Mens eights final Sydney 2000 olympic regatta.mpeg

Harry Mahon, one of two coaches of the GBR 8+, was my coach. This eight is a beautiful demonstration of how much technique matters. No eight has yet achieved such perfection. Harry Mahon is awesome, rest in peace Harry.

Xeno Muller

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

Lange Training Film 2 XOlympic gold medalist and bronze medalist

I found a gem of technical analysis. Thomas Lange was my idol, although the goal was not to row like him, his toughness is what I wanted to emulate. Great athlete he is.
Xeno Muller

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

Some common mistakes when training for endurance competitions.

Hello rowers and endurance athletes.

Congratulations and thank you for illustrating my first point I am about to make on personality of an athlete or coach.  Through your active search, you found me and this article, because you are in search of greater aerobic capacity for either yourself or people you train, which in turn describes you as a motivated individual.

1996 Olympics, Derek Porter, Xeno Muller, Thomas Lange, Olympic record 6:44.85

Do rowers and coaches know when to slow down?

In order to achieve maximum results from training, the mind and body need to be in harmony.  From personal experience as an Olympic gold/silver medalist and coach I have noticed that athletes too often forget to look for the connection between the two.  Such disconnect can be caused from guilt and competitive paranoya of the "what if I don't train..."  Athletes are guilty of this as much as coaches.  Coaches who don't understand the importance of limiting hard workouts and neglecting to observe the rowers demeanor during and outside of the workouts, fall into a situation in which more injuries appear and morale of the crew becomes gloomy.  Slowing down is not in the nature of motivated people it must therefore learned and accepted in order to improve fitness.

Believing that achieving new personal bests is mainly caused when the mind gets stronger... another problem.

I have heard it many times from club and university rowers.  As training "progresses" coaches chose to test their crew members to confirm that their training plan delivers better 2K, 6K, and more boat speed.  Some of these coaches also tend to favor harder workouts instead of aerobic training sessions.  When too few personal bests are recorded the coaches' answer are more high intensity training with team meetings denouncing that the crews are not pushing hard enough and that it is a matter of getting mentally tougher to sustain more pain.  For rowers with less coaching interference a similar situation exists.  All-out-effort-self-testing becomes a form of security blanket.  Unfortunately the blanket is sometimes used in moments of doubt, for example when coming out of sickness such as the flu.  In such cases the test which ought to show improvement ends up informing the rower of how much the illness impacted their fitness.  More often than not, the result of the test is less than satisfactory and leads the rower down a path of self-doubt mixed with impatience that lead to harder workouts, because of the idea lost time from being ill needs to be made up.

 "No pain, no gain, no Spain."  Learn from other endurance disciplines, look outside the box.

This was a headline in Sport Illustrated back in 1992 as the world was preparing for the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.  Rowing is known to be one of the toughest sports and therefore it is easy to imagine that training has to be filled with intensity and pain.  Many rowers and coaches believe that rowing success comes from going through hell on water and land.  This concept of training is so wrong, it makes me cringe.  My coaches' adopted training methods from different disciplines such as cross country skiing, flat water kayak, cycling, and Olympic weight lifting.  Learning from mistakes and successes of other successful.

Training on Lake Sarnen, Switzerland

Improvement in rowing comes through a carefully mixed training program that gives the athlete enough time to recover from hard workouts and plenty of aerobic mileage to increase the mitochondria count in muscle cells throughout the body and not just the core rowing muscles. Cross training is crucial to avoid chronic injuries, mental burnout, yet extremely beneficial for total body fitness at the molecular level.  As rower, listening to ones body, accepting gut feeling, erring on the side of caution is a better way to becoming a champion.  Coaches need to accept that athletes achieve greater performance through mileage and fine tuning, rather then creating a living hell, where mental toughness is the means to an end.

Now go and puke your gut out at CRASH-B and its satellite regattas.
Xeno, Olympic gold and silver medalist, Olympic record holder.  Row2go, XenoRowingCoach, Digital Workouts.

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

Can you afford not to? $175 Slow motion stroke analysis, greater success with less work.

