A hundred questions race through the mind of a coach regarding why another team is faster and why his/her team is slower.  The questions are perplexing and the answers are usually in the fine details.  Having a faster racing shell is almost never the answer.

Perhaps an example will provide some indication of just how hard it is to sort out the details.  We  spend an inordinate amount of time working on the catch at the varsity level.  The essence of the catch is that the catch is made as the last part of the recovery and not the first part of the drive.  But the recovery is immediately followed by the drive, so the distinction is not clear, having a separation of some hundredths of a second.

The make the distinction by the direction of travel of the hands at the moment of the catch.  At that very moment, the hands should be just finishing up their travel toward the stern of the boat-- just finishing up the means still traveling toward stern.  It means a sharper catch without missed water.  Does it look substantially different than waiting a few more hundredths of a second and dropping the blade once the drive is initiated?  No, not really. 

Does it make a difference when you multiply 8 blades X 220 strokes in a 2K race?  Yes.  Faster boats generally have better catches, but there are boats with such a plethora of talent that less-than-perfect catches might not be enough to erase the gains from talent.  Muscle mass and stamina can and often supplant technique as a factor in winning. 

This multitude of factors, some subtle, some obvious, is what clouds the issues of why one boat wins and the rest don't.  We should control that which we can control.  To that end, all of our rowers should become students of the stroke.  Always ask what is taught by our coaches?  How do I deviate from that? How can I improve?  One of the clearest means of doing that is to review films that we make available.  For example, I have a "dropbox" on the Internet to which I will allow members of Westerville Crew access.  With a software application for reviewing video, such as VLC, it's easy to put the video in slow-motion, or even frame-by-frame to pick out flaws.  I also put films up on Vimeo, almost daily, and always using the keyword "WCrew".  Film review is indispensable aid to improvement-- it's revealing and remarkably honest.

When considering a hot climate and significant exertion, it makes sense teleologically that as the body temperature increases, the human model should have some sort of limiter on the level of exertion.  Let's face it, the human model would not be functionally complete without some sort of protective mechanism against hyperthermia.  And these mechanisms do exist.  First, we have sweat.  It's evaporation from our skin scavenges all sorts of energy, now lost to the environment in a very effective mechanism.  Another is to dilate the blood vessels in the skin to increase the heat loss through convection.  And still another is for the brain to tell us, or really command us, to diminish our exertion when the first two are insufficient.  The brain commands us that we feel tired and it's time to quit.

What is interesting is the direction that the scientific literature is taking in how an elevated body temperature limits us during maximal exercise.  Traditionally, the body's core temp has been measured as the prime correlate for an exercise limiter.  As the body's core temp rises, the maximal exercise intensity decreases.  But in order to test the hypothesis, exercise scientists warmed their athletes by warming the skin, and through warm skin, the core.  That is the fastest way to warm the core.

But some interesting findings are appearing in the literature.  It's not that simple.  By measuring skin and body core temps separately, it's possible to correlate skin temp to toleration of maximal exercise intensity.  Interestingly, maximal aerobic exercise is likely more closely correlated to skin temperature than to core temperature.  That is, take two groups of athletes with the same elevated core temperature, but vary the skin temperature (perhaps through a special suit with water coursing through it at a preset temperature to keep the skin temperature constant), and the athlete with the lower skin temp will perform better, despite both having an elevated core temp.

It's easy enough to understand.  The higher the skin temperature, regardless of body core temp, the higher the blood flow to the skin, and the greater the blood flow to the skin, the less the blood flow to the muscles, and the lower the VO2max becomes for the athlete.

