Low intensity training and stroke rates.

Hi Mr. Muller, I am currently training at a Canadian National team satellite training centre in St. Catharines, Ontario. For steady-state rows that I am only interested in long continuous rowing, is it better to be at a slightly higher stroke rate such as 22 or 24 instead of putting more pressure on at a rate of 18 or 19? Or do you suggest something entirely different for a 90 min row? Your input would be appreciated.

My answer:
>Hello
>No probelm, I am glad to answer you. I used to row at
>21. MAKE sure that you put the ergometer on slides if
>you use the concept2. If you can use a rowperfect
>even better. You should grab a DVD that I sell on my
>website for rowing technique. Does Canada still teach
>an extreme layback at the finish?
>Take short water breaks when you row your 90' pieces.
>Make sure that you put carbs and electrolytes in the
>water and drink approximately .5 litters every half
>hour.
>Sincerely,
>XENO

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

Rowing can make you enjoy working out and help you burn calories!

40 Pounds Lighter
by Teresa Wiltz
After a lifelong battle against fat, she transformed her body—and her community.
The look in the mirror
Health reader Ruth Lytle-Barnaby, 44, figured she’d been born with the fat gene. Puberty first packed on the pounds; a sedentary lifestyle sealed the deal. After years of grad school, marriage and kids, a full-time job, and a full-time diet of processed food, “one day you look in the mirror,” she muses, “and you say, ‘Oh. My. God.’”
The makeover trigger
In 2004, Lytle-Barnaby was asked to be the subject of a makeover by a local magazine publisher who knew her from her work as the executive director of Community and Foundation Development for Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. She was paired with a nutritionist and trainer. And she was nervous: “I just knew I wasn’t capable of losing weight.”
How she dropped the pounds
Lytle-Barnaby’s savvy trainer kept boredom at bay by switching up her workouts, from the elliptical trainer to the stair machine to the weight room. After 6 months of healthier eating and daily workouts, she’d lost 40 pounds and four dress sizes. Today, Lytle-Barnaby’s never felt better. She’s cut way down on fast food and has embraced a new passion: rowing crew with her husband. And she even looks forward to working out—something she does nearly every day.
Slimming down her city
In 2005, Lytle-Barnaby and a group of colleagues founded the Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity (CAN-DO), which promotes health and fitness to local companies and the community. It flourished, and more than 800 hospital employees joined CAN-DO’s first lifestyle challenge. In just 3 months they logged a million exercise minutes and lost more than 1,500 pounds. Inspired, CAN-DO has started extending the challenge to other businesses around the city.
While Lytle-Barnaby’s biggest sense of accomplishment comes from watching the fitness spark catch fire, the admiring looks from old acquaintances don’t hurt, either. “I’m a work in progress,” she says. “And I like it.”

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

Exercising prior to joint replacement quickens recovery time. Indoor rowing is great.

DGNews


Exercise Prior to Hip and Knee Replacement Reduces Need for Inpatient Rehabilitation

HOBOKEN, NJ -- September 29, 2006 -- Osteoarthritis is increasingly common among aging Americans and is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. Exercise is often used in treating osteoarthritis and is an important part in rehabilitation following joint replacement.

The level of function prior to knee and hip replacement has been shown to be strongly related to function after surgery, yet little is known about the effects of exercise on patients with end-stage osteoarthritis. A study published in the October 2006 issue of Arthritis Care & Research examined whether an exercise program prior to hip or knee replacement would benefit patients in terms of function, pain, and muscle strength before or after surgery.

Led by Daniel S. Rooks, ScD of New England Baptist Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, the study included 108 patients scheduled to undergo hip or knee replacement between November 2001 and November 2003.

The patients were divided into two groups: 54 patients participated in water and land-based exercise three times a week for the six-week period immediately before surgery and 54 controls received educational materials. Prior to surgery all patients were questioned about their level of function and were evaluated in terms of lower-extremity strength, balance, and mobility. The exercisers participated in strength training, aerobic and flexibility exercises that were individually tailored to each person's fitness level, performed in a group and supervised by a physical therapist.

The results showed that patients who exercised reduced their odds of discharge to an inpatient rehabilitation facility by 73%. "The potential economic implication of this finding is noteworthy and should be examined in future studies, particularly with the rise in inpatient rehabilitation use," the authors note. The exercisers were also more likely to walk more than 50 feet at the time of hospital discharge. Those who exercised responded differently before surgery and immediately following surgery depending upon the joint replaced: although patients who exercised increased lower-extremity muscle strength, only those undergoing hip replacements showed improved function before surgery.

