How many times a week did you do Rowperfect sessions?

After 1998 we started to train differently. We did more sessions on rowing machines, essentially one a day would always be on RP for 16, 20 or 12 km. In the boathouse in Hammersmith we had along one wall we had 5/6 C2s and there were two tucked in behind and two Rowperfects. We only had two and we took it in turn on them we’d do 10k and have 1 mins break and then swap. As an individual you would be on it twice a week and some people pushed to use them more often.

What was different in the winter versus during the racing season?

One of the reasons we did more ergo work was because previously in the 8 we found it hard to get everyone’s heart rate at the right level all the time while training on the water. Some people never got their heart rate up to the right level. Machines would guarantee your fitness improving because everyone could make sure their heart rate was right. The coaches, wanted to make sure the sessions on RP weren’t just physical. They were technical sessions –for the C2 we had to ensure the fan noise and rhythm was right and the hand speeds and feet movement. On the RP we had to make sure the force curve was the right shape and right movement off the feet.

Did you train using the Rowperfect force curves?

We were very aware of getting the oars in and out at the same time wasn’t enough to win the Olympics, we had only one way of measuring everyone had the same force so the power was coming on quickly and maintained long enough. It was the only tool we had to check this. There is a template curve from Lewis Attrill or Kieran West we used. [Download famous athletes’ force curves for use on RPW and RP3W software.

What did you personally learn from the Rowperfect?

One of the key things I worked on was opening my back properly against my legs to get my force curve shape right. In the warm up tent we had at the Olympic Games we had 2 Rowperfects and one of the things I spent a lot of time doing was sitting on RP to make sure I was doing it correctly. The force curve shape was an immediate check. Then also making sure hand speed correct around the finish and we were connecting hands and feet properly at the catch…. how far you slide up and down was dictated by hand speeds.

Did you use drills and exercises?

Not really – we spent a lot of time on RPs with feet out.. It was more doing the distance and being coached to make sure the volume of the curve was right. Doing it individually was relatively easy – when we strapped two RPs together it became quite hard. We might spend first few minutes individually and then strap them together – we had different pairings… I didn’t row as well as I wanted to and I found the pairings harder to do. You had to be so precise with how you were moving on the recovery and how you were starting the drive to make it work. I did a lot with Bob Thatcher and we were bow pair for a long time – we managed to do it pretty successfully – when we swapped different pairings down the boat it was harder.

You talk in the book about ‘moving away’ from Jurgen Grobler’s training system. What was different about Martin and Harry’s training system?

Their programme was designed for us rather than the four. Some of the differences – if you’re in a pair it’s easy to get the heart rate right every session. That’s one of the reasons we did more on the machines. Jurgen’s corner stones were lactate sessions – weights circuits. Because Martin felt they weren’t muscle specific and we didn’t have time to do it so we did 10 minutes on machines instead to make it more specific. Jurgen has some technical sessions in his programme – we had probably more technical sessions where we went out and just did drills because we needed it. After hte 1999 Worlds and through the season we had the fastest middle 1000m in the race. And a mediocre start. So became clear if we wanted to win the Olympics we needed the fasted first 500. Every session on the water ended with one or two starts. The training programme was to develop core power to get us out of the blocks faster… the whole focus of the programme was on this. Jurgen’s programmes were never designed like this.

Did the coaches take technique and skill drills from the boat onto the Rowperfect and back again? Which ones?

Not necessarily the same drills but there was a lot of focus on technique on the machines. The boat drills wouldn’t transfer e.g. feet out to make sure we were moving round the back turn correctly and our feet were staying connected. We did on the machine lifting our hands and getting pressure on the feet to make sure the catch shape at the catch was the same on the machine and the boat. Drills in the boat included – single strokes; doing the front quarter / half of the stroke making sure upper body and back was staying still just moving our hands and picking it up on the legs…. there were sessions of Harry just getting us to row in circles… one person rowing individually to make sure we were doing what he wanted us to do. I remember at the ‘99 worlds doing one lap of the course we did 250m each time we’d try and row like a different nation… Romanians, Russians, Americans… it was great fun to translate what we were seeing on the lake to how that felt and then going back to how we wanted to row.

Technically we would decide we wanted to work on something like lifting the hands, or moving the back – we’d take an element of the stroke and for one week or 10 days we’d spend time doing nothing but that one element. And then when the coaches decided we’d play word games and number games up and down the boat to take the focus away from anything we’d being thinking technically – it relaxes you and you forget about rowing and thinking about word association.