When I receive rowing footage via Youtube or email (up to 50 seconds with iPhone), I complete a slow motion stroke analysis with commentary. I help rowers pick the right technical drill to improve deficiencies in their rowing stroke. 
The result is improved power application, greater speed, better boat control, and better erg score, without training harder.
How effective can training be, when you don't know what your weaknesses are and how to strengthen them?

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

En Español! Remándole... Normal para remeros, nuevos jugadores de tenis.

Veo partidos muy reñidos en la tele y se me ocurrió que muchos de estos atletas tienen poco tiempo para recuperarse para la siguiente ronda; especialmente los jugadores que se enfrentan en dobles y singles durante el mismo torneo. Conozco una manera suave para apresurar la recuperación. Pero primero echemos un vistazo rápido a lo que se hace comúnmente.

Xeno Müller, Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist, Olympic record holder

Dependiendo de la edad y el nivel físico, el tiempo necesario para regenerarse después de un partido duro puede variar mucho entre individuos. Con el fin de "ayudar en la recuperación", la mayoría de los jugadores pasa algo de tiempo bajo la regadera caliente, lo cual en términos fisiológicos se describe como recuperación pasiva. Muy pocos se tomarán un baño con hielo, el cual atrae la sangre a la piel del cuerpo de ese modo sacando el ácido láctico del tejido muscular. Algunos harán tiempo para una sesión de masaje valiosa, lo cual se describe como un método de recuperación semipasiva. Tal vez unos cuantos usarán una bicicleta estacionaria para producir el lactato en las piernas bien torneadas. No tengo duda que un porcentaje de los mejores jugadores usa alguno de estos métodos para sacar ventaja en la recuperación. Aún así uno de los métodos de recuperación activa más eficientes en cuanto al tiempo ha permanecido sin descubrirse en el mundo del tenis, hasta ahora.
Tiempo para presentar el "remo regenerador" de 20 minutos". ¿Por qué un jugador de tenis querría usar el remo para una recuperación más rápida? Para los novatos, el remo es un movimiento soportado por el peso de cero impacto de cuerpo completo que es extremadamente suave en las articulaciones y así facilita lograr una gama completa de movimiento con las rodillas, caderas y tobillos. La parte superior del cuerpo se asegura en la articulación coxofemoral con los hombros flojos mientras que la parte inferior de la espalda se apoya permitiendo que se estiren y contraigan suavemente los tendones, al mismo tiempo la espalda se involucra de manera uniforme durante todo el ciclo de remada. La resistencia suave y gradual de remar es una excelente terapia para el dolor muscular. Remar es un proceso ACTIVO para regenerar el cuerpo.

Existen otros beneficios regeneradores importantes que el remo proporciona, tales como el ritmo de respiración profunda usado para relajar el cuerpo en la recuperación y cómo la aceleración que comienza desde el impulso de las piernas suspendiendo la parte superior del cuerpo desde la fuerza de su esqueleto. El remo fácil también es suave con el corazón debido a la posición paralela del riel al piso y, así, reduce a la mitad el poder necesario para que el sistema cardiaco bombee la sangre a través del cuerpo.
El remo también es un excelente ejercicio de entrenamiento en múltiples áreas. Los ejercicios físicos varían en intensidad y duración. Se sabe que el deporte produce algunos de los atletas más aeróbicamente sanos y mentalmente duros. La adición del remo a la rutina de ejercicio semanal brinda variedad al entrenamiento que, de lo contrario, se enfoca enormemente en estar erguido y poner mayor presión en las articulaciones que ya están puestas a prueba de manera importante a través de los entrenamientos y partidos de tenis.
¡Sería sorprendente para mí ayudar a los jugadores de tenis a usar el remo para mejorar su recuperación y récord de triunfos! Considere nuestro paquete de iniciación de 10 semanas, el cual es excelente para aprender de forma pausada a remar y es perfecto para enfriamientos del tenis y entrenamiento en múltiples áreas.
Xeno www.row2go.com para entrenamientos de remo en línea. www.xenorowingcoach.com para DVDs y coaching privado.

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.