The main issue of concern to rowers, however, was the weather. It was a typical English Winter, which means the rivers are flooded. Fields from Heathrow all the way to Oxford were under water. Oxford gets especially hard hit by flooding because it sits at the bottom of a valley. The red flags were up on the Isis, which means the stream was too high and fast to row safely.
What always struck me when I was over in Oxford was that every year people seemed surprised by the flooding. No one ever seemed to plan ahead - and when I suggested it they called me crazy. It seemed to me that we should simply write off water practices for the month of January and even much of February (if the river was not flooded in February, which it often was enough to keep lower crews off the water, the sun still kept inhospitable hours which did not allow for crews from science-oriented colleges such as Wolfson to get on the water as much as they could later in the year). If a crew can get out on the water a two or three times a week, this should be considered bonus.
A properly executed Winter land training regimen will actually produce faster crews when it counts come May. This is the time of year to get that base conditioning. There are also plenty of things every rower can learn about how their bodies work which they can do better on the erg than they can in a crew on the water.
In the United States, most collegiate crews are off the water during the Winter months for some reason or other (league rules in some cases, conflicts with exams and long vacations in others, and frozen rivers in many cases). If being able to train on the water year-round were crucial to success, we would have long ago seen colleges from California dominating the sport. That they have not underscores the point. Proper use of Winter training was pioneered at Harvard in the 1960s by the legendary (and still very much active) coach Harry Parker. He raised the bar many rungs, and now any program which even dreams of succeeding must beat itself to death on land during the Winter.
In England, the collegiate racing season falls a whole month later than in the United States. So lack of water time in the Winter will have even less of an effect on a crew’s performance. It strikes me then as even more silly that crews do not take a page out of the books of their American counterparts.
A proper Winter training routine makes use of as many forms of torture as are readily available. The erg is an essential ingredient. I do not know how many ergs Wolfson owns now - it was two when I was there, which is a standard number for most colleges of that size. While it is always better to line up as many ergs as possible, two will suffice since it allows people to have at least one direct opponent every time they erg. I devised an erg program for the Wolfson women which I still use every year in some modified form. Since I now have lots of ergs available to me this year, the first time in my coaching career I do have access to a proper erg room filled with the machines, I have upped the amount of erg work I do to match the sort of training I did as an undergrad. But even with a lot of people having to share two machines, it is possible to do a minimum of testing every week - I used to use a system whereby everyone tested on their own time and reported their scores to me, which I then posted on e-mail and on the (publicly visible) rowing bulletin board.
Winter ergs are all about playing mind games. So the distances must vary to some extent (at Wolfson, in addition to the variable-length pieces, I also did weekly 30-minute tests throughout Hilary Term, but I have stopped that here in the States because the racing season comes on sooner. Over here, I have shifted these 30-minute tests - and longer distances - to the Fall). They must also generally be broken up into chunks. I regularly employ a series of shorter pieces (say 3x2500, or 2x2000+2x1000+2x500) with equal rest. The object is to maintain the same splits on all pieces, and for that split to be the fastest split possible overall. From week to week, those splits must drop. The workouts must be crafted to trick the mind into finding new ways to stretch its pain threshold, since the body can perform to a much greater extent than the mind believes it can. Besides the gradual improvement over the Winter, most rowers - particularly the less-experienced ones - will find one week when their scores jump substancially. With this new knowledge of increased personal performance level, the individual rowers are capable of achieving that much more in the boat.
Not everyone survives Winter training, of course. The weak drop. No one does the sport because they like to erg, they do it because they like to race, and race to win. But without the conditioning they will not have the ability to win races. They will not have the mental toughness. And rowing is 90% mental when it comes down to it.
In addition to the ergs, of course, comes the rest of the land training: running, stairs, circuits, weights, swimming, whatever is available (I have a deadly hill available here, which my squads run up and down backwards for prolonged periods of time). Every collegiate program dabbles in this. But most save a lot of this until during the racing season. The time to do it is now, when getting on the water is problematic. Come Springtime is when training time should be spent on the water. Crews which get their base fitness in the Winter do not need to figure out how to get in shape during the actual season.
The main inconvenience to this plan is Torpids, the silly Winter bumps race held in late February or early March, depending on the year. Yet this event is often scaled back due to flooding, if not completely canceled for some crews. So it is not worth getting too worked up over the event. Preparing for Torpids also disrupts training - doing racing starts and rowing a high ratings is not what crews should be worrying about in February. I was always an advocate of scrapping Torpids altogether, maybe replacing it with a multi-day head race (safer than bumps, particularly on a high stream). The crews I tended to turn out for Torpids did the event for experience, and did not always include the most obvious line-ups since not everyone was available to train on the water regularly in the Winter. Indeed, in my final year coaching Wolfson, my women’s First Torpid included only four rowers who would be in the First Eight (two more rowed in the Second Torpid, and two more sat Torpids out and trained only on land and the odd water practice), had three rowers rowing the opposite side (including the stroke) and had only practiced in that line-up twice before racing. The object was to get through the event with added experience and to learn skills which would help come the season in May (the First Torpid held its position, the Second Torpid won Blades - that Summer, the First Eight went on to win First Division Blades and the Second Eight narrowly missed Blades).
If Torpids gets run, fans of bumps racing (I am not one) should consider it a bonus. But Winter training has no substitute. After Torpids, the time has come to head onto the water full-time, in preparation for the Tideway Heads, which mark the end of the English Winter season. There is then the long vacation, perfect for training (while all serious colleges go somewhere else to train and the not-serious ones do not train at all, Wolfson has the river virtually to itself. Given Wolfsonian work schedules, that is far more convenient).
There is plenty of time to take to the water. Now is the time for some real abuse on land.
