of a motion slightly different or not you need to sometimes break out of your motion pattern and this is why i like to do strength training outside of the bow and then a big big big factor is health precaution increased bone density there are studies to prove that more and stronger muscles equals higher bone density i heard i didn't read i heard about studies the group of 80 year olds had a bone density increase of one percent i think while the comparison group did have a decrease of half a percent within a couple of months i imagine being 80 years old you can improve your bone density or lose bone density that's a big thing i think strength is a huge issue also for non-workers it's a very very important thing to preserve your health the older you get the more you have to do this second increase stability of tendons and ligaments there are studies about this and i also observe this i that's one of the main reasons i like to do strength because in rowing we need stable joints i stabilize the joints with strength in the off-season there are no studies i found if you know of any studies please send them to me but improved stability of cartilages i heard about this from other coaches i haven't found studies about this but i also observed this that if you do strength training the cartilages actually adapt and become stronger so my personal observation is that cartilage has actually become less susceptible to injuries but that's a bit vague i can't really specify this because i didn't open up the joint and look at the cartilage and put it back in that's not doable but my observation is that joint pain has simply become less due to strength training control strength training i'm not talking about abusive strength training i'm talking about control the strength of the training and this i blame increased stability of cartilages for that but that's my observation i have not done medical studies about this and i haven't read any so if you know more about this please put it in the comments below i would love to read about this next point what types of strength training are there so it's generally speaking there is a specific and non-specific strength training so specific to our sport rowing would be um strength in the boat that would be low rate high power super simple that's specific non-specific would be everything else weight training it would be body weight only training it would be a range of motion training i consider an overhead deep squat for example to be a full range of motion training for your hip that's very important to mobilize certain parts you simply don't mobilize in the boat then core training symmetric core training straight situps asymmetric core training i've made a video i'm going to link it in the description below it's a full trainer long set asymmetric core that's one of these training sessions where you learn to connect our right hand left foot for example and therefore your overall power output increases don't focus on the time so much focus on the precision of the motion as much as you can next point which exercises now that list will never be complete because there are so many exercises you can do generally speaking i think most of the olympic lifting is a good thing because it's a controlled it's something all kids can also do as well they don't have to use a lot of weight but learn the technique there's a channel i recommend you check out it's uh zach taylor and he actually dissects all the different motions but what's also interesting for me i think is um squad university some of their videos are very interesting so i would recommend you check out these two channels generally speaking there's a misconception when we do certain exercises there are different types of squats you can do front squats you can do the back squats you can do overhead deep squats you can do jump squats farmers walk you can do one leg lunges you can do pistol squats which i don't like by the way because i think they load the knee way too much of all the squats there's usually one weak link in this entire motion and it is usually not the legs it is usually something around your back and if you do squats and you go on full load and you try to load your body completely and then you end up being in a sub perfect position with your low back then you simply have maxed out what your body can do i recommend you see squats as a functional exercise which it actually is most people start to do squats and think my leg's going to give in because if i don't feel my legs burn i haven't done proper squats no the weakest link will give in first whatever the weakest link is with most people it's the back so if i do squats i focus a lot on the back i don't focus a lot on the legs and then the question may be well but then my legs will never get stronger yeah but if your legs already overpower your back they will also overpower your back in the boat so the point is that if you think you have to work in your legs and you have to find some way to work on your legs because if your back always gives in when you do squats in that position it's not perfect it will be the same issue in the boat and this is why i'm not a big fan of of doing leg press for example i used to be one of those guys who did a lot of leg press so my leg press weight for 20 repetitions was 360 kilos whatever i could load onto this thing and i would do 20 reps i would do four sets i was bored i had big big big legs but it did overpower my back because my back was not not in the least way able to handle any of that weight adi my partner byron once came up with a very interesting adaption to leg press he actually welded two handles to a leg press and said all right now load up the leg press and remove the back rest and now do the leg press again and all of a sudden people that have