A couple of weeks ago I had my first real experience of CrossFit at CrossFit Strength In Depth, held at the London Excel Centre. The event saw some of the CrossFit Elite competing for a place at the CrossFit Games held later this year in the U.S.
It is well known that the ergo (rowing machine) is a piece of equipment regularly used in CrossFit boxes/gyms around the globe, but with a phenomenal amount of passion for our sport (rowing) and CrossFit, Dr Cameron Nichol (@drcamnichol) has pulled off an incredible move and bought our sport of rowing to CrossFit…on the water.
So how did it work? Throwing the CrossFit athletes in a single was never going to work, there would be too much for them to learn to ensure they got from start to finish in a timely manner and safely, it was decided that they would sit in a double, with the person in the bow seat acting as the judge. For those that don’t know, while crossfitters are doing their thing on the floor, they are followed by a judge who counts each rep and makes sure each rep is completed adequately before moving onto the next move. Therefore, getting competent rowers to sit in the bow seat and calling them the judge was a more natural thing for the CrossFit athlete, after all we were in their world now. The job of the judge, simply sit there, make the boat as safe and as stable as possible and ensure the boat went in a straight line. All judges submitted their body weights, and each judges ‘weight’ was raised to that of the heaviest judge using sandbags to ensure fairness across the board, much like how it works with coxswains. The judges were also briefed on how to adjust course and reminded that no words of encouragement or coaching were allowed while the athlete was racing, again to make it as fair as possible for each athlete. The athletes raced in a time trial format over 500m, their times were recorded, ranked and then given the appropriate points, e.g. the winner was awarded 50 points, this then decreased the lower the athlete was down the finish order.
That’s a short, sharp brief overview of how the event worked and it worked very well indeed, thanks to a lot of time and effort put in by Dr Cameron Nichol and the rest of his team. What really struck me was the physical and mental ability of the CrossFit athletes.
Let me start with what I mean by mental ability. CrossFit is all about functional movements in many different forms, weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, running, cycling, rowing the list goes on, because these athletes are constantly training and adapting how they move to suit different movements and exercises, their awareness of how their bodies move and function is phenomenal. Their so malleable and adaptable that they are almost instantly able to look at the movement pattern, absorb what they see, process that information, relate it to a similar movement and then put it into action. This made me think, if we as rowers & the rowing community opened our eyes and our minds to different ways of moving in our training, could this not make us better rowers and athletes? From what I have seen at rowing clubs we stick to the same things, slogging up and down on a rowing machine for endless hours, Bench Press, Bench Pull, Deadlift, Lat Pulldowns and maybe Power Cleans (if you are capable), the same thing, year in, year out, working pretty much in the same plane of motion, not too stimulating on the mind either is it!
But how about we changed that approach? Now I’m not saying lets all get out there, do CrossFit and we’ll all be much better rowers, there are fundamentals of our sport that we need to do and incorporate, but what I am saying is we could adopt some of what CrossFit does to keep our minds fresh, alert and always open to adapting, if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you will only ever think in that way. Learning and doing different weekly workouts with different moves, may make you think and use your mind more openly in a boat and may allow you to be able to make changes easier, as an example, you may think about how you got into a certain position when training on land, which could have a huge impact on your hand speed at the catch position, ultimately allowing the spoon of the blade to enter the water faster or more efficiently (what rower doesn’t want that right).
I guess my main point here is the more mentally open you are to trying and doing different forms of training and moving in different ways, the more likely it is you will be able to mentally make technical changes in the boat a lot quicker and in anyone’s world, the faster you make a positive change the better right?
I’ve sort of touched on physical ability whilst discussing mental ability above by talking about how CrossFit athletes train to perform many different movements, but here are the physical attributes that stood out to me in both male and female CrossFit athletes while watching them compete; strength, power, speed, agility, co-ordination, all while having extremely good range of motion in all areas, are these not all the things we need in rowing? Let’s break this down a piece at a time:
- Strength– we know we need strength, the stronger we are the more force we can drive through the legs to lever the boat past the oar, simples.
- Speed – The faster we drive our legs down, open our backs, draws the arms through, release the blade out the water and recycle our hands around the back end the faster we move.
- Power– is applying a maximum amount of force (see Strength above) as fast as we can (see Speed above), sounds quite a lot like the leg drive to me, agreed?
So, with those first three points, we’d probably all be in agreement that makes sense and as rowers we’re not too bad at working on that stuff on the land, however where I think as a rowing community, we fall down is on the next couple of points. Here’s something I have heard quite a few times in rowing, “I’m a rower, I don’t have very good co-ordination” or “I’m a rower, I’m a bit cumbersome and used to sitting down while exercising”, hell I’ve without a doubt even said things like this myself. But since stepping away, being less involved in rowing and opened my eyes to a lot of sports and thought about the way we need to move as rowers, my outlook about how I believe we should train has changed dramatically, maybe I’m becoming less institutionalised (shock horror, yes I did say that).
This now leads me onto my next couple of points where I think land-based rowing training can improve and learn from CrossFit.
- Agility & Co-Ordination– these Crossfitters, they are big, strong people, but hell they can move. Single arm, single leg, handstands, walking handstands, ring work, kipping, skipping, muscle ups and all while have great co-ordination of their trunk & limbs. Oh, and by the way some of these guys clean well into triple figures, 100++kg.
- Range of Movement (ROM) – this is the most important element for me, not only is all the above happening, their ROM is ON POINT! And this is what I believe keeps them safe. Without excellent ROM as an athlete you are never going to reach your full potential with any of the points above. ROM is so important in rowing, there is so much going on, for example at the catch position we have flexion of the ankle, knee, hip, back, as well as some rotation (for sweep rowers). As a rower if you can’t get into the necessary positions well, injuries are going to occur, you won’t be able to stay agile and quick on your feet, you won’t be able to apply maximum strength and speed to the part of the rowing stroke that drives the boat forwards.
Just before I’m done waffling on, I spoke to someone recently who was becoming very bored of rowing, a sport they have loved since a young boy and it was down to the way their coach wanted them to train. Hours and hours going up and down on an ergo to get ‘lean’, ‘fit’ and ‘strong’, no weights, no running, just ergos. Now I’m sorry Mr Coach, but 1) there are other ways to get fit other than sliding up and down a metal rail and 2) open your eyes and think about our sport for a minute, mentally this is not stimulating for an athlete, variety is key, it keeps us motivated, hungry and driven to turn up to training. Doing the same thing over and over again, good chance of picking up an injury, no one needs that. Lean! Yeah, you’ll get lean, probably lose a load of muscle mass too, not a great thing when we need that strength mentioned above to drive the boat through the water towards the finish line is it? Plonker!
And breathe Mr Foad…. to summarise, How rowing could learn from CrossFit (in my opinion) is basically by adding variety in the movements performed in land based training to allow rowing athletes to keep developing their strength, speed and power, but also work on the areas which I feel are often overlooked, this being agility, co-ordination and range of movement (ROM), to ultimately create a more well-rounded rowing ‘ATHLETE’ as opposed to that ‘big strong ROWER, who can only exercise in one plane of motion, going backwards’. Our sport is so much more than sliding forwards, putting an oar in the water and pulling hard, so let’s look at other sports like CrossFit and see what they do, which could benefit us as rowers. My message to the rowing community, let’s move with the times, rejuvenate how we train, be adventurous, don’t just stick with what you know or what you see other rowing clubs doing, challenge yourself and your team mates to be better all-round athletes, it might be the difference between qualifying or not qualifying for Henley?
jamesfoad 