This week I seat raced four times- I’ve been in the 2V, so they seat raced me twice for the 1V. I lost, which is okay, I was happy with the 2V. Then I got seat raced and lost the 2V, and now I’m not boated for this weekend’s race, and probably for the rest of the season. I’m 5’4″, a heavyweight with top 8 time on my team, and my coaches say my biggest problem is that everyone else is just longer than I am. Do you know of ways to improve length? I’m starting to think I’ll never be a decent rower.

This may or may not be adding insult to injury, but I think that’s your coach’s polite way of saying that they’re taller than you and that’s where the advantage comes from. On one hand, strength and flexibility plays a major part in your length but it also comes from how tall you are. You want your reach, catch, and stroke to be as long as possible, which is why you see a lot of insanely tall men and women on the national teams. The biggest thing that will help you in the long run is working on your overall strength (if your team has a lifting program, start doing it) and flexibility (stretch, stretch, stretch, roll out on foam rollers, etc.). The strength part is most likely going to happen before the flexibility does (there’s not much you can really do about that either), but the two together will really help you out. Your height, limb length, torso length, etc. are all things you can’t change so even though they play a big part, it’s not worth worrying about because you can’t do anything about them.

Your hips and shoulders have to work together when you’re trying to achieve good length. Rowers like you who aren’t able to get or be as long as their teammates can make up for that by getting your hips deeper into the catch (not too much though), which brings your upper body forward a little more and allows you to grab a couple extra inches of water. What will allow you to do that is to work on the flexibility of your hips and increasing their overall range of motion.

Once you’ve worked on all of that (fast-forwarding to the fall season) and you know that your technique is good, your strength and flexibility have improved, etc. and you’re still not getting as much length as your coach would like, then he might look at the rigging on your seat. There’s a compromise to this though – changing the rigging, in this case the height and/or angle of your foot stretchers, increases your length but decreases your power output. Your coach would have to weigh the options and decide what he wants from there. Would he rather you be at a uniform length with the other seven rowers or be a little short but still able to get your maximum power output on every stroke? You’ve got one of the top eight erg times though so I don’t know how willing he’d be to compromise that power.

I’m sure you already are a decent rower. It doesn’t take much to be decent but it takes a lot of work (at least on the teams I’ve been a part of…) to be able to seat race for the first varsity boat. Your coach could have told you worse things, like your technique is terrible, you’re a poor sport, etc. but he didn’t. As long as you’re willing to do the work off the water, you’ll be back in a lineup in no time. Like I tell everybody else, don’t let this discourage you – instead, let it motivate you to work harder.