Hi, I wanted to know if you if you have any advice on goals that you could set yourself. I’m 14 years old and I’m female, I’m 5’9 pushing 5’10 and participate in a lot of sports so I have a tall lean but muscular build. My high school doesn’t have a rowing team so I have joined a club. I really like rowing and I’ve been rowing for about 6 months. My coach is great and I row in a quad, double, and single (all scull). I row 4 times a week and I’m starting to become successful but I want to set myself some goals so I can keep improving. We are going to start gym sessions soon so I was wondering if you have any tips on times or achievements I should aim for?
This would be a great question to ask your coach because he/she would be able to give you a more specific answer than I can since they know your current times and all that stuff. Without knowing any of that it’s hard to give any concrete advice but I will say that whatever times you do end up aiming for, have that be the end goal but also have targets to hit at various intervals leading up to that as well. If you’re currently at an 8:00 2k and you want to be at 7:40 by spring break, determine how often you want to test yourself in between now and then and what times you’re shooting for with each test (i.e. 7:55, 7:50, 7:45, 7:40…). It’s a lot more effective to be able to check off a small goal each month than to just aimlessly work towards a bigger goal that is three, six, nine months down the road.
When you’re in the gym, if you’re doing a bodyweight or plank circuit, try to add reps or time every couple of days. For example, if you’re doing 30 second planks, after two or three sessions add 10 seconds. If you can comfortably hold it, do 40 second planks for a couple sessions before bumping it up again. If you can’t complete whatever additional amount of time/reps you add, go back to the previous amount. The goal is to slowly build upon whatever you’re already doing. When you’re on the ergs, consider getting a heart rate monitor so you can track your workouts and make sure you’re training in the right HR zones when you’re doing steady state. This can help a lot with tracking your progress towards your goals (because if you’re training the way you should be you should in theory be able to hit your targets with little to no issue).
