If you know you should be stretching after practice but your team doesn’t have a dedicated stretching routine or you’re just not sure what to do, check out this video. It’s 20 minutes long which is about how long you should be spending stretching and/or rolling out after a workout anyways.
For me, the parts of my body that feel the most sore when I come off the water (particularly after a race) are the front of my hips (from leaning over and contracting those muscles), quads, low/mid back, and shoulders. I really like the twists with the bar at the beginning, though instead of twist going back and forth I kinda roll my body instead. I start in the same standing position, arms draped over the bar or whatever I’m using, and rotate my upper body around my hips – sorta like you’re hoola-hooping in slow motion. From there I gradually start leaning my upper body forward until I’m fully bent over and am just loosely hanging there before going in reverse and working my way back up. After that I go into a long side stretch, keeping my arms draped over the bar and just leaning as far over to each side as I can.
Scorpions (at 6:35) are one of the stretches I like to do for the front of my hips. Rather than go back and forth I like to hold it for 30ish seconds before switching, sometimes a little longer depending on how sore I am. This part of my body always hurts the most when it’s cold out (to the point where it actually hurts to stand back up) so this is usually one of the first stretches I do once I get out of the boat or off the launch.
The last thing I do is a few flows through cobra, child’s pose, and downward dog, similar to what she does between 12:05 and 12:45. I try to hold each one for a couple seconds (3-5ish max) but for the most part I like to keep it moving – not fast though, it’s still a slow, smooth transition between each pose. When I remember (which isn’t all the time) I try to take the opportunity to close my eyes as I go through this and focus on my breathing. It’s a good way to relax (or try to at least), especially if I and/or the boat had a shitty practice.
All in all this takes me maybe 10-15 minutes. I always felt like it was a little less critical for me to stretch right after practice (compared to the rowers) so I’d usually wait until I was home and had taken a hot shower before doing this. I found that I felt less sore doing it this way but I still stretched with whoever stuck around whenever I didn’t have anything else to do.
Any other coxswains have their own stretching routines? What do you do?