like 40 kilos 60 kilos that was already you felt like in an orangutan on the leg press because your arms couldn't couldn't hold that and your back couldn't hold that everybody around back here the thing is you need to see rowing as something that requires you to transfer force from the soles of your feet to the palm of your hands in order to get force on the blades now everything in between is important you can't just say if i have big legs all the rest of the issues will be solved by themselves yes and i recommend you get an excellent physiotherapist because you will need one a very good one two three four years down the line this is what happened with me i worked extensively on my legs when i was 15 years old i did squats with 150 kilos so 300 pounds you went down to 90 degree angle you held this for 30 seconds knees were shaking like crazy talking about health and and the bar was bending and i felt like a hulk and you went back up and you did um squat brush or jump thrust or whatever you call this excellent my knees still hurt today and my back is still a bit thrashed today also from all this linear earth training just because your legs can do something it doesn't mean it's actually beneficial for the boat and that just saying that's just talking about squats generally when you do squats i like front squats right now a lot i like to work on the anterior chains everything that's the front part of your body and the under ventral chain that's the front part torso and also in a load environment so usually people do a lot of sit-ups that's body weight only or maybe use a 20-pound disc or something i recently started to use chest press and with the same weight you do a couple of sit-ups lay flat on the bench move up a bit down move up a bit down that's how you load your abs for the first time the reason why i focus a lot on the apps right now and that's just myself as a coach making my way through my my life as a coach and i've been doing this for 25 years now finding ways to make people more effective when it comes to growing technique and i found one of the best ways to teach writing technique is to focus on the ontario chain not on the posterior chain because if you only focus on the back and the hip extension and so on it's very difficult to keep a posture especially when we talk about using the upper body you know later earlier you kind of become numb to that but what if you focus on your abs in the zoom life sessions by the way if you haven't joined armchain.com three sessions per week link in the description below um a couple bucks a month and you have life coaching in the boat and on the end of rower the idea is to keep the upper body in place and have a lot a lot a lot of force going through the entire body because the more you load up your hip the more effective that catapult is going to be once you use the upper body and in these in these classes i focused on why don't you start the catch with focusing on your abs it's this way you don't pivot too early because you don't have to stabilize your back all you need to stabilize is your abs and your abs are not very likely to make the upper body rotate around the hip very early i found this to be super effective when it comes to stabilizing the trunk throughout the first part of the leg drive and also this way you can't overload the back because you're kind of out of your muscle memory outside your comfort zone therefore you don't really tend to use the upper body too early because you focus now on your on your on your abs they have to cope with all the leg power you've got i like to do um also full range of motion exercises uh overhead deep squats i like to do good mornings you don't have to use a lot of weight that full range around your hamstrings and glutes and hips that's so important a lot of people simply don't have the flexibility finished position hands away most people can't rotate the hip without bending their knees and that's a huge issue so i'd like to solve these issues when we do strength training this is why i like to do strength training because you can do it in a single out environment non-endurance environment outside the boat very important in terms of lap and shoulders of course you can do bench pull but make sure you're not too high when you pull so you should be right here not where your chest is pretty low otherwise you don't activate the left ventral front rows big thing because it also activates the back very very interesting pull-ups of course supported pull-ups 45-degree pull-ups where your feet are on the floor and you pull yourself up that also requires a lot of tension in your trunk then it's a lot of asymmetric stuff so for example push-ups on on barbells hexagon barbells you would do a push-up you would go down up lift one side up go back down up lift one side up it's a classic you've seen it before but in the rowing community i have not seen it a lot and you don't have to use a lot of weight but it's also very interesting how quickly can your muscles respond to a different load which is exactly the load we have with the catch so at the catch you go from a lot of people go from pushing forward to pulling ideally you should be in a slight pre-stretch environment before you start to drive so the muscles are ready but most people are not ready so i'm trying to teach the muscles how to respond quicker i said this before i try to avoid deadlifts i do not consider deadlifts to be bad but most people are too crazy about putting a lot of discs on their barbells that's something where you can quickly injure yourself especially if you do a linear warm-up roll and then deadlifts that's almost a guarantee for injury i know there was a study or paper about you shouldn't use the erg before you do weight training absolutely get it it overloads