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Tapering is reducing volume while maintaining intensity. Deloading is drop volume and intensity. Remember form = fitness minus fatigue.
Timestamps
00:45 How fit are you to race and train?
Three ideas for your race preparation - taper compared to deloading; the form formula explained; and a practical taper blueprint.
When you ease off training do you feel flat and slow in the boat? A taper is pre-competition where you reduce volume but increase the intensity of your workouts. The conclusion is to arrive at the race feeling fresh and you haven't lost your sharpness.
A deload is a recovery strategy where you reduce both volume and intensity. This lets your body get more rest during a hard training block.
They feel similar but the effect is different.
03:45 What is rowing form?
Fitness rises lowly and fades slowly - notice this if you have time off. You can come back to the level of fitness you had before the break quickly.
Fatigue is the acute training load which is on top of your fitness.
Form is what's left when we clear out the fatigue - the fitness available to you on race day.
As masters our fatigue can be amplified as it takes us longer to recover.
A taper keeps your fitness steady and rapidly drops your fatigue - think of your fitness as a glass of water and the fatigue is a layer of mud sitting on the top surface of the water. Clear away the mud and you can access your fitness reserves.
06:00 Taper blueprint
All Faster Masters Rowing training programs include tapers for the major masters rowing races and months of the year. Most masters only peak with a taper twice a year - a long distance race and a sprint 1k race.
In the taper we cut volume by 40-50% across the taper period. Shorter sessions but nearly every session has elements at or above race pace e.g. racing starts practice. Do not add in anything new in a taper week - no new equipment, drills or nutrition changes.
The urge to train more during the taper because you feel flat during the mid-taper. This urge is nearly always long and you'll feel flat in days 2-4 as your fatigue is clearing. Remember you aren't losing fitness.
For multi-day regattas start the taper one week before your first race.
Review your race week training and plan how you are going to manage your fatigue. Your taper is a way on collecting on what you've already earned in your training.

Dr Malcolm Howard, Canadian eight Beijing 2008 “People say it was always so easy for you, so straightforward. But it’s always been about the work. Rowing, by its nature, is a beautiful sport because you get out of it exactly what you put in. The harder I worked at rowing the more success I had.”
Timestamps
00:45 Why your brain is working against you
Many masters rowers are putting in less than they think believing in a ceiling which is not real. And limited by a brain that pulls the 'alarm cord' long before you've reached your limit.
02:00 The effort ledger
Are you paying what rowing actually costs? This is a way of measuring work and exposes pretend work. If you train by feel (Rate of Perceived Effort RPE) but feel and reality diverge with age. RPE rises as recovery slows. When you bring tiredness into training sessions your RPE can be higher even if your work output is lower.
The three columns - What you planned to do this workout, what you actually did, honest quality rating (1-5 range). Average the scores at the end of each week.
Map the gap between what you intended and your execution. Write it down and bring honesty to your training.
05:30 Your effort ceiling
Some masters may be leaving more on the table than you think. A limiting belief is that your effort is limited by age. This kicks in before your actual physical limit occurs - mind working separately from the body.
Test yourself by picking one thing on your training plan that you dislike and so avoid doing.
Am I avoiding this because my body can't do it or because I don't want to find out what it reveals about me?
Masters have more choice and may take more recovery between workouts than pro athletes.
Do that one session which you've been avoiding next week and notice if the ceiling is your body or your mind.
07:45 The repeated bout effect
The science behind your brain limiting you in an effort to protect you. Your brain lies in order to protect you - so renegotiate with your brain. Brains are survival machines and send a STOP signal before you reach your actual limit. It's conserving resources and energy reserves in case you need it.
The Central Governor Theory by Tim Noakes - brain limiting your output based on predicted cost not actual capacity.
When you expose your body once to a hard effort - your brain re-anchors what hard feels like. Next time you do it the alarm goes off later. Perceived difficulty and the urge to stop reduces on the second exposure to the same stimulus. The brain's prediction model adapts.
This is the physiological underpinning of Malcolm Howard's quote. The work doesn't just build the engine, it teaches the brain what your engine can do.
Faster Masters Rowing training programs include workout repeats in order to help you use the repeated bout effect in your training.
https://fastermastersrowing.com/racing-program/
11:30 Three layer synthesis
The ledger shows what you're actually putting in; the ceiling test shows what's still available; the repeated bout effect shows why doing it once is enough to retrain your brain.