Hot skin kills exceptional aerobic performance.  It was particularly noticeable in our erg room before we installed our special fans and ducting.  Now we move over 10,000 cubic feet of air per minute (gross capacity of the fans which is obviously limited by our ducting).  Prior to our current setup, within maybe 3-4 minutes of the start of practice in the erg room, with all 51 ergs in  use, the ambient temperature, humidity and heart rates would rise precipitously.  Heart rate monitors became ineffective instruments in measuring exercise intensity because too much of the blood was being siphoned off by the skin as the skin became a radiator, not unlike your car radiator, to keep the core temp normal.  Only after installing our huge air moving capacity, could our lactate testing/heart rate monitors become useful measuring sticks.

We just need something as effective at Nationals.

Many of our rowers join crew without a definitive plan-- they don't even know for sure if they will like the sport, or if they can develop the endurance required of a recruitable rower.  But as things evolve, their horizons often expand.  Maybe they should consider a school outside of Ohio?  Maybe even an Ivy, or a Georgetown, or GW, or Cal Berkeley,  Stanford, Clemson or other school that offers rowing.  Our former rowers attend all of them, but they didn't start rowing with an exact school in mind.  Their horizons broadened as they learned that their rowing skills offered something that the top schools in the country seek.

So how well are you prepared?  Have you taken the PSAT?  Or have you purchased the ACT Test Guide with 5 full (but retired) ACT tests to learn your deficiencies?  Go to ACT Test Guide  For less cash than you'd spend on a date at Chipotle (well, with her younger sister tagging along), you can order the book.

Maybe you've taken one of these standardized tests and you feel you need some professional help. This question has arisen so many times.  Trish and I sat down with Debbie Crumrine, a college planner, on Wednesday.  Debbie's business is "Class101", a fulltime job of helping students plan for college.  She has worked with more than a half dozen Westerville Crew rowers, primarily in preparation for either the SAT or ACT test.  We've heard from several pleased parents, prompting us to call her.  Debbie does not educate regarding the content of the ACT.  She will not teach you math, for example, but she will teach  you how to prepare and take a standardized test.  Her students average a three point increase in their ACT scores.  Debbie's office number is 614-942-0247.  Her website is www.myclass101.com.

Consider that the average composite ACT score for Westerville City Schools in 2009 was just shy of 23 and for New Albany, 24.  How does that compare nationally? Above the national average, but in 2010, twelve percent of ACT test takers nationally had a 28 or over.  For the above listed schools where we have former rowers, 28 is generally in the bottom 25% of their ACT scores.  And consider that among Harvard's applicant pool, there are enough candidates with at least a perfect score on one section of the SAT to fill its entire freshman class.  So, while your 28 might put you into the upper percentiles of your local graduating class, you should start planning on better if you're eyeing a top flight college.

First things first.  Rhabdomyolysis is called rhabdo by emergency physicians and as you might guess, ER docs are the most likely to treat rhabdo, but mention rhado to an ER doc and you will generally elicit thoughts of bad electrical injuries where the electrical impulse causes a tetony in the muscle-- a prolonged, severe contraction -- until the electrical impulse ends.   Or a crush injury when an extremity is pinned in an auto accident.   Or thoughts of a mass-disaster, such to an earthquake, with many patients are pinned in collapsed buildings.  Or perhaps status epilepticus (a prolonged seizure) causing long muscle contractions. Or even an limb artery blockage (like a heart attack, but in a limb) causing muscle cells to die from lack of blood, and release their contents.  Thoughts might even wander to a venomous snake bite to the calf where the venom acts as a super meat tenderizer, breaking down muscle cells.  Hard exercise is not likely to top an ER doc's list of rhabdo causes.

Then in January 2011, news of 13 University of Iowa football players being hospitalized for rhabdomyolysis put rhabdo on the roadmap.  The hospitalizations followed a very hard strength training session.  Today the Dispatch reported that 6 OSU lacrosse players were hospitalized for a "rare, but potentially dangerous muscle condition" on Friday after one of the lacrosse players complained of soreness.

I commented to Trish, while reading the paper this morning, didn't we have kids complaining of muscle soreness last week after running on Monday?  How much exercise does it take to diagnose rhabdo, and importantly, how much exercise to cause kidney injury, a feared result of severe rhabdo?