"Our findings show that an appropriately designed program of water and land-based exercise involving cardiovascular, strength training, and flexibility activities can be a safe, well tolerated, and effective approach to improving function and muscle strength in middle-aged and older adults with severe osteoarthritis of the hip and knee," the authors state.

They point out that patients participated in strength training for only 3 weeks (9 sessions), which is well below the recommended duration required to bring about significant strength gains. They suggest that the increase in strength was due to a combination of increased neuromuscular coordination and a reduction of fear about anticipated pain associated with increased muscular effort. They note that knee replacement patients would probably need to participate in strength training for a longer period of time in order to experience increased function prior to surgery.

The fact that the patients responded differently depending upon what joint was being replaced suggests the need for different approaches for people with osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. Also, because several participants who dropped out of the study did so because of the travel required to get to the group exercise location, the authors suggest that future studies should consider the location and convenience of the exercise sessions.

They conclude: "Additional attention should be placed on testing postoperative interventions for building on preoperative gains in function and fitness, adapting the intervention more successfully for the TKA [knee replacement] population, and examining the cost effectiveness of exercise for patients undergoing total joint replacement."

REFERENCE:
"Effect of Preoperative Exercise on Measures of Functional Status in Men and Women Undergoing Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty," Daniel S. Rooks, Jie Huang, Benjamin E. Bierbaum, Sarah A. Bolus, James Rubano, Christine E. Connolly, Sandra Alpert, Maura D. Iverson, Jeffrey N. Katz, Arthritis Care & Research, October 2006; (DOI: 10.1002/art.22223).


SOURCE: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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

Fighting Cancer through aerobic exercise such as rowing is the way to go!

This is a nice short article which underlines the benefits of aerobic training to stay healthy and help prevent cancer. The benefits of rowing as arguably the greatest form of exercise is still pretty unknown to the general public and many doctors and writers... In this article dragon boat paddlers are wrongfully called rowers. This is a good mistake because even though they did not mean the true form of rowing, the article came up on the rowing website www.row2k.com. In the end rowing is so superior to any other form of aerobic exercise because of of its full body motion and ZERO impact movement. Ok, I am getting off my rowing high horse, enjoy the article. XENO over and out.


Cancer prevention through exercise



By Margaret Evans
Sep 26 2006

Fourteen years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was caught in its early stages and treated with surgery, chemo, and radiation. I spun through the fear-driven loop of ‘what if…’, ‘why me…’, ‘how come…’ But I got on with practical living and adopted a holistic recovery approach by staying fit. I’ve always ridden horses but that’s not aerobic from a cardiovascular point of view, except for the horse. So, to be fit to ride and to use fitness to distance myself from cancer, I took up jogging and resumed with more focus a regimen of yoga exercises.

I had a stubborn belief that exercise and some kind of fitness regimen would be helpful for recovery and staying healthy. Turns out, I wasn’t too far off track in linking exercise and cancer recovery. Current science is pointing toward fitness as a means to keeping breast cancer at bay.

Donald McKenzie, a professor and cancer researcher at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine, specializes in sports medicine and exercise. His pioneering research into lymphedema, the accumulation of upper body fluids in people who have had their lymph nodes removed or radiated as part of cancer treatment, led him to theorize in 1996 that strenuous, upper body exercise like rowing might alleviate the build up of fluids and other complications from lung diseases. His theory led to the launch of the celebrated Dragon Boat races, the rowers all breast cancer survivors.

His theory begged answers to two tantalizing questions: Could exercise help prevent the onset of breast cancer and could exercise help prevent a recurrence of the disease? According to many recent studies across Canada, the results are leaning toward a very encouraging yes.

“There have been some good studies done,” said Dr. McKenzie. “The vast majority show that aerobic exercise has benefits to help prevent the onset of cancer with as much as a 30-40 per cent reduction in risk. In terms of primary prevention (to prevent breast cancer) the results are clear. For secondary prevention (to prevent recurrence of breast cancer) exercise makes sense.”

Why?