the back but i still think some cardiovascular stuff before you start weight training is very effective therefore we hop on the buyer blower on the erg on the boat for 20 minutes then on the bike we leave the back then shake we'll just do a bit of gymnastics mobilization and then we would do strength training and this way i think we bypass a lot of the issues there's so many more exercises you can do oh yeah hip thrusts a big big thing hip rest is probably one of the most important exercises in rowing i believe as long as it is an environment where you can safely execute the exercise all good very all good the question is now next point how many reps that's where training planning comes in place in rowing we are still not a power only sport three to nine minutes or or 15 30 minutes coastal that's a long time to depend on power only ultimately in training cleaning my plan is to my job is to get my athletes to build up raw strength cardiovascular raw strength cardiovascular ultimately these two have to connect the thing is you can't really build you can't really make yourself or turn yourself into a hulk and at the same time are working your cardiovascular development it just doesn't work scientifically speaking it's not quite sure whether you actually gain more muscle fibers or they're just getting bigger i read contradicting things about this so i don't know what the current point of science is but my point of view or my point of error right now or wisdom or whatever you call it is that it's not quite sure what happens but as a matter of fact you see that things become more shirts become smaller so too small for you so something has got to change physically in your body and that makes it almost impossible to work on high performance endurance loads it just doesn't everything and i found you can work on strength and aerobic capacity that seems to go well together but it doesn't make a lot of sense partly does to go above the anaerobic facial level this is why right now we have november in the northern hemisphere you would have peak of season around july august september so right now we have three weeks pretty much exclusive focus on weights and strength so if a master's athlete has five sessions a week three of these sessions are actually weight training two of these sessions are endurance training to clean out all the stuff that still flowing around from the weight training session with um a light to moderate endurance session if you have seven sessions or 14 sessions per week the same principle apply my experience is and this is something you don't read this in the literature in literature most of the studies have been done with sports students these are not high performance athletes and even you know if your master's role would you you train four to five times per week you're probably better trained than most of these sports students no offense to you sports students out there but you have to consider what a road actually does rowing itself is it's a huge huge effort by the body and it's strength and endurance so aurora is usually better trained than most average people out there so the sports literature has not been all most of the studies have not been done with pro athletes because they were busy doing their workouts and and working towards their goals so this is why you can't really look at literature and say okay hypertrophy is like super slow six reps whatever you find in youtube it doesn't really work for growers unless you are a super super explosive athlete so in rowing you need explosiveness and endurance now if you're an explosive athlete of course you can kill yourself within five to seven uh repetitions but what do you do if you're super endurance athletes a difference here real quick i said this again in many videos classic endurance athletes stereotypical endurance athletes um probably could do 150 pound bench pull for 50 times but ask that person to do 154 pound bench pull five times not possible the other extreme most people are mixtures i know the other extreme would be an explosive athlete happily does i don't know 300 pound bench pull eight times but ask that person to do 150 pound bench pull 20 times impossible you can change this with training playing that's also part of my job enrolling ultimately you need both so it doesn't matter from which extreme you come from you need to develop both and with the strength training i'm trying to already balance this out a bit this is why when we talk about repetitions i work with with triple loading now depending on the exercise let me give an example we would have 8 to 12 8 to 15 repetitions uh let's say chest press 8 to 15 reps maybe 20 reps uh after your warm-up set all good first first set 8-15 repetitions then a tiny mickey mouse break 30 seconds that's not a full recovery again load load load until failure so the the goal is then in the first set you want to put yourself you want to use as much weight as needed to fail within 15 to 20 reps in the second set you try to fail within 8 to 12 reps because you only have 30 second break and in the third set the third subset of one actually main set you try to fail again after a mickey mouse break so we try to empty the muscle three times in a row boom boom boom and i found this to be first of all extremely extremely time friendly most people have other things to do than rowing although it's hard to believe and secondly this is what works this is how you build up muscles this is how you become effective if you do two sets of these or three or maybe four if you're super tough and crazy there's no way you're not going to have any gains that's what i found to be effective and that's the sweet spot of repetitions that is neither the classic hypertrophy training nor is it the classic endurance weight training when