I heard that the crew used Rowperfects during each race warm up and preparation. What did you do?

I remember sitting on it not doing a huge distance just handfuls of strokes to make sure my back was opening against my legs properly and it was there as a tool to make sure we go the force curve right when we got onto the water. We did some pairs and moved down the boat – stern pair and next pair. We made sure we did it with other pairs in the boat.

Do you have any advice for coaches considering using Rowperfect for their athletes and crews?

I’d say one of the key things to start with is to have a good understanding of what your boat class force curve should look like. From a 1x to an eight the shape is going to be different. Firstly when you stick athletes on RP for the first time have a template of that athlete’s boat class so you know what you’re trying to do and the athlete knows too. I think that very often rowing machines are seen as a way to work really hard. If coaches get athletes only to work hard they are missing out on so much.

There’s so much more you can do on a rowing machine. For example if you break the elements down of what makes up a rowing outing – it’s technical, physical and mental. On rowing machines you should be doing the technical and mental part as much as the physical. Your athletes should be as tired mentally and technically as physically after a session. … on a RP if you can get athletes in a crew boat to have their RPs linked so they can row with anyone else in the boat well. If they can do it [on RP] effectively with feet out and matched force curves they’ll probably go fast in the boat. You have to be far cleverer to use a RP… they are harder to use but it means what you’re doing translates into the boat far more effectively – make sure you’re using it as cleverly as you can so it links to the boat it isn’t just a “work hard” tool.

What was the aim for the Sydney Olympic Eight?

We knew we wouldn’t be the strongest crew who raced the Olympics on the water and our aim was to be the most technically skilled in the world.

In our eight one of the clearly stated aims was to technically be the best crew in the world. I don’t think we managed it but when we went to regattas and training camps we took a couple of RPs with us because we thought they were really useful tools to help us row bette

By Mark Billingsley
Special to The Seattle Times

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. — Even missing senior co-captain Mathis Jessen, the top-ranked Washington men’s varsity eight boat didn’t miss a stroke as it crushed the competition Sunday morning to lead the Huskies to a four-race sweep at the Pac-12 championships. It’s the 35th conference title for the program and the fifth championship in the last six years.

Jessen was deemed too sick to travel to Lake Natoma, just east of Sacramento, and was replaced in the two seat by senior Austin Brooks. Brooks had rowed in the two seat on the Huskies’ second varsity eight for much of the season, UW coach Michael Callahan said.

California got off to a fast start Sunday and led at the 500-meter mark. The Huskies didn’t panic, and gathered the Bears at 700 meters then crushed the seven-boat field to win in 5 minutes, 43.5 seconds — exactly eight seconds ahead of second-place Cal.

“Cal went out strong and they rowed their piece,” said Huskies co-captain Rob Munn. “But we know what we can do and we felt it (at 700 meters). Sometimes a team comes out hot, but we were feeling it.”

Stanford was third (5:57.7), followed by Oregon State (6:04.7) UCLA (6:21.6), Washington State (6:21.8) and Colorado (6:42.4).

The huge margin of victory served notice that the undefeated crew from Washington is ready to defend its Intercollegiate Rowing Association title and capture its 15th national men’s championship. The 2012 IRA championships are May 25-27 on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J.

“We might have sent a message, but that’s not our job, though,” Munn said. “We have to perform there like we did here.”

Wins in the second varsity eight, varsity four and freshman eight gave Washington 72 points, followed by Cal (63), Stanford (49), Oregon State (48), Washington State (25), UCLA (16) Colorado (12) and USC (10).

Munn said Jessen’s status will be determined sometime late next week. If his illness has weakened him too much, Brooks will likely be the replacement for the IRA finals.

“No one wants to take a seat away from someone else by injury or illness,” Callahan said. “But these guys as a group are all very competitive. We lost 14 guys to graduation last year and this year’s squad saw that as an opportunity. They stepped up.”

First, the young men watched a rapid-fire lineup of photos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had just seen as the photos again zipped across a computer screen.

Afterward, half of the students rode a stationary bicycle, at an increasingly strenuous pace, until they were exhausted. The others sat quietly for 30 minutes. Then both groups took the brain-teaser test again.

Notably, the exercised volunteers performed significantly better on the memory test than they had on their first try, while the volunteers who had rested did not improve.