In rhabdo, it's the oxygen-carrying protein in the muscle cell that causes the injury.  It's called myoglobin and is much like the oxygen-carrying stuff found in blood, called hemoglobin.  Just as hemoglobin causes the blood to appear red, myoglobin causes the muscles to appear red (at least those that are more Type I muscle--- the very aerobic muscle fiber type).  And when myoglobin is released from a damaged muscle cell, the myoglobin is exreted by the kidney.  Excrete enough of it, and the urine turns pink. That, along with extreme soreness, is the likely cause of an ER visit-- "Doc, I'm peeing pink and my quads are killing me after yesterday's workout.  What's up?"

And just as iron is used by the body in the creation of hemoglobin, it is also used in creeating myoglobin.  The problem is, too much iron in the kidneys can cause the kidneys to fail, and as the myoglobin gums up the kidneys and is broken down, the released iron can cause kidney failure.  Kidney damage is the major concern in rhabdo. 

The simplest way for an ER doc to find evidence for rhado is simply do a "urine dip".  Using a 2 inch "dispstick" that instantly tests for different substances in the urine, the doc will find it positive for hemoglobin.  But it's not really hemoglobin, but myoglobin masquerading as such. And it's found in the absence of other identifiers for blood.  That leads to more testing including testing for the level of myoglobin in the blood.

We know that the symptoms of exertional rhabdo is soreness following exercise.  So what constitutes too much soreness?  Should we avoid all soreness?  Do we have anything to go on?  Fortunately, a group of docs in a very busy California trauma center decided to look at this problem.  In that ER, they were seeing just shy of quarter million patients per year.  They looked through all charts over 5 years with rhabdo as the diagnosis and eventually found 35 patients (all men, average age of 24 yrs) who met their criteria for exercise-induced rhabdomyolysis.  Here's the good news-- none of the patients experienced acute kidney failure.

So while the news outlets use such descriptions as "rare", "potentially fatal", "acute renal failure", and other frightening descriptors, we coaches need to continue to use good, common sense.  There is no reason to deliberately have such strenuous workouts that we can and should expect to hobble our kids for days.  Or, as one of University of Iowa football players posted on Facebook, I “had to squat 240 pounds 100 times and it was timed. I can’t walk and fell down the stairs”.  And another posted, “Hands down the hardest workout I’ve ever had in my life! I can’t move!”

Will our kids occasionally be sore?  Likely.

From 60 Minutes and from Wikipedia, we learn that "The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.  After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School. In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube.  Their popularity and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009 and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time.   Bill Gates once said that "I'd say we've moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job."

Personally, when I wished to brush up on the Kreb's cycle and the electron transport chain, following my interest in exercise physiology, I turned to Khan Academy where I found a delightfully done review of both by Mr. Khan.  His style is easy to follow.  He draws on the screen as he lectures, providing just enough information to get the message across without cluttering the neural synapses with information overload.  And the best part, you can pause, rewind, and replay at will.  And if there is a concept that you just don't understand (maybe oxidation/reduction in the electron transport chain), just bring up another screen and search that on Khan, review it, and move back to the first lecture.

The bottom line is that in math (algebra, pre-calc, calculus, geometry, statistics, differential equations, etc), biology, chemistry (inorganic and organic), physics, and history, there is a now a one-stop resource for kids to go when their classroom instruction is just not getting them proficient enough.

And even better, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of lectures to step our kids through every problem in the College Board "Official SAT Study Guide."   As they advise at Khan, do the practice test and then use the video lecture to help step you through those problems you could not solve.

Preparing for the SAT/ACT is much like rowing-- you can't cram at the end of season, or during your senior year.  It's an iterative process that is slow and methodical, that is well planned and executed.  The earlier you start, the better.  The tools are here.

