Our rower Matthew won the Hammer at Crash-B!

Congratulations Matthew for winning the CRASH-B Sprint, Indoor Rowing World Championship, in the junior lightweight division in 6:22/2K

2 years ago Matthew tested 6:53/2K, with hard work and smart training he achieved a very tough result.

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

If rowing is your sport, this book is a must read, Olympic Obsession :-)

 I am currently reading this book. It is fantastic and TIMELESS. The second chapter is about my own Olympic coach, Harry Mahon. With the KINDLE app anyone with a smart phone can read this book anywhere, it is so cool. Perfect to read as we get ready for the 2012 Olympics.

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

How I met the bench row, a key component to Olympic gold

First day of rowing January 198

I was 13 and a half when I started rowing in Fontainebleau, France.  As a "cadet" rower, we were asked to join the Friday evening strength training session.  The weight room was part of an athletic complex across the street of a famous business school called, Insead.  This school attracted well accomplished US rowers such as, Alyson Townley, Chris Carlson, C.B. Sands-Bohrer, Anne Marden, and John Marden.  This early US rowing interaction presented me with the opportunity to hold Anne Marden's freshly won Olympic silver medal from the Seoul Olympics in my young hand.  It was amazing how big and heavy the medal was.  As I held it,  I remember looking at it long and hard which gave me the impression that the medal grew larger in my hand.  Then a voice inside of me said: "Xeno, you can achieve this, but it is going to cost you, you will suffer."  I tightened my jaw and knew that I was in it for the long haul.

My dad and I the year before Brown

As a young teenager I was a fan of movies such as Rambo, Rocky, Commando, the Running Man and a few others staring these actors...  I wanted to be as buff as Stallone and Schwarzenegger.  Even my father and grandfather enjoyed telling me that a strong body is important in a young man's life and beyond.  So it was no wonder that I was given a piston rowing machine and a punching bag for Christmas the year before I started rowing on the water at the Club D'Aviron Fontainebleau Avon.  When I first set foot in the gym that Friday evening, all I saw were free weights, a couple Smith cages, and monkey bars...  The elder rowers told us to grab four benches that were stacked along the concrete wall.  I had no clue what we were going to do with them.  Maybe we were going to sit down and talk about what we were going to do.  We were told to place three benches parallel to each other and the fourth bench was set on top.  Then an Olympic bar was placed underneath the top bench and I was told to lay belly down and grab the bar and start pulling.  The date was February 15th, 1985.

Shortly before driving to Sydney from Murwillumbah

The company of the bench row lasted 19 years from that evening on.  I did bench rows in Fontainebleau, Zurich, Sarnen, Providence, Boston, and Newport Beach.  There is no doubt in my mind that this specific exercise brought a huge amount of torque to my sculling and sweep rowing stroke.  I excelled at the French national bench row test, which consisted on how many bench pulls with 40kgs one could do in 6 minutes.  Years later, I laid there in the gym of the Newport Aquatic Center, my stopwatch already running and placed on the ground right below me, my finger tips hooked around the bar. As the stop watch reached one minute, I began pulling at a deafening pace, literally, because at the end of every pull the Olympic bar hit the metal frame creating a loud bang.  I thrived on that ear piercing sound.  I felt rage, I was in my element, my mind was screaming to go faster, harder, I wanted to tear everything apart so that my my opponents would get destroyed, they shall regret having chosen to race the single scull.  The metallic banging reminded me of a sledgehammer.  As I progressed through the six minutes, I increasingly felt my lat muscles pulsate with every draw.  My arms became twice as big.  Sweat dripped off my forehead onto the floor.  I kept counting, I wanted to go farther than 240, which meant an above 40 strokes a minute pace. I kept ramming the bar against the bench.  At one minute to go, I demanded that my body released every ounce of energy for the final sprint to complete the six minutes of hell, or was it heaven...  That day I pulled my absolute best, 248 draws at age 28, a month and a half before the Sydney Olympics.

