Keeping Your Back Healthy and Injury-Free During Erg Season

Rowers on both coasts are off the water and onto the ergs ahead of 2K season, CRASH-Bs, and the important erg tests that start recruiting processes or slotting rowers into 1V, 2V and 3V. Staying healthy and keeping your body feeling good is critical to getting in the training you need to succeed.

Back Pain in Rowing

I'm not a doctor or a PT, but I can share some of my experiences and my teammates' experiences. Here is why your back may be hurting. The gist is that your back can get tweaked either because you don't have good body position from the get go, or because you lose your good body position as you get tired - from a long session or from taking hard strokes. As you get tired, you stop sitting up well and using your core as much (because you're tired), and start having more flexion through your back. Back fatigue or back pain that you only feel at the end of a training session can be different than back pain that you have all the time on the erg - if it's hurting from the first few strokes, it's a good idea to go see a PT or doctor.

Strong and weak body position at finish. Image via +WorldRowingFISA.

Your coach may have a series of warm up or cool down exercises or stretches that you do as a team. Current thought for rowers and all athletes says that it's important to warm up and strengthen your muscles through their functional range of motion (the movement range you'll be using during rowing). If you're looking to add in bodyweight exercises that activate, warm up and strengthen some of the really important muscles for keeping your core strong and engaged, I've put together some good ones below. Each is linked to a video showing good form.

Warm-Up (2 Sets of 10 each)

Do 10 of each exercise, going through all exercises twice (2 sets of 10 each)
Good Mornings (put your knuckles on your temples if behind your head is uncomfortable)
Back Extensions
Lunge Series (Front and Back, Lateral, Spiderman - do 10 each leg for each direction)
Deep Bodyweight Squat
Pushups

Post-Practice Stretching (2 sets of 45 seconds each)

Do 45 seconds on/15 seconds off for each stretch, going through all stretches twice (2 sets of 45" each)
*Can also use these between erg pieces to help relieve tension in back. Good Mornings, above, also provide a good stretch.
Half Pigeon
Figure 4
1 Leg Across

Bonus: Strengthening Your Functional Range of Motion

These exercises will help you build and strengthen your core. These can be done with bodyweight or using a 10 to 25-pound plate or dumbbell. Do 2 sets of 10 of each exercise.
Back Extensions (if using weight, hold against chest with arms crossed)
Bulgarian Split Squat (hold weight in front of chest, just below chin, and keep chin and chest up)
Deep Bodyweight Squat (hold weight in front of chest, just below chin, and keep chin and chest up)
Reverse Hyperextension (if using weight, works best with a medicine ball held between feet. You can use a bench pull or weight bench to create a platform; the range of motion is similar to a back extension.)

If you have other bodyweight warmup, stretching or strengthening exercises that have made a difference for your back, share them in the comments below!

Stay healthy and happy erging!
Esther

Acupuncture: Healing and Getting (Un)Stuck from Injury

Acupuncture...ouch?

The #1 question I get when I tell people I use acupuncture as a healing and treatment tool is: "Doesn't it hurt?" We all have memories of being a little kid in the doctor's office as a nurse walked over with what looked like a foot-long needle and stabbed us with it. The agony that could not be calmed, even by the coolest Snoopy bandage!

Actually, acupuncture doesn't feel like that at all. Nor does it feel like getting your ears pierced. Nor does it feel like getting a tattoo. (Sorry, Mom...) The closest approximation I can give is a very localized feeling of using a stim machine--or of a slight electrical tingle--but in your muscles, not across your skin.

Before I finally tried acupuncture in 2011, my thoughts on it--in spite of hearing from some teammates that it was a great healing and injury prevention tool--were that it was somewhere between New Age-y weirdness and masochism. You're suggesting I get someone to stab a bunch of needles into my knotted, injured muscle? Thanks, but I'll stick to my ice packs and stretching and massage.

Acupuncture needles are tiny... 10 of them fit in a typical medical syringe!

And then I found myself racing in Germany on a chronically injured rib--and the only team who'd brought a physical therapist was Japan. A favor was called in and I ended up being lucky enough to be treated by their team physio, who was astounded that I'd never used acupuncture as a treatment option. And...it was amazing. There was certainly no pain from the needles, which looked almost as thin as a human hair. Instead, the needles found some of the nerves that refused to relax, and I felt them "fire"--contract or flex part of the neighboring muscle--and then let go. I could actually feel the muscles around my injury calm down. After that, the physio was able both to adjust my spine (like a chiropractor) and do a smaller amount of massage that really made a difference, because the area was not on lockdown. It took exactly one session for me to become a believer.

A map of our nervous system. What's driving our muscles!

As athletes, as rowers, we focus a lot on our muscles, our lungs, our balance, our mental game. We don't think as much about how all of those are run and impacted by our nervous system. When I drive my legs as hard as I can, that is my brain telling the nerves in my legs to fire the right muscles in the right sequence. Although sometimes muscles sustain actual injuries and damage, it's my experience that many of the common "knots" that don't go away after stretching, foam-rolling, and a nap after practice are often caused by the nervous system being out of whack. Sometimes it's your body trying to protect an injured or weaker muscle or area; sometimes it's a muscle that's been twisted or overused. Either way, acupuncture is a very under-utilized tool that can directly tap into the nervous system and help get the recovery and healing process back on track.

The acupuncture map.

I've been lucky enough to be treated since by some of the best practitioners in the country since: Dana Harbison in Fort Washington, PA; Lili Gould in San Diego, CA; and Dr. Melanie Six as well as Dr. Yong Chen in Alexandria, VA. Definitely cheek them out if they're local to you! Also, check with your insurance--many policies now cover some or all of acupuncture treatments.

Don't write off acupuncture, especially as a tool to add to your healing and recovery arsenal. I'm so thankful I learned about its benefits!

Heal up and keep training hard--here's to hoping this extra-long winter is over soon!
-E

Kicking off the New Year!

So 2011's been around for a week and a half now, and it's been a pretty good start.

We're back in Princeton, slogging through snow everywhere, but getting some good training in and getting back in rowing and racing shape after the funny schedule of Worlds this year.

A November bike mishap led to training for a month on an elbow that I didn't know was fractured (oops)...I've been logging some miles on the (stationary!) bike while I waited for it to heal, but have started back up on the ergometer after getting an all-clear last week. It's frustrating to feel like I wasn't able to start the winter season exactly how I'd envisioned doing so, but I've definitely improved my fitness, and I'm eager to get back into the team's workouts so that I can show that.

Two big things: first, my friend Jen Whiting wrote a really neat piece about our 8+ from this summer and the experience of training with the group here in Princeton. We sat down for dinner a couple of times this past summer and fall, and I think she did a really great job on the article. It's the feature story in the latest Rowing News Magazine, which you can check out in a boathouse near you or order online here.

Second (for all you ergers out there!) I will finally be putting out my January playlist this week! So get excited. Props to Adam Barhamand (you can find his music-focused blog here) for once again putting together an exceptional genre-spanning collection that pointed me in some good directions for the playlist. I'm planning on putting together at least one playlist per month for this year...so if you have any suggestions for songs, artists, good music blogs, or anything else, feel free to leave them via comment or email!

Happy training,
Esther