Yesterday, after writing my blog, I was plagued by a nagging feeling that there must be a way for a coach at my level to resolve such coaching issues.  What is done in business (short of firing a manager and hiring a new one)?  What is done is medicine when you're the expert and you have a problematic patient?  My paradigm is to search the literature and find a solution (being the miserly sort that I am), but in business, it's also common to either outsource or hire a consultant when you need a higher level of expertise.  The consultant idea, I thought, might have some traction.  Why not go to the source of what is the ultimate test for speed-- an Olympic gold medalist?  So I wrote Xeno Muller and he promptly responded with a call to my cell.  We had a wonderful chat and yes, he does film review at a reasonable charge and would be happy to offer another set of eyes on our rowers, or as I  put it, "I've never been to the top of Everest and looked down. I need someone with that experience to provide a top-level view of how we coach the stroke."   I'm not looking for the mundane-- bow is skying at the catch, 2 seat rows into it, 3 seat is using only one leg to drive, 4 seat's finish is messy, carrying water out of the lake...-- but instead the high level stuff such as, "I think you could do a better job front-loading the stroke by ...."   He's happy to help and I've already sent the first film.

On another note, we need as much water time as we can get.  Tomorrow morning is going to be marginal on temps, but if we wait till a little later in the a.m. to get on the water, it will be warmer, and importantly, no wind and sunny.  So there is a chance that tomorrow morning's workout will be varsity boats only, on the water instead of the ergs, as a group where we can have them rowing by eights for the entire row to ease the concern of anyone getting cold. 

While I don't promote dumpster diving at Goodwill as a means of finding adequate rowing apparel, I do suggest "thrifting" as an alternative, particularly for finding such items as tights.  Yesterday was cloudy, rainy, and windy and I had 2 rowers without tights to cover their legs.  When it comes to the teenage years and making choices between buying tights at a sporting goods store, at their exorbitant prices, or filling your gas tank, or having some coin in your pocket for a date, I understand the choices are tough and the hot date might win.  But let me suggest that getting a small group together and going thrifting is not a bad way to spend a couple of hours with rowing friends.  You can find some great items at a great price at Goodwill and most importantly, looking at the obesity rate in central Ohio, likely athletic apparel that was never worn.  Think of it as your civic duty....a donation to a good cause.....just don't tell your would-be-date.

But that 2008 lightweight eight was 4th in the Grand Finals of Youth Nationals despite their slower erg times.  They certainly rowed faster than their erg scores.  So what gives?  Should we be rowing faster for our current erg scores?  I think the answer is yes.

To that end, I returned to videos from that year and looked for the differences and there have been several creeping changes.  For example, we obviously held our shoulders in bow longer in 2008.  That is, after the strong drive, our rowers would "send the boat off" and let it run for a moment while their shoulders paused in bow.  While they had fast hands away, as we have always preached, they did not have a fast turn-around of the shoulders.  There was a moment at the end of each drive when the rowers would bask in the great feeling of sending off the boat.

With our current lightweight eight, the rowers tend to "bounce out of bow" in an attempt to get "body over" efficiently.  There is no small pause of their shoulders to let the boat run.   There is not the "send off" of the boat that we had just a few years ago.  Instead, it looks like a hurried effort to get out of bow.

What do the experts do?  Do they bounce out of bow with their shoulders never pausing, or do they "send the boat off" with a momentary pause in bow?  After reviewing videos of the US National Team, the Aussie National Team, and Olympic final scullers, the message is clear.  Xeno Muller, rowing at a high 37 rating in the 1996 Olympic singles final, had a longer pause than Westerville Crew rowing at a 16 rating.  Ditto for the national teams of the US and Australia.  I'll review more films, but the implication is clear to me--  we put all that energy into driving the boat, but there is not a send-off.  It's almost like we're spinning a bicycle tire and the tire is going fast.  To keep it spinning. we briefly strike the tire with our hand, but there is no send-off, just a momentary strike with immediate preparation for the next one.  I'm thinking our end-of-drive has to more resemble a batter striking a ball with that momentary pause as he takes in the send off.

