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This is going to be my story of how I became a Division I Rower at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I had always dreamed of playing a sport for a Division I school but I had never excelled at just one sport. That was until I found rowing and seemed to have some promise at being somewhat successful. I did not start out rowing at a young age and I was not even recruited to row at this university. It all started the fall of my high school sophomore year when I decided to quit volleyball and take a chance with this sport of rowing. I remember walking to the Anacostia boathouse with all of my friends not sure what I was getting myself into.

The first thing that was ingrained in our heads was the rowing sequence. We start at the finish, ironically, with a strong layback position then extend our arms straight out in front, the next sequence is pivoting our body over our hips, then knees up to the catch, and then finally we place the oar in the water using a slight shoulder movement, all while our inside hand rotates the oar to square or feather the blade and the outside wrist must remain flat. For the first several weeks if not the first month I was definitely in the cognitive stage of Fitts and Posner’s Three-Stages of Learning. I kept verbally and cognitively repeating the phrase hands, body, legs, body, hands. Over and over, I tried different strategies to see how to time each movement to be efficient until my coach let me know it looked good. I would experiment with how soon could I start pivoting my body over once my arms and hands were extended away from my body. Once I had figured out how to make the movement fluid and not so rigid and robotic I was able to really focus on when I was putting my blade in the water as well, I realized if the blade was not square long enough before the catch that I would be late and miss the water, I did a lot of trial and error in practices to understand just how early to square the blade which felt like around ½ slide. I also had to develop ways to stay in time, if I was early I would end up hitting the girl in front of me in the back which was never fun and if I was late I would be the girl with an oar in her back. I quickly realized from the consequences and successes that I needed to look at the back of the woman in front of me and I would move my eyes between watching the elbow and slide of the woman in front of me to make sure my time at all parts was spot on.

This all eventually began to feel more automatic and I was able to stop having to use cognitive cues and verbal processes to get me through the stroke. The sequence started to come naturally and I started to be able to follow easier and not have to focus on three different parts of the woman in front of me but just the back or the back of their head, led to a lot less oar injuries. I still was not a perfect rower though and I still am not. That’s why I would say I am teetering currently between the associative and autonomous stages. Certain aspect of rowing I would say take little attention and have become largely automatic. This the sequencing of the stroke, It comes naturally and I do not even think about it, as well as it is easy to tell when I am out of time for certain parts of the stroke and when I perform bodies over before my arms are fully extended and can correct them. I have also found that when I am on the ergometer I am able to hold a conversation with the woman next to me, there have been plenty of steady state workouts where I have sung one of the songs or had a full conversation with one of my teammates and we have been completely in sync with correct form. However, I do think I am still learning how to make the catch better and am still in the associative stage of learning for that movement. The environmental cue of backsplash from the oar and feeling the waters pressure on the back of the oar as I am catching lets me know that I am catching correctly and quickly enough. Not every stroke is correct and I am no longer making as large of improvements in catch timing but it is much more consistent than when I first started to row because most strokes are close to the desired outcome and every now and then I perform the catch almost correctly. Before I was unable to see when I was not catching quickly enough because I could not tell I was missing water and did not realize I wanted to create a splash, now I can tell from the environmental cues when I have made an error and missed water.

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I was never good at doing more than one thing at a time which makes rowing a good sport because although there is a specific pattern of movements, they can all be different, each sided limb is doing the same thing. It is a very symmetrically bimanual activity which is our bodies preference anyway. However, it makes a lot of sense that, especially, when we all started out learning how to row the asymmetric coordinative task of feathering with one hand and not with the other was difficult. Practice can affect the performance of another limb (Swinnen et al., 1990), seen as interference, causing spatial biasing to occur. In practice our coaches will always emphasize, especially for the younger girls, that they are not also using their outside hand to rotate the oar squared or flat. The outside hand is supposed to let the oar rotate in it but sometimes with the leg motion of rowing it is easy for the outside hand to be drawn towards performing the same task as the inside hand. Another problem that my teammates and myself included have encountered is opening our backs, sitting up and rowing vertically rather than with our shoulders in front of our hips, when we place the blade in the water. This usually happens because our shoulders are lifting to place as well. The correct movement is staying horizontal with the body and gently unweighting the oar to place, but, it is hard to keep our upper bodies steady while our shoulders and arms are doing something completely different. I honestly still do this sometimes and have to tell myself to stay “low” and not sit up and open my back up. It feels more natural to do the placing movement together with our backs but that interference causes a less effective catch and for us to be ineffective with all the crazy force we are trying to put into the water to move the boat.