Meanwhile, blood samples taken throughout the experiment offered a biological explanation for the boost in memory among the exercisers. Immediately after the strenuous activity, the cyclists had significantly higher levels of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is known to promote the health of nerve cells. The men who had sat quietly showed no comparable change in BDNF levels.

For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.

Other new studies have reached similar conclusions, among both people and animals, young and old. In one interesting experiment published last month, Brazilian scientists found that after sedentary elderly rats ran for a mere five minutes or so several days a week for five weeks, a cascade of biochemical processes ignited in the memory center of their brains, culminating in increased production of BDNF molecules there. The old, exercised animals then performed almost as well as much younger rats on rodent memory tests.

Another animal study, this one performed by researchers in the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and published in September in the journal Neuroscience, showed that if adult rats were allowed to run at will for a week, the memory center of their brains afterward contained more BDNF molecules than in sedentary rats, and teemed with a new population of precursor molecules that presumably would soon develop into fully functioning BDNF molecules.

Perhaps the most inspiring of the recent experiments is one involving aging human pilots. For the experiment, published last month in the journal Translational Psychiatry, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine asked 144 experienced pilots ages 40 to 65 to operate a cockpit simulator three separate times over the course of two years.

For all of the pilots, performance declined somewhat as the years passed. A similar decline with age is common in all of us.

Many people find it more difficult to perform skilled tasks — driving an automobile, for instance – as they grow older, says Dr. Ahmad Salehi, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and lead author of the study.

But in this case, the decline was especially striking among one particular group of men. These aging pilots carried a common genetic variation that is believed to reduce BDNF activity in their brains. The men with a genetic tendency toward lower BDNF levels seemed to lose their ability to perform complicated tasks at almost double the rate of the men without the variation.

While the pilot experiment wasn’t an exercise study, it does raise the question of whether strenuous exercise could slow such declines by raising BDNF levels, thereby salvaging our ability to perform skilled manual tasks well past middle age.

“So many studies have shown that exercise increases levels of BDNF,” says Dr. Salehi. While he notes that other growth factors and body chemicals are “upregulated” by exercise, he believes BDNF holds the most promise.

“The one factor that shows the fastest, most consistent and greatest response is BDNF,” he says. “It seems to be key to maintaining not just memory but skilled task performance.”

Dr. Salehi plans next to examine the exercise histories of the pilots, to see whether those with the gene variant, which is common among people of European or Asian backgrounds, respond differently to workouts.

In people who have the variant and less BDNF activity, “exercise is probably even more important,” he says. “But for everyone, the evidence is very, very strong that physical activity will increase BDNF levels and improve cognitive health.”

Thank you to the Wall Street Journal
How Exercise Benefits the Brain
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

1)The Weber Fechner rule:
The Weber Fechner rule describes the relationship between the magnitude of a particular stimulus and the brain’s ability to sense differences in the amount of the stimulus. The basic rule is that as you increase the stimulus, the ability to tell a difference in the amount of the stimulus decreases.
If you slow down and thereby increase your ability to sense differences in muscular effort level, you increase the brain’s ability to sense and correct any potential excess and unnecessary effort.
Applying the Weber Fechner rule, we know that gentle movement leads to a more accurate and discriminating perception of the mechanics of the movement. In other words, there is more detailed and refined information available to the brain to build the movement map. The map becomes clearer with greater resolution. It’s like clicking the zoom button on google maps. There’s more detail, more side streets are revealed, more information about how to move around that joint.

2) Another reason to move slowly and gently is to allow yourself time to approach movement in an exploratory and curious manner, and to put a great deal of attention on the subtle details of the movement. Becoming more coordinated is essentially a matter of rewiring the neural circuits that control movement, which is an example of a very fashionable process called “neuroplasticity.” Neuroplasticity simply mans the brain’s ability to change. According to Michael Merzenich and other prominent neuroscientists, attention and awareness are major preconditions for neuroplasticity to occur. In other words, your brain is much more likely to get better at a certain activity if you are paying close attention while doing it. Slow movement can help your ability to pay attention to exactly what you are doing when you are doing it.

Of course, at some point you will have to speed things up to use your skills in a more real world application, but it should be clear that slow movement presents some huge advantages that are not present in any other form of practice. By Todd Hargrove

All that is simple to say but impressive to see and experience.
I remember my first day at the University of Washington back in 2006. It has been over 6 years and there is only one reason why I love this program and everything about it. Not that they win races, not that they are the Huskies or have been there for hundred of years….