There are other creeping changes too-- an earlier roll-up in preparation for the catch, for example.  The problem is, a squared oar, and especially eight of them, can offer significant wind resistance that adds up to seconds lost over a 2K race.  This phenomenon is worsened in a head wind, as we had in the grand finals of Youth Nationals last summer.  It is better to have a later, just-in-time roll-up.

I wonder how these creeping changes came about.  I think the answer lies in unintended consequences.  We have put so much emphasis on the catch and a controlled slide that our rowers have slowly evolved to an earlier and earlier roll-up in preparation for the perfect catch.  Gains in a  better catch might have been partially erased by increased wind resistance.  Similarly, getting out of bow faster might have been an attempt to spend more time preparing for the catch.

We've got some work to do.

For a rower, the heart replaces the carburetor.  Generally, the bigger the heart, the greater the blood flow to the muscles, and cardiac output is a major determinant of aerobic capacity. 

But the human body is a bit more conservative than a 16 year old in the late 60's.  That is, the heart will quite rapidly change its dimensions to accommodate the predominant load that the body is experiencing,  For example, up the intensity of workouts and within just a couple of weeks, the heart adjusts by improving its strength;  take a couple of weeks off and the heart will likewise begin remodeling for a lighter load. 

It's one of those teleologic mechanisms for energy conservation by the human body.  There is no sense to pump more blood per heartbeat if there is not apparent need.  We know that the heart is fairly plastic in its ability to adapt to the predominant workload, but the body is miserly too, taking away what it giveth if it goes unused.  So it interested me when I came across the journal article, "The Effect of High-Intensity Rowing and Combined Strength and Endurance Training on Left Ventricular Systolic Function and Morphology" from the International Journal of Sports Medicine in 2007.  Just how plastic is the heart?

The authors' interest in rowers is borne in the finding from many studies of the "athletic heart" that rowers, among a large span of athletes, often have the biggest hearts.  The fact that a 2K race is likely one of the most torturing events in the sports world provides the stimulus to the body to create a gas guzzler. 

The subjects were 10 male  rowers from the local university rowing club in Alberta, Canada who were entering their winter erging season.  Initial 2k erg testing demonstrated that they were not competitive-- many of our novices would better their erg times.  The athletes then underwent 10 weeks of both strength and endurance training consisting of steady state rowing, as well as interval training, alternating days with weight training.  Before and after echocardiograms, as well as 2K tests, were done to assess the rowers' cardiac status. 

It is no surprise that 10 weeks of training, increased to 3 days per week of erging and another 3 days per week of strength training, improved the heart's contractility and size in these rowers.  The heart became stronger and pumped more blood per heartbeat. 

Of course, the keywords of rowing, weight and endurance training piqued my interest and sucked me into studying the article.  Unfortunately, it was just another garbage article that made it past the editors of an international sports journal.  There were no controls. The athletes changed workout regimens to a more structured, monitored and intense regimen.  What da heck did the researchers expect would happen?  That the cardiac status would shrivel?

I was anxious to see lactate results because we started our weight training last week.   I secretly held a belief that their lactates would nudge up a bit, and the kids would be forced to lower their watts of intensity, due to some anaerobic creep.  Weight lifting has classically been an anaerobic promoter, but instead  I was elated to see that 80% of lactates dropped.  Four out of five kids were able to increase their steady state watts.

Forgive my redundancy-- my coaching heritage teaches me that our rowers typically need to be reminded a thousand times before a stroke problem is fixed --but we wish to move the lactate curve to the right.  That means, for any given lactate value on the Y axis, we wish to have a higher watts of intensity on the X axis.  Physiologically, lactate is the proxy for fatigue because as lactate rises during harder exertion, so does fatigue.  (While that is indisputable, the exact cause of fatigue is not known).  Still, if we can achieve more watts of intensity without nudging up the lactate, then we can row faster without greater fatigue (and fatigue is always maximized in a 2K race).  So last night I was pleased when lactate after lactate dropped, and rower after rower could increase their steady state intensity.

