Tips on Testing and Racing

[Adam William Swetlik]

Team,

Before you get the big, huge winter break training email I wanted to give you a couple insights that may help you with your rowing (and really most other) careers. This is especially true for racing and testing.

Negative Splitting-

This is primarily for you novices but I still don't see all varsity practicing this on a regular basis.  The idea of negative splitting is not wearing your legs out or building excess lactic acid so you can push your body to its max near the end of your test.  With proper negative splitting you'll never blow up or tail off.

This take attention to detail, knowledge of your capabilities on any given day, and practice.  What I mean by this is starting slower than your goal, then getting faster every 500.  To show you an example here's the test I pulled today in 500 splits.  The first 500 is still in need of settling but the rest is what you're looking for.

1:49.8 25
1:50.6 25
1:50.6 26
1:50.6 25
1:50.4 25
1:50.4 24
1:50.1 25
1:50.0 25
1:49.8 26
1:49.6 25
1:48.1 27
1:44.2 29

21:54.2 1:49.5 25spm avg

Not all my pieces look like this but more do now than used to.  The key here is I know what I'm capable of on any given day and I have the discipline to hold myself to a race plan.  That takes time and a lot of meters to learn, but you are all capable of doing it.  I still need to work on my spm, both bumping them up and being consistent, but the splits are there.  If you're able to do this, you'll consistently produce your fastest possible tests.

Focusing on Whatever Will Drive You During Your Test-

There's a few things I've focused on this year to motivate me while trying to get myself back in shape.  And I don't mean in a general sense, I mean mid-piece.  The main one is you guys 

I love winning, more so now then I did in college.  Every time I pull faster than you I feel great, and that drives me to go faster every time.  Most of the last couple thousand of every 10, 4 or 6k I pulled this year I thought about how many people I could beat.   So when it comes down to crunch time and my legs are on fire, I turn to the things that drive me most to never be slower than my last piece.  It doesn't work every single time, but overall it is pretty dang effective.  I highly suggest you find something that drives you to be better than you were the piece before.

Never Fear Being Fast, and Never Row with Fear-

One thing I'm seeing all on the team this year are people who continually get slower on tests despite doing well on workouts.  There's no physiological reason,  it's all mental.  Fear takes many forms.  Some people are afraid of getting faster because that means more is expected of you next time and it'll hurt even more.  Some people are just afraid of the unknown, and getting to a new level of speed they haven't been to.  Some people do bad on a test, then are afraid they'll never do better again.  These are all irrational fears, something I'm familiar with.

Never be afraid of what you might accomplish.  The worst that will happen is you stay the same speed.  The best is you'll win some medals. Just don't get in your own way of accomplishing your goals. If you want to win badly enough you'll never row with fear.

As I said at the first info meeting, you'll learn about more about life rowing then you'd ever believe.  In turn you'll be able to deal with a lot more of the realities of life after college far better than your peers.  As always if you ever have any questions about how to get better at rowing and accomplishing your life goals feel free to talk with me.  I may only be an ear to listen but sometimes that's all you need.

Adam Swetlik

Men's Head Coach
Colorado Crew