Join one of the fastest growing communities of indoor rowers at www.row2go.com and become the fastest rower at www.xenorowingcoach.com
Xeno Muller won an Olympic Gold in Atlanta and an Olympic Silver in Sydney, and is the current Olympic Record holder in the 2000m Single Scull. 

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

How to enjoy rowing more, row faster, row safely, join us.

Join one of the fastest growing communities of indoor rowers at www.row2go.com and become the fastest rower at www.xenorowingcoach.com
Xeno Muller won an Olympic Gold in Atlanta and an Olympic Silver in Sydney, and is the current Olympic Record holder in the 2000m Single Scull. He is also the President of XenoRowingCoach and Row2Go which is quickly becoming THE online community for both indoor and on-the-water rowers providing its members with weekly online workout routines and individualized coaching programs.

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

Chronic issues on the water with boats and technique.

Hi Rowers and Coaches,

Yesterday as I was communicating with a couple rowers over the internet it occurred to me that I ought to write about chronic problems that I encounter and hear about of technique and rigging issues, here goes:

This is not good enough of a hang either :-)

Scullers and sweep rowers seem to be chronically rigged too far into the stern, which forces an insanely uncomfortable lay back.  This leads to washing out of the blades at the finish and contributes to a sore lower back.  The biceps are overdeveloped and the latesimus dorsalis underdeveloped. The finish posture leads to a bunched up recovery where arms away is combined with a forward body angle similar to the hunchback of Notre Dame, and a skyward tug of the knees which is solely the result of contracting the hip flexor, totally leaving out the far more important hamstrings.  The movement of the seat arrives too early to the end of the track which stops the knees and allows a lurch of the upper body which leads to a drop of the handle height, a late squaring and skying of the blade.  In a women's  eight, the shoes are usually set too low making over-compressing of the knees likely and perpetuating the lurch at the catch.  The leg drive tends to be shortened through the steeper angle at which the legs are at extension because of the low foot board position and over-sized shoes.  Men in sweep and in sculling are rigged too low, while women are rigged too high.  In sweep rowing, the inboard handle is either too short, or the span too wide.  The sculls and sweep oars are held in fists instead of fingers creating blisters in the palm of the hand.  Shoulders during the drive look like they are attached to the rower's earlobes.  That catch occurs when the boat sits deep in the stern instead of when the hull comes out on its own buoyancy. During the drive the notion of hanging of the leg drive is fuzzy.  Hanging does not mean contracting muscles above the hip joint while pushing with the legs.  Heels come off the foot board at the finish creating and perpetuating the lack of support in the lower back and the lack of use of the hamstrings to lever the swing of the upper body against the last quarter of the leg drive, which is the most powerful angle, but also the shortest distance the seat travels, creating a drop of the knees indicates the loss of connection between leg drive and upper body swing.  Catches are performed with an early opening of the back, clearly showing that the knees/legs are not the primary driving force of the rowing stroke.  Arms are used in similar manner as a squirrel holds an acorn, which slows down the extension of the legs and uses up the draw too early in the stroke which then prevents a supported finish position.  Foot boards are usually too flat instead of too steep.  Larger junior teams spend more time lining the boats up than worrying about training at target heart rate and building torque.  Junior teams tend to train too little at the aerobic zone, and too often at and above the anaerobic threshold.  Such training leads to injury, mental and physical plateau, an angry coach, because the team is not improving, a dislike of returning to the boathouse, low self esteem.  Coxswain are the most underrated assets in a boathouse.  If the coach new how to coach, the coxswain would make the coach's life a living dream.  Coxswains feel boat and hear what the team is saying without the coach hearing it.  The coach is to a crew what a five star general is to an army, therefore the coxswain is a four star general. 
Ok, got to quit I have a couple stroke analysis to do.
You can find me on www.xenorowingcoach.com and @rowingadviser on twitter.  You can row with me at www.row2go.com.
Happy February and know that I am certain that you can go 20 seconds faster on a 2K if you have never been coached by me or have made it to the national team.

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