Last week we began the process of finding 1 RM on our varsity rowers.  1 RM is the "repetition maximum" that can be lifted.  The 1 signifies the maximum that can be lifted just once.  If we put a 6 in front (6RM), then that would be the maximum amount that a rower can lift 6 times without resting.  We'll track the 1RM of our rowers and expect, like watts-at-lactate, that the number will rise over the spring.

The answer seems simple, but then the cellular biochemists got involved once they could efficiently measure hundreds, or even thousands, of  proteins  in the the cellular milieu.  Might there be another answer?  Could the two workout styles be mixed?

I mentioned an article back in Jan ("Regulation of Muscle Genes by Moderate Exercise" by Nishida Y et al. in the International Journal of Sports Medicine in 2010).   This article is extraordinary because it finally put some numbers around the intracellular events of endurance and strength training:  Athletes committing to a workout program similar to Westerville Crew's can expect more than 200 proteins involved in oxygen use to be augmented in each muscle cell of rowing.  In a similar article by the same author, for those athletes involved in strength training, a little more than a dozen cellular proteins are affected.  

What these two articles really show is when an athlete habitually exercise in a certain way, there is a cascade of events at the muscle cell level that eventually lead to either augmentation of the aerobic process (burning oxygen to create power) or the augmentation of strength through muscle hypertrophy (enlargement) .  The keyword here is habitual.  Neither type of change occurs overnight.  Both exercise styles have their inherent dominant changes.

But what happens when you combine the two?  Are the cellular signals incompatible with one another?  Is every attempt at weight lifting simply going to drain aerobic endurance?

We know if you wish to build muscle, you do strength training. Strength training is a muscle promoter.  We also know that if you wish to be less aerobic, you also do strength training because strength training is also an aerobic inhibitor.  But we also know form several of my previous blogs, there is a way of combining strength training with habitual endurance training without becoming a muscle head.  This cool interplay is all done through cellular signaling.

For background, cellular signaling is hugely complicated-- not unlike a presidential election year with two major candidates (aerobic and strength).  Perform one form of exercise, and not only are promoter signals enhanced for one candidate, but inhibitory signals are produced for the other candidate.  Think of these promoters as FOX and CNN.   On FOX, you get clear, positive signals for the the endurance candidate and negative signals for the strength candidate;  flip to CNN, and you hear great stuff about the strength candidate and negative feedback about the endurance candidate.  The signaling is done through something called AMPK-PGC-1 for endurance and Akt-mTOR for strength.  Like an election year, this cellular signaling is more complicated than a couple of signalers-- just consider all the affiliates, political action committees, editorialists, campaign contributions, war-chest, prior experience, unemployment numbers, deficit....you get the picture.  Cellular signaling is hugely complicated.

But some interesting research shows us that the unexpected can happen in this interplay (Coffey, et al, "Early signaling responses to divergent exercise stimuli in skeletal muscles from well-trained humans" in The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Jan 2006. p190.192).    If you take a bunch of habitually trained endurance athletes and subject them to strength training, their cellular AMPK increases.  That is just the opposite of what is expected.  Strength training is predicted to increase mTor signals while inhibiting AMPK signals,  which in turn should make the cell less aerobic while creating muscle hypertrophy.  The opposite happens.

What's up here?  The keyword is habitual, or more to the point, the habitual exercise type.   Strength training can actually increase the aerobic cellular signaling, but it does this only when the predominant habitual exercise is of the aerobic type.  So the next question, of course, is what constitutes habitual?  Where's the cross-over?  That is, when does too much strength training inhibit, not promote, the aerobic pathway?  Nobody offers the definitive answer, but there are some hints in the literature.  More to come...

Here's the nearly completed weight area.  We need another Olympic wt bar but we have 3 squat stations: