As we hope you are aware from previous correspondence, RoCo have been working on developing a new structure for coaching and club squads. We sent out a survey in June to all members and had a fantastic response. Thank you to the high number of you who responded, and for all the helpful feedback you gave us. Using all this information we have been able to form a new structure which will hopefully fulfil many of the different requirements of the current members of the club.

The Programmes

We will have two main programmes which members decide for themselves which one they would like to join.

Firstly, there is the Rowing Programme. This is for everyone and different people will get different benefits from it. Some people will want to compete in events, some may not. Some may want to do ergs and weights, others may not want to do any of them, others may like to dip in and out of doing them when they have the time. In response to requests from the survey, this programme will not have set targets or training plans as this will be flexible for the different needs of the individuals.

This group will have coached water session by Louise Hart on Saturday mornings and Monday mornings each week and Sunday coaching by Sam Morgan. There are also a number of other support coaches who will offer support coaching when Louise and Sam are unable to coach, for example when Louise will be needed in March for lambing season!

The second programme is the Intensity Programme. It is open to men and women who will be coached in one group together. If someone chooses to go into this group it is because they are able to commit significant time to their rowing and are wanting intensive training. The only limiting factor to someone opting to join this group is that they will need to bear in mind that they will need a skill level in their rowing to be able to manage more complex drills and coaching. This will have a set programme for water sessions along with set ergs and weights each week.

This group will be coached by Tim Male, on a Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings in the spring/summer.

In addition to the coaching sessions mentioned above, during the summer on a Tuesday evening we will have a race craft evening. This will be for both groups together, run on a similar format to the current ladders session but will have two to three coaches involved, Tim and one or two of the support coaches, so that there is more scope for crews to receive coaching through the evening.

In addition to all of this, to keep the social aspect of the rowing club going, there will also be a year round uncoached Social Row on a Wednesday morning followed by coffee, and cake if we’re lucky! And in the summer a coached social row on a Thursday evening following which the bar will be open. We are hugely grateful to Helen and Mike Smith and Mike B for their work on this and hope they continue with this important opportunity for social rowing.

When choosing which of these new programmes to join, there is flexibility to move between the two. For example someone may want to be on the Rowing Programme as they don’t want to commit to the Intensity one, but could move across to it for a period of time if they wanted to compete at a high level for a particular event but then after that event step across to the Rowing Programme again as they are wanting to have more flexibility to do other things in life over the rest of the summer.

As the Intensity Programme coach Tim will set the programme and the crews for the Intensity Programme group. The Rowing Programme will have more flexibility in crew settings which will be facilitated by Louise, Sam and Group Captain/Coordinator, we anticipate some may want to self select crews. When setting crews for races, we will encourage collaboration between Tim, Louise, Sam and support coaches.

This is a summary of how the programme will look for each group.

Rowing Group, Summer.

• Monday morning- coached water session

• Monday evening - Pilates/weights

• Tuesday evening - coached race craft

• Saturday morning- coached water session Sunday morning- coached water session

Intensive Group, Summer.

• Monday evening- Pilates/weights

• Tuesday evening- coached race craft

• Wednesday evening- coached water session

• Thursday evening- weights

• Saturday morning- uncoached water session

• Sunday morning- coached water session

Social sessions open to all, summer.

• Wednesday morning- uncoached

• Thursday evening- uncoached

Rowing Group, Winter

• Monday morning- coached water session

• Monday evening - Pilates/weights

• Tuesday evening - uncoached hard erg

• Thursday evening - uncoached long erg

• Saturday morning- coached water session

• Sunday morning- uncoached water session

  
  

Intensive Group, Winter.

• Monday evening- Pilates/weights

• Tuesday evening- uncoached hard erg

• Wednesday evening- weights

• Thursday evening- uncoached long erg

• Saturday morning- uncoached water session

• Sunday morning- coached water session

Social sessions open to all, winter.

• Wednesday morning- uncoached

The erg sessions will be mixed and all weights sessions are uncoached

We hope this new programme offers the current members of MRC the variety that came across in the survey results - different coaching styles, some day time coaching, different intensity of training and socialising. To try to formulate a new programme incorporating as many requests as possible alongside co-ordinating with different coaches to make a plan that is feasible has taken some time. Please bear with us when it starts as it will take some getting used to the new changes. We will soon be sending you a new google sheet for signing up to sessions - we will have one sheet for the whole club as this gives everyone the scope to sign up for any of the sessions they want to attend.

We will be transitioning to the new programme over the next few weeks. We have a tight time scale so the first week or so will not quite be as smooth as we’d ideally like, but everything is very close to falling into place.

We will have a club wide meeting on 23rd September where you’ll be able to ask lots of questions but hope this information explains the new plan in the meantime. After 6 months we plan to ask for feedback again so that we can review how this programme is working.

MRC Rowing Committee (RoCo)