Once it became an agreed strategy for the whole crew, who did things a little differently, it removed conjecture about what was possible and not possible for me at varying stages of the season and gave us a plan.
We just went out and beat the HWs early season as well. Without this testing and analysis, and an understanding that I was more comfortable with this approach, I would have potentially been subject to an unsafe diet plan, or set a target weight that was untainable, and made miserable over it. As a coach of high school rowing and previous high school athlete I absolutely think weight classes should be eliminated at the high school level.
Obviously I get the logic behind it, but it is so damaging to the athletes. I just think that it is overall far too damaging, regardless of the potential benefits of separating out the smaller athletes.
Which countries run lightweight events for school kids? I know New Zealand does. Lightweight rowing and weight management is about winning. The reason they do this is not because they are naturally too big. It is because being big is an advantage in rowing, and cutting weight allows you to race bigger and stronger.
Coaches encourage tall athletes to race lightweight because being tall means that you have a longer stroke which will make the boat faster. Excessive dehydration will make you slower on race day.
As a result, you will find that successful lightweight teams will only cut lbs in the week leading up to a weigh in—a very healthy amount—and that the teams who use dangerous cutting practices are usually losing teams. But there are idiots in heavyweight rowing too, and to generalize this to my entire sport is unfair.
Most of the lightweights with gold medals around their necks are quite healthy. Thanks for this, Robert. In a sport where height and lever length is everything, the focus is on weight! Take the focus away from weight and put it on a factor that is not a variable and cannot be influenced by training. Let the tall people be as light or heavy as they need to be to be a fully fit and healthy athlete. Then create a height limited category — e. Easy to implement?
Will make for fairer racing for all? Will make for a sport that is perceived as more accessibly to all? Hell yeah. For women lightweights they must weigh below 59kg or an average crew weight of 57kg.
Lately there have been some high profile names that have opted to change their weight class. Hayden Cohen of New Zealand rowed and medalled at both the junior and under level as a heavyweight rower. Rowing at the elite level as a heavyweight and having an unsuccessful season led Cohen to re-evaluate how he would progress in the sport. I needed to lose about kgs, not all at once though.
So I set out on some good healthy eating and hard training to try and loose some fat while maintaining as much strength as possible.
I lost the initial 5 or 6kgs in about weeks. I then slowly lost the rest when I needed to for racing. In the boat Cohen says he feels remarkably the same. Well, it seems to me that for each and every woman who steps on a scale after sweating to the point of dehydration, or depriving themselves of excessive amounts of food and water, there has to be at least one coach behind them.
And not only are these coaches fully aware of what is going on, but they also support the practice. The only people I encountered that were taking any stands toward alleviating this problem were fellow lightweight rowers. And I'm happy to say that I finally did witness them make a difference. Halfway through my research there were surprise weigh-ins the suggestion of one of the "natural" lightweights on the team that was the focus of my research and the woman who was struggling was told she would no longer row lightweight.
She had mixed emotions, since she had been rowing lightweight for seven years and it was what she lived and breathed during that time, but in the end she was relieved. In the sport of rowing, both weight and height are advantageous. Height inevitably gives the rower a longer, more powerful stroke. Moreover, taller women weigh more. Weight plays an important part in rowing by allowing the rower more "hang" on the oar handle to finish the stroke and, in turn, pull with more power through the water or on the ergometer rowing machine.
Imagine feeling hunger pangs so great that you can only reason that your stomach is eating itself. Imagine pain so intense that you can't keep your mind on anything else. Then, imagine being so thirsty and wanting a drink so badly that you don't even care about that hunger pain anymore.
It needs to be mentioned that not all lightweight rowers have to obsess about weight. Some don't even have to watch what they eat; they could weigh in eating donuts and still have pounds to spare. The point is that even one woman struggling with weight in such extreme ways is one too many.
While it is true that there are exceptions to these basic "rules", they hold true for the most part. In order to make competition more aggressive, separate divisions--weight classes--have been created that separate heavier from lighter rowers. This serves as an opportunity for rowers who weigh less to compete at more advanced levels than they probably could if the groups were mixed. The cutoff weight for lightweight women at the college level is in the fall season with a boat average of , and in the spring, which is usually the more intense racing season.
However, the problem arises with the "borderline" women ranging from in season. Some countries even have flyweight rowing lbs or less for men and lbs or less for women.
Rowing is the only non-combat sport with weight classes. Rowing is also categorized by age and sex. There is juniors rowing for athletes under 18 who are usually enrolled in high school. There are three divisions of collegiate rowing. Masters rowing is divided by age group. There are races for rowers who are in their twenties as well as races for rowers in their eighties or older.
The two types of rowing are sculling and sweeping. Scullers use two oars per rower while sweep rowers use just one. Sweep boats include the eight, the four, and the pair. All sweep boats can be coxed, but only the eight requires one. Sculling boats include the octuple, the quad, the double, and the single.
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