
Introduction to rowing
Rowing is a very popular sport, however people seem to
either know nothing at all or everything about it. Here are some of the basic
facts: rowing is one of the oldest Olympic sports and is one of Team Great
Britain most successful disciplines at the Olympics, winning a gold medal every
year since 1984. Rowing is GB’s third most successful Olympic sport, after
Athletics and Cycling, with 58 medals in total.
A misconception about rowing is that it is “all in the
arms”, quite the contrary is true with the arm muscles contributing very
little. If done properly most of your power comes from your legs. When you put
your blade into the water you squeeze your abdominal muscles and set your back
muscles in a static contraction to connect the handle to your footplate. You
then plantar flex your ankle and extend your knee joint using your quadriceps.
When your knee is coming to the end of extension you use your lower back
muscles and glutes to swing your torso backwards, finishing off the stroke by
pulling the handle into your chest.
There are two classes of rowing boat, a sculling boat in
which the rowers have two blades each or a sweep boat where rowers use one oar
each. Sweep boats can range in size from an eight to a pair and sculling boats
range from a quad to a single. We also have two seasons: a head season which
runs through the winter. These races usually range from 3 km to 8 km, boats
start one after another and classic examples are the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race
or The Head of the River Race. Regatta seasons generally runs from May to
August, and the races are normally 2 km (the same as the Olympic distance) with
multi-lane racing. The most famous regatta is Henley Royal Regatta in July where
Olympians, students and amateurs from all over the world race each other.

Manchester University Boat
Club (MUBC) is one of the oldest and largest sport clubs at UoM, with
around 200 members every year. Founded in 1932, the Boat Club has since grown
into a thriving group for both novice and senior athletes. We have an
ergometer training room at the Armitage Sports Centre and our boat house is on
the Bridgewater Canal in Sale. We train and compete throughout the whole of the
academic year all over the country. A usual training week is 8 to 10 sessions, consisting
of water outings, ergometer sessions, weights and circuits.
Common rowing injuries
The most common rowing injury is a rib stress fracture. This
usually occurs in the lead up to head season when we are doing long distances
on the water and ergometer to build our aerobic base. A normal session would be
a 18km paddle or an hour on the ergometer. We try to combat this injury by
training our cores often. The second most common area to injure in rowing is
your lower back. As fatigue sets in a rower’s posture slumps and the back
becomes more rounded, which puts more strain through the lower back. Teaching
proper technique, increasing flexibility and core strength are important to
prevent this injury, as well as many other injuries in our sport.
The use of sports massage and sports physiotherapy also
helps keep on top of all the aches and pains accumulated during our intense
training. For this reason, we are looking forward to our new partnership with My Sports Injury Manchester. Our
athletes are always in need of a sports rehabilitation clinic and we know their
injury specialists will help us to keep achieving a high level of training and
racing.