Why do so many masters rowers struggle with catch timing despite endless practice? Al Morrow's counterintuitive principle. The causes and cures of rigidity in your body and the amazing catch timing waiting for you (when you cure it).

Timestamps
00:45 Rigidity problem
Al Morrow's remark when talking about Good Rowing is Horizontal - the issue that rigidity kills how you approach the catch.
"The more rigid you are, the lower the probability you will have a good catch." Al Morrow
Feeling you are in control in rowing can lead to tension, particularly in your hands. There's a balance between having control and being so tight that you do not have good control.
Controlled, accurate movements are your goal.
Test this for yourself by gripping your handle tighter than usual and note how your catch timing and depth is or your feather/square movement.
Poise is a balance between the right amount of control and tension to facilitate the rowing movement, Enough tension to get into the right positions but not so much that you are rigid and hamper your strength, movement and oar control.
Rigidity kills your strength. 90% of your power in rowing is below your arm pits.
When rigid it's hard to respond in real time to a gust of wind, balance issues or wake. When relaxed, the boat absorbs the energy from the wind or waves and you don't react to the disruption.
07:00 Al Morrow's drill
This is a catch drill - put the oar in the water fast so it arrives at the perfect depth under the surface.
From the catch position, push down on the handles so the oar spoon is high above the water. Let go of the handles quickly and listen to the sound the oar makes as it enters the water.
An oar arriving in the water under zero tension - you will see it arrive at the perfect depth.
The perfect depth happens when you are relaxed and do not interrupt gravity. Progress the drill by gradually holding the handle without tension - fingers extended. Make the same sound.
Move to holding a normal grip while keeping the same blade entry sound. Then take one stroke. Stop rowing and try it again.
Move towards making the perfect catch sound but starting at the finish - roll up the recovery and unweight the handle to place the oar in the water.
Work on the timing of unweighting your hands and the slide change of direction. The hand action has to precede the slide stopping.
Remove rigidity from your neck shoulders, arms and hands at the catch using this drill.
11:00 Trust the release of tension
The best possible catch at higher stroke rates comes from being proactive placing the catch - that can negate the lack of rigidity you've been working on.
12:00 Active Catches
Build trust that you won't flip when unweighting the handle. Move the moment when you release the tension to being earlier in the recovery. Listen to the sound of the blade entry.

The risks of abrupt changes of your training and surprising outcomes from practice lineups, rigging, and winter to summer transitions with guest Marlene Royle.
Timestamps
00:45 The effect of abrupt changes
Marlene sees these as a red flag for masters rowers. Her experience as a coach when racing season comes around was a trend from mid-summer on where their season got derailed. All were caused by quick changes, unfamiliar boats and doing a training session from another coach on top of their normal training.
These are all avoidable.
04:00 Transition from winter to summer
Let your muscles and tendons adapt to different stresses like moving from an indoor rower to a boat. The difference between a sculling erg and a sweep boat is clear in movement patterns.
All these abrupt changes resulted in injury to tendons or muscle strain.
Rule of thumb for moving onto the water is to start at 50% volume in week one and build up to full training in the new mode over 4 weeks. You won't get as fit on the water initially as you did on the rowing machine so use this time for technique.
07:00 Three injury scenarios
- An athlete with mild tennis elbow changed the grips on her scull handles. The new grips were a different size and it flared her tendonitis. Be aware of any pain (it may be a very small thing).
- Another had a glute / sacrum tendon tenderness and while somewhat fatigued did a practice with another club member and the following day was in a quad doing a race simulation. The boat was rigged high for her and she rowed the quad two days in a row doing another race simulation. This pushed the ligament strain and stopped her rowing for a month.
- Two athletes visited another club for a quad outing and found the rigging/boat changes led to a hamstring strain and the consequent race was "cautious" and not full power.
A soft tissue injury takes 6-8 weeks to heal, at best, with physical therapy.
19:00 When in an wobbly boat
The temptation is to stop rowing your normal pattern and instead to "flex" and go with what you feel in the boat. This is an abrupt change in technique and not conducive to protecting your body.
If you have a sensitive low back, then an unstable boat can cause a flare up.
Common sense - think before you do. Common sense is not very common.
For equipment make gradual changes.

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Join Santiago Fuentes to discuss
- the growth in masters rowing in South America (country by country differences)
- the main rowing events in the region - long distance head races and sprint.
— What you hope will happen next in the future