I comeback to them everyday I can because they inspire me with their hard work, passion and believe. This Team makes me believe that our Sport is the ultimate sport to educate young students to become great people. University of washington is doing that to perfection and I’m so proud of them. Excellence, hard work, Team work, being humble and working the hardest you can to become the best you can be.
I’m so proud of having the chance to be part of them!

Winning is secondary, because for me everyone of this program has already won by doing what they are doing!
Thank you Huskies for giving me the chance to be part of this amazing program!

Rower Rob Munn, just like UW program, just keeps coming
In losing, UW captain Rob Munn learned valuable lesson that defines the program he rows for.

By Jerry Brewer
Seattle Times staff columnist

Rob Munn, of Redmond, has sights on ’16 Olympics.

Rob Munn can set the scene of his past disappointment like a novelist. It was a cloudy Saturday morning a year ago. The dynastic Washington rowing program was on the water, doing what it does best — competing.

Men’s coach Michael Callahan instructed his athletes to do a series of race simulations, which they call “pieces.” And on this cloudy Saturday morning, as the Huskies continued their never-ending quest to make their storied varsity eight boat go faster, Munn lost his spot to a good friend and teammate, Ty Otto.

Until then, Munn had spent the entire 2011 season in that varsity eight boat, helping the Huskies win the historic 100th dual meet with California, the Pac-10 championships and the Windermere Cup. He always influences winning. As a freshman in 2009, he rowed with a dominant, undefeated freshman eight that captured gold at the IRA national championships. As a sophomore in the junior-varsity eight, he was part of an undefeated group again. In fact, he has never lost an official race while wearing the “W” on his chest. But on that cloudy Saturday morning during his junior year, a rare defeat, even in practice, turned into a painful one. He lost his spot in the final days of preparation for the national championship.

Otto simply made the boat go faster, and in rowing, it’s always about the boat. Your résumé means nothing in crew. It’s the cruel part of this faceless sport, but it also reflects beauty of competition at its purest.

“He got me that day,” Munn said of Otto. “The depth of the program is so strong. Every practice is competitive. Nothing is a given. It sucks when you lose out, but you realize that’s a part of this sport. You keep your head up and try to get better.”

Munn didn’t mope. He went on to help the JV eight win gold again, and the Huskies earned a record fifth consecutive Ten Eyck Championship, which goes to the best overall program. But the varsity eight decides the true national champion in men’s rowing, and while the Huskies won that for the 14th time last June, Munn was left to cheer on dry land.

But here’s why we’re highlighting Munn now, and it captures the spirit of sport: The competition has only made him better. He didn’t stay disappointed. He got faster. And stronger. And smoother.

Now, as a senior, Munn is team captain. He was mostly in the three seat during his time with the varsity eight last year; now he’s the bow. Callahan believes he’ll compete in the 2016 Olympics if he stays committed.

Munn went to Amsterdam last summer and became an under-23 world champion. He was part of an eight that included Otto and Washington junior Alex Bunkers.

During this college season, Callahan raves that Munn, who is from Redmond, has posted better results every time the coaches have tested him. He’s the strongest guy on this team, and also a more fluid rower.

“I thought he handled the situation last year better than anyone could,” Callahan said. “He was a really strong teammate in that moment. All he does is win races. It’s impossible for such a disappointment not to affect you, but now it’s his turn. This is his time.”

The Huskies, who will compete in the Windermere Cup on Saturday, are again the top-ranked men’s crew in the nation.

The UW men’s varsity eight is a quirky group — smaller rowers in the middle, bigger ones in the bow. The Huskies beat Cal by 10 seconds over 2,000 meters last week. Only three rowers in the eight are holdovers from last year’s Windermere Cup-winning crew.

“It’s a really easy team to coach,” Callahan said. “It’s a fun team to coach. They’re starting to flow together, but we’re not taking anything for granted. We have to respect the process every day.”

No one respects the process more than Munn. In high school, he twisted his ankle days before he was supposed to go to Austria to compete with the under-18 team. He couldn’t make the trip, but he was unbowed.

“Nothing ever affects him,” Callahan said. “He just keeps coming.”

Said Munn: “This sport teaches you to handle pressure, take care of business and always be a performer. I heard Robert Griffin III say, ‘No pressure, no diamonds.’ Pressure helps create the diamonds. That’s how I see it, too. And you know everyone else on this team, they’ve been through the same thing.”

That attitude defines many great Husky oarsmen. It is Munn’s time now.

No cloudy Saturday mornings this year.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com