Hi! I am a recently graduated high school senior that, due to my birth year, has to race U23 this summer. Do you have any tips on how to make the transition from junior to intermediate rowing easier? I will be competing at some major races this summer (IDR, Henley) so any info on how to get into a U23 training mentality would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

I think the best/most important piece of advice is to just go into it with an open mind and be coachable. You’ll definitely be pushed at a level higher than you probably have been thus far so your mentality has to be one of holding yourself accountable to doing the work more than anything else. Don’t overlook the simple stuff either – Wes Ng talked about this at one of the camps I was at last year and it’s all great advice that would definitely apply to your situation. That post is linked below.

Related: 10 simple things you can do to be a better athlete

One of the things I remember friends in college saying about moving up to U23s (and college rowing in general) was how much more seriously they had to take their recovery. The changes in training were obvious but if you don’t follow that up by adapting how you recover, the training itself will be less effective.

They all also kept pretty detailed training journals but one also kept a separate recovery journal where he detailed the different routines/recovery methods he tried before finding the “sweet spot” of what worked, in addition to laying out his thoughts on how he was feeling mentally about training, what hurdles he was facing and how he overcame them (particularly when it came to hitting new PRs), etc. Ultimately I think that journal (which was a physical notebook compared to an Excel doc for his training journal) proved to be the most useful tool for him simply because of the introspection it allowed. It’s not something that works for everyone, which is fine, but it’s definitely something worth trying to see if it helps you too.

For him (and a lot of other rowers I know), being more in touch with the mental/emotional side of training helped in a lot of different ways (the least of which being able to train smarter) but it all went back to holding himself accountable to keeping those journals in the first place so he could track his progress/mentality throughout the season.