i was in the team we used to do things like 30 minutes consecutive bench pull with 60 pounds or 65 pounds and after the first five minutes you think i'm never going to survive this your head blows up like a tomato your arms become that wide and cables come up but after seven eight minutes you kind of find yeah okay and if it took 40 minutes i could do it as well there's no real benefit anymore after seven eight nine minutes and but back then you know our national coach thought it was super beneficial so we did it that's about my current point of error and wisdom or wisdom and error where i use these um yeah sets of of you know three subsets within one set and try to really empty the muscle you have to do this and i try to empty it with little repetitions as possible knowing that most of my athletes will actually need um 8 to 15 ribs and it's also a technical thing not a lot of athletes are able to have a super clean squat so if you don't have a super clean a super clean squat you will hurt yourself if you use too much weight same with dead lift same with overhead deep squats and all this stuff so i have to take this into consideration i can't just say um five repetitions uh ninety percent of max weight block another thing how much weight i know that there is a classic way of doing this you do a one rep max test and you say you do 90 of you one rep max for so and so i don't do this anymore i used to do this it doesn't pay first of all one rip max has a lot to do with technique not so much with power i know technique also comes into place when you do the exercise later on but you don't differentiate between explosive and endurance athletes and this is why it all becomes a bit weary so what i say is whatever the weight is the first two three weight trainings it's it's trial and error how much weight do you need to empty your muscle three times with a 30 to 30 second two minute break how much time do you need how much weight do you need so i asked my athletes try it out see how much weight you need to empty your muscles according to the plan and this is the way to use and the next time you put in a bit more if you think you can have a clean execution if you're not quite sure use your phone record yourself look at this does it look good if not send the video to me i look at that and i'm connected with all my athletes on telegram so i'm always available that's how you kind of find the right weight i'm not a big fan of you cannot tell enough play every single thing they have to do and i found this to be super effective so i i prescribe weights in terms of if it's a warm up set 80 of 20 breath max nobody has an idea what it is but everybody understands okay if i would do 20 reps i would probably do i don't know 80 pounds so i'm going to use 60. and tada is pretty precise you also have to consider we're not power lifters so we don't judge intensities that way we use it for rowing not for power lifting if you are an olympic lifter of course first of all your technique is super clean and second of all this is your daily bread this is like for us talking about what levels or speed on the water that's a different ball game but we are not in the ball game we play a different game here last question is open when and how often do weight training so if your peak of season is june july i would start right october i used to do more endurance than weight training and over the last couple of years i moved to more weight training right now i'm doing three weeks a lot of focus on weights three weeks a lot of focus on cardiovascular development um again three weeks away three week cardiovascular and this is becoming more favoring um it's becoming more favorable for for endurance as we approach peak of season but weight training is something that i like to do until about two months two and a half months before the main peak of season uh because strength is such a decisive component in probably okay i might do another video in a couple of years and say what a nonsense i'm completely i'm of a completely different opinion now but that's my current point of error and i'd like to share this with you i hope it was interesting so if you want to work with me go to autumntraining.com i write training plans to live sessions um that's what i do so happy to work with you program and your questionnaire drop me an email call me text me skype rmtraining.com as all the infos connect with me in rowing.zone that's a rowing enthusiast forum which is growing our 260 300 members already it's becoming bigger and bigger and bigger post a comment subscribe and share the video with somebody else who you think could benefit from that i wish you all the best thank you very much for watching until the end and now i'm going to hop into that it will play shirt and see how it looks like ebookplay is actually an austrian company they actually started out with rowing gloves i'm one of those who actually likes to roll with gloves when it's cold and if the gloves are well made it works and the gloves they make are insanely good feels good i like used to when you bought shirts um it used to be that you're like ah i don't know it's like ah clunky doesn't feel right but that's like very narrow armholes so you have a lot of motion you can move i i feel comfortable moving around that's awesome that's it's like a second skin you don't even feel it usually these running shirts are stiff and you go to the kitchens like but this one is super nice feels very good if we go to the catch i've got all the space in the world wow joey that's an awesome shirt thank you so much for that so i highly recommend you check out eagle clear and uh thank you once more for sending it all right thank you for watching the video all the way to the end and looking forward to seeing the next one uh [Music]