The intent of this article is to help you design a training program for yourself that will fulfill your own aspirations in the sport of rowing.  My basic premise is that you must fix upon a goal and then figure out what you need to do to accomplish that goal.  Be wildly ambitious in choosing your goal!  Then add a dose of reality by factoring in the circumstances of your life.  Aim high, but not so high that it's unattainable.

Now, consider what is required to reach your goal.  (Hint: The biggest lesson I learned in international rowing is that "following the program" and "making the team" are not the answers.)  Systematic training, good health, proper equipment, the right coaching, excellent logistics, and the ability to pay for it are all factors that you can have some control over.  The basic message is this: Think things through for yourself.  In this article I focus on the basic training part, but I hope you can apply some of my comments and ideas to the whole picture.

Once you recognize just where you want to go with your rowing, make an honest assessment of your ability and the circumstances of your life to come up with a realistic approach.  Since you will probably never be able to fit the ideal training program into your schedule, prioritizing workouts is important.  Before you start, however, you must recognize that none of this is possible unless you are motivated, and none of this is worthwhile unless you are having fun.  As occasional supplement of grim determination may be required to overcome the inevitable setbacks, but if this "optimization" is working, you should see an increase in confidence, inspirational moments, and sheer enjoyment in your rowing.

When I rowed, I was always a student with a busy class schedule or (with a few brief interludes) working full time.  Once I began rowing the single, I did most of my training on my own (including timing my own pieces).  As my job became more demanding, it became impossible to stick to a regular daily training schedule. So I learned to focus on the most important workouts, and I fit them in, like pieces in a puzzle, as I wove my way through each week.  Frequently this meant picking or redesigning workouts that I knew would fit the constraints of time and available facilities.  The very nature of this process demanded a basic understanding of what I needed to gain from each week, which I used to communicate with my coach and as a "scorecard" to keep my interest up.

For example, if I could squeeze in a 90-minute lunch break on a Tuesday for an intensive track workout in Batterson Park (15 x 400 meters), then the next day I would avoid a long, endurance weights workout (giving the legs a chance to recover), but a long row would be just the thing. If I couldn't do the row because I had an early breakfast meeting in the city (downtown London), I could do light weights at lunch and run home after work on my dark but friendly 9-mile riverside route.  Then on Thursday I would be ready for something more intense, but would lean toward postponing endurance weights until Friday to leave a day between weight workouts.

It was not unusual for my plans to be derailed:  Thursday arrives, and everything falls apart.  I oversleep and wake up exhausted, legs aching from the run.  So I miss the morning row.  Not much chance to work out at lunch because I took two long lunches earlier in the week.  Feeling tired, I take a day off.  Then on Friday, feeling better, I realize I should do a technique row with fartlek plus heavy weights while the going is good (that is, when I am fresh), so there goes the endurance weights until Saturday or Sunday (a midday workout between long rows).

Being able to survive a week like that, and then muster the energy to do it all over again the next week, is where inner determination comes in.  I cannot provide a secret recipe, but I do believe understanding and prioritizing the components of your training program can help.

What follows is a self-assessment checklist to help you analyze your ambitions in the sport and arrive at your top ten workout list (although this could be your individual situation).  I also provide two of my top ten workout lists-one for fall endurance training and one for late winter/early spring.

Fall Endurance Training

Late Winter/Early Spring Training

Self Assessment Checklist

1. What is your ideal goal in rowing?  Do you want to win your age category in the Head of the Charles, move up from junior varsity to varsity on your university team, win a gold medal in the Sydney Olympics, or just break out of the doldrums and find that magic?
2. Do you think you have the potential to achieve this goal under optimal circumstances?  If not, go back to question 1 and come to something ambitious but more realistic.
3. What are the key aspects of your rowing that you need to improve to achieve your goal?  For example, you may be great on endurance but slow off the start.  Or you may have lovely technique but no oomph.  You will need to work hard on your weak points, and be clever in how you go about doing it.
4. What are your strong points that you must be careful to nurture?  Minimizing your weaknesses will keep you in the race, but your strengths will do the winning.
5. List all the workouts you would like to include in your program under ideal circumstances for each season of the year.  For example, my ideal for fall training would be (1) eight 20 kilogram outings in the single at steady state pace, (2) two shorter, higher-intensity/anaerobic threshold rows, (3) two technique rows, (4) two weight workouts plus a short run, and (5) two longer runs plus stretching workouts.  Of course it would be absurd to think anyone could do these workouts unless he or she had nothing else to do with the day, but this is a useful starting point.  It is also a good way of being realistic about what your competition might be doing.
6. When can you get on the water-morning, during the day, evening?  How many times a week?  Are you dependent on others for team boat rowing or do you row in the single?
7. What about land training?  Running, weights, and erg practices are usually more efficient and flexible than actual rowing.  If you are on a tight schedule, you will probably be able to get more pure training with land workouts than on the water.  (That was certainly true in my case.)  What facilities do you have available to you-showers at work, nearby health clubs with ergometers and running tracks, or a home fitness center?  Is there a running club with a cross country team in your area?  Do you have a well-maintained racing bike?
8. What your favorite workouts?  This is very important.  I believe you need to have at least some of your favorites incorporated into the program.

Picking Your Top Ten Workouts

The next step is to rank in order of importance each of the workouts from step 5.  The right answer depends on your assessment of your own strength and weaknesses as well as the facilities and time available to you.  Some workouts may have to be redesigned to fit these two constraints.  Finding a balance between your ultimate ambition and the reality of your life should get you thinking about the reasons for each workout.  Whether you have limited time for training or are a full-time rower, a system for assigning your workouts different priorities is very useful.  If you have limited time, it should help you get in the crucial workouts even if you have to skip other parts of your training.  You may have felt intimidated in the past because you knew your opposition had trained more than you.  This time, think about the key workouts you did and how you managed to fit them in; dwell on your own improved confidence instead of the strength of your opponents.

For the full-time rower, ranking your workouts may help you overcome the tedium of endless endurance rows or give you the kind of focus you need to peak for a key competition.  If you are rowing in an organized team and have little control over the practices on the water, think in terms of implementing the team training with additional workouts (full or add-ons) to make up the program you want.  Your goal is to try to get every workout in your top ten done each week. Pursuing this objective will boost your motivation and confidence, help you organize your time, and allow you to enjoy your training.

This gives you an idea of how I managed to keep motivated and kept up high-quality, focused workouts when I was training on my own, at very off-hours.

 I would like to acknowledge and thank my coaches, including Kris Korzenowski, Jean-Pierre Leroux, and Hartmut Buschbacher, who gave me the workouts in the above text, and a lot more.

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Anne Marden took up rowing a Phillips Academy and subsequently attended Princeton University.  Following her sophomore year, she stroked the U.S. women's eight at the '78 World Championships in Karapiro, New Zealand.  During her elite rowing career, Anne proved herself one of America's most prolific medal winners ever, winning a Pan Am Gold in '83 in the double, a silver in the quad at the '84 Olympics, a bronze medal in the single at '85 Worlds, an '87 bronze medal at Worlds in the double sculls, and a silver medal in the single at the '88 Seoul Olympics. This is in addition to a number of wins in the Head-of-the-Charles, a national championship title in '90, and fourth place finishes in the '91 Vienna World Championships and the '92 Barcelona Olympics.

Along the way, Anne developed her career as a pharmaceutical industry securities analyst, employed with J.P. Morgan in New York City and London.  She continues to keep up with rowing and training, and is an articulate spokesperson on the subject of goal-setting and achievement orientation.