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boats and boating equipment and supplies

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Every step I take there is a sharp shooting pain in my hip, extending my leg in front of me to take a step is agonizing and when I sit on the ergometer or am in the boat driving off of the foot stretchers I feel the same pain and a tugging on my hip. Well it turns out I had developed sports hernias in both of my hips, so the pain was coming from an inconsistent pulling on my pelvis and subsequent pain within my groin. On top of that I also had a left pelvic up slip. I could not believe that I would have to take off a whole fall semester of rowing and had no idea if I would even be ready to start winter training. All I could think about was how far behind I was going to be technically and strength wise, I also could not imagine not being able to do what I loved for several months.

Luckily I had amazing physical therapists that helped strengthen the essential muscles without having to have me perform movements that exacerbated my pain. I did hate that I would have to wake up for a 6 am appointment and have to work out but it was for a good cause. I had a routine of performing planks, dead bugs, side planks, banded leg lowers, bear crawls, side shuffles, kettle bell swings, and lunges along with seated leg presses. I never would have thought that strengthening my core would be important for healing my injury but also for rowing, I had no idea how important core strength was in stability in the boat, for helping to stabilize my hips, and prevent an unequal tugging at my pelvis. The leg exercises were also important in continuing to strengthen my legs so that I would continue to be strong but also being in the compressed leg position as well as performing kettle bell swings and RDL’s were important in maintaining leg strength but also explosive strength and speed. This transferred to the rowing stroke, since the stroke is mainly powered through the legs and hip strength to swing through the rest of the stroke. The hips are the pivoting point of the stroke.

Performing theses different exercises promoted positive transfer of learning towards rowing, I was elated when I got back to practicing. My form kept and I slowly saw myself week to week getting faster. When I returned to practice one of my first practices that week was a test piece, I had to row 2000 meters, I did not expect to be as fast as I was before I had to stop. I turned out that I, of course, was not as strong as before but was not far off of my personal best time for that test piece and had increased my stability on the erg without having any more pain. The exercises, specifically the squats and kettle bell swings, also had identical components (Thorndyke, 1914) and since those tasks shared a large number of similar movement elements it makes sense that there was a large amount of transfer to my rowing form and strength.

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4) Visualize the Boat, Be One With The Boat

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4) Visualize the Boat, Be One With The Boat

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6 years from the start of this journey in rowing I am now at a place where I no longer need verbal cues and have developed enough strategies to perform the stroke of rowing well enough that now I am working on perfecting the stroke. Just last year our coach implemented a ‘mental warmup’ to the start of our practice every day. We all lay down on our erg bay floor close our eyes and breath together in sync, becoming one with each other just like we must become one in the boat. It is more than just breathing and meditation though. Let me run us through the mental warm up just like coach Bebe Bryans.

“Visualize your most successful and best erg piece, what were your muscles feeling, what were you thinking about, even think about your technique. Now put yourself in the boat, you are at Big Tens about to start the final race. Feel your hands placement on the oar, are you remembering to sequence, make sure that you feel the connection between the oar and the water especially in your lats, notice your grip and hand on the handle. Now imagine yourself standing on the podium at Big Tens, how does it feel to be standing up there with your teammates knowing how well and fast you rowed. Now everything that we have just thought about think about how you will put that into todays practice. Imaging imagine you are in the starting 500 meters of your 1500-meter piece, what moves are you going to make, think about how you will execute this piece, see yourself sprinting and to the finish and then paddling at the end”

Every morning I lay down and from an Internal imagery point of view I can feel myself at the finish laying back and activating my core, then I see myself following the person in front of me with the timing of our hands away and body over, I can feel my knee’s breaking  and compressing while my inside hand rotates the oar to square the blade to be prepared for the catch and once I am there a place the oar and feel myself suspended off of the handle and my seat while my leg muscles and back drive and swing back with all the force I have. I repeatedly see myself keeping my shoulders and hands level and placing the oar in the water before my seat wheels have stopped, I also feel the connection and load of the water in my lats as I drive back. Here I go over and over in my mind the one play and the things that my coaches have been asking me to work on so that when I get on the water I am focused and hopefully the neuromotor pathways important for the performance are activated to improve practice. I may no longer be a novice but I still hope that pathways are activated and that the actual anatomy that is used for rowing and the brain activity involved in controlling motor performance are both stimulated. The mental practice that I do before every practice is related to Singer’s five-step learning strategy that involved mental and physical practice to improve performance. I am mentally and emotionally preparing myself for practice, I go through mental imaging of my performance, We focus on a specific part of the movement for practice, then we go out on lake Mendota, and after practice we gather for boat meetings to evaluate our performance that day. Looking at video from even my freshman year to now my technique has improved greatly, one way specifically is that I do not drop my hands or shoulders at the catch anymore and I make the lifting motion through my shoulders and not by opening my back too early. The combination of motivational imagery of being successful and winning with cognitive imagery of the components of the skill has allowed many of us who have been rowing for years to have a beginner’s mindset and continue to improve performance if we truly want to win Big Tens this year.

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Even in volleyball I was never the right height for an outside hitter, but man did I work my butt off to act like I was. In rowing it was the same story. At one practice we had to line up from tallest to shortest and of course at 5’7 I was the third shortest out of about 30 people. I have always known that I had to work harder to make up for this and other abilities that I was born with because abilities are unmodifiable even with practice. When I’m in the boat I work hard on my length in the boat, I make sure I row as long if not longer than even the tallest people in the boat. I remember one practice when I was rowing the coach pointed out that I was rowing longer than one of my teammates who is 6’2. Now how was this even possible and how is it that someone who is too small to be successful at rowing even thinking about racing in the top boats and thinking about the under 23 national team.

To be an athlete at an elite level like Division I and playing in high school are completely different. The individual difference variables such as age, maybe you started when you were older, height, motor ability, and personality characteristics set people apart at these levels. I thought I was competitive and driven when I was a high school athlete but walking on to the team here I was tested in so many ways. I noticed so many tall and innately strong women come and go on the team, and, I personally almost did not have the emotional ability to make it. The ability to be competitive, work well with others on a team for a common goal, and be driven to reach any goal are important abilities and characteristics to have. I had to work my way from the bottom up, and if I wanted to stand a chance, working on skills that could make up for the abilities I didn’t have and the differences that hold me back was my best option. Looking at the sport of rowing though the people who excel beyond working hard have great multilimb coordination to be able to move up the slide with fluid grace and time the movements of each essential limb to move the boat. Rate control is also important in knowing how to precisely move up the slide and how to place the oar in the water with the correct speed, this can be a challenge when different slide rates are involved. Slide rate is how quickly a person moves from the catch to the finish and can be simplified to how many strokes per minute the rower takes. Knowing how to time hands away, slide speed, and catch timing at rate 12 is different than at a rate 36. Along with these perceptual abilities are physical abilities such as explosive strength and stamina. The motion of rowing is very dynamic and explosive off of the catch and a lot of power is generated from the hips and legs. Along with stamina is essential and can separate good teams from great teams. Our motto in porter boathouse is that we win in the 3rd 500 meters. The standard race is 2000 meters and teams are always fast off of the start in the first 500 meters but in the 3rd 500 meters a lot of teams fall apart because they don’t have to stamina or technical efficiency, and the 3rd 500 meters and can win or lose a race.

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boats and boating equipment and supplies

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I just have so many :)

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boats and boating equipment and supplies