Across the country there have been over 200 studies in recent years focused on the link between cancer and exercise. A few facts are emerging. Regular aerobic exercise changes hormones, reduces obesity, and lowers fat levels. The current focus is gauging what exercise-induced changes occur to the metabolic system, insulin levels, and key hormones like estrogen and androgen.

Breast cancer is a hormone-influenced disease. Estrogen and androgen levels rise in post-menopausal women. Hormones are produced in body fat and if women have significantly increased their weight by over 12 kg since age 18, they could increase their exposure to risk by perhaps 40 per cent. But as exercise burns body fat it lowers hormone levels, therefore lowering the risk.

“It is generic exercise,” said Dr. McKenzie. “Women need to do something aerobic like walking or jogging.”

How long should each session be? How many times a week? To what intensity? Gym work? Distance running? Power walking? Cross-over sports? Interval training? An ongoing study at the University of Alberta involves 330 cancer-free women between 50 and 74 years of age who have been put on an intensive five-day-week exercise program for the first time in their lives. Their blood and body fat levels will be scanned and scrutinized to find links between exercise-induced changes and body chemistry. Results are expected this fall.

Exercise not only combats breast cancer but it also appears to be valuable for other forms of cancer including colon, lung, endometrial and possibly prostate cancer.

Grabbing those running shoes has taken on a whole new fitness meaning.

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

Tim Mclaren coming to the US (and he also loves the Rowperfect)

US Rowing + Great Coach = Olympic Medals

Well, the first two parts to this equation has happened here in the United States. My former coach from Brown University, Steve Gladstone, who now coaches the University of California Berkley has hired Tim McLaren to head the California Rowing Club. Steve has long wanted to see a more successful U.S. rowing team at the World Championship and Olympic Games, will his wish come true?

In October the 300 millions American will be born. That is a lot of people. Yet the United States have had in comparison to smaller rowing countries a deplorable result of international rowing medals per capita since the beginning of the modern Olympics. US sculling boats have a catastrophical record in comparison to its sweep rowing program. The explanation for this is that all Universities with a crew specialize in fours and eights.

I often hear that the US is too large for its own good to crank out medals. Too many coaches are teaching different techniques and when the time comes to form the national team there is hardly any time left to practice before the major international competition. Mike Teti the US head coach, figured out how to shrink the vast US territory into Princeton New Jersey. He has created an environment for sweep rowing talent to train together and to find local jobs. His system is working. The result is that the US is producing medals in the men’s and women’s eight.

Princeton, New Jersey… sounds nice, but between November and April it is C O L D and definitely not the environment that I would choose to train in. So I wonder where the rest of the people are who are interested in sculling at the international level. If they are not the runts of the Mike Teti sweep program, they are scattered throughout the US. There seems to be a Boston and Seattle enclave for sculling programs, but I am not going to vaste out time talking about those obscure programs. The bottom line is, there is no successful small boat US flotilla that can make a dent in the medal count at the Olympics and world championships.

Now the US has Tim Mclaren! Right from the get go I can tell you that I am a believer in Australian coaches. My own Aussie coach Marty Aitken helped me figure myself out to win Gold and Silver in Atlanta and Sydney. If you are an Australian you ought to feel good about what I am going to say. You people are roughly 20 million or less and your per capita medal count is ridiculously high at the Olympics. Jeez, I wonder how that is possible… Simple, Aussie’s have good athletes and great coaches. Marty was so methodical with my training that I NEVER had a doubt that I couldn’t do the job at the major yearly rowing championship. He introduced me to methodical lactate testing and cross training that kept my thirst high for on the water rowing.

Lactate testing is arguably a foreign concept for rowing training here in the US. Yet, today it is a simple process to monitor lactate levels in athletes and benefit from its information. It boggles my mind that the high performance committee of the US Rowing Federation has not gotten a clue yet and informed the thousands of rowers and hundreds of coaches about its benefit to avoid overtraining. When it comes to sculling styles there seem to be as many as there are coaches here in the US…

BUT! Other countries better beware and not get too comfortable things are going to change. Tim Mclaren has a proven Olympic record and is about to build a system that will crank out highly trained athletes who understand the subtleties of training and rowing small boats, which in turn will create superb large boats. My prediction is that we will see a rapid convergence of rowing talent to the California Rowing Club. Heck, if I were still in competition mode, I would migrate to see Tim… I guess I am not too old for that yet… Hmmm this makes me think… In any case I am wishing Tim and his family a great time.

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