RowingRelated

This week's video comes to us via the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, and features an inside look at the recent quad camp there, which included Craftsbury Green Racing Project's John Graves , Potomac's Willy Cowles , and California Rowing Club scullers Derek Johnson and Hans Struzyna . The camp was put together by CRC head coach Bernhard Stomporowski , and, in the words of John Graves, served as a way to encourage greater collaboration between clubs and training centers looking to develop elite athletes and crews. Here's an excerpt from a post Graves' wrote for his blog, Jaunting , about the camp: "The majority of our rowing was low intensity, but we did a couple of 3k pieces with some of the other boats at the TC; most notably the women's 2x and light women's 2x who have showed medalist speed over the past couple of years." This allowed them to compare some percentages, and get a sense for how the lineup performed by t...

Collegiate programs aren't the only snowbirds in the American rowing community. The U.S. national team has been training in California of late, taking advantage of what has been, even for California, unseasonably warm weather and calm conditions. These videos come by way of U.S. national team high performance director Curtis Jordan , and in the clips from the men's training sessions, you can hear coach Luke McGee's voice over the megaphone. Coming up soon on RR: A coaches' corner piece on avoiding subconscious complacency (how can we push beyond our imaginary limits?), and a look inside the inner workings of California Rowing Club . -RR

The above video comes to us by way of California Rowing Club head coach Bernhard Stomporowski , and gives us a window into the CRC side of national team training camp down at Chula Vista , from January 6-27, 2013. Not only do we get a glimpse of this year's invitees doing some work in fours, but we're also invited on land for erg work supervised by newly appointed men's national team coach Luke McGee . USRowing released the full list of athletes invited to the Chula Vista training camps on both the men's and women's sides last week, with the (mostly) lightweight men's camp set to run from February 7-17. For the men, the camp included an NFL Combine -style assessment, as evidenced by some furious activity on Twitter: 20yrd sled push. @ usrowing @ coachlukemcgee @ rowingwolf7 @ rowingrelated twitter.com/volp/status/29… — bryan volpenhein (@volp) January 23, 2013 Also making an appearance in the film (not listed by USRowing but present representing CRC...

WinterCamp from Washington Rowing on Vimeo . The Washington Huskies spent their winter training camp in sunny Southern California, and, judging from the above video, there was no shortage of work being done. Taking center stage this year is Canadian Olympic silver medalist Conlin McCabe , who is shown in the stroke seat of both a straight four and an eight—leading by example and setting the tone for the Husky squad this season. While it's going to be tough to out-perform last year's team, which set several records en route to sweeping the IRA Regatta, if there's any team out there ready to do it, it appears to be the 2013 Washington men. Speaking of, it's nearing that time of year once again where we shoot our mouths off and make some picks and predictions for the coming season. Stay tuned! Want to suggest the next ' Video Of The Week ?' Shoot us an email at rowingrelated [at] gmail [dot] com, send us your suggestion via Twitter ( twitter.com/rowingre...

GB Olympic Trials GB Rowing hosted its Olympic Trials over the weekend at Eton Dorney, and the racing featured a number of notable no-shows, some predictable results, and a few surprises. The list of athletes not competing at the event grew throughout the week, and the final tally included both members of the defending world and Olympic champs in the LM2x (this has Rowing Illustrated's Sean Wolf  ready to predict  that New Zealand's Storm Uru and Peter Taylor will take the crown in London), as well as Rob Williams and Richard Chambers (of the LM4-), Hester Goodsell of last year's bronze medal LW2x in Bled, Annie Vernon of the W4x, and several members of the heavyweight men's squad. Despite the long list of absentees, the racing was intense and showed off the depth and top-end speed of the GB squad in the midst of its selection process. Andy Triggs Hodge and Pete Reed took first place in the M2-, as expected, but the field was reshuffled behind the top pair, with...

This video, shot in 2007, gives an eight-minute window in the coaching style and approach of one of the most news-worthy figures in all of USRowing last Fall -- Kris Korzeniowski. Not only this, but it shows what the training environs are like at Arco, which has recently become the seat of the US men's team. Though it was shot during a different Olympic cycle, it features some banter from Sam Stitt (most recently the three-seat in the US Men's 4- in Karapiro), as well as drills along with Korzo's commentary. In the last press-release regarding the changing role for Korzo in the coming year, his position was vaguely defined, and one suspects that he may be lending a helping hand during the 17 months left as we head toward London. Note: For FeedBurner subscribers, click the title of the article to view video.

The Wall Street Journal got involved in the debate surrounding the US National Team this week, publishing an article that is the first appearance to date of any reasoning behind the moves as expressed by Glenn Merry himself. The rationale, according to Merry, is directly related to training -- the warmer climate in California allows year round training on the water, and, given the US men's failure to bring home any hardware from Karapiro in November, the US Rowing leadership decided that the move would facilitate rapid improvement in small boat categories. The results from the RR short answer poll show that the move is a divisive issue: 38% believed the move was a bad decision, while 32% backed the move to California and 28% remained undecided. While I believe this is the right move in the long-term, there are a number of problems yet to be addressed in the wake of such a dramatic shift, and only 20 months left to resolve them. First, let's look at the benefits of the move f...

On Friday last week, I wrote to Megan Kalmoe asking her a number of questions regarding the changes made to the US Rowing program. Despite her busy schedule, she took the time to write back with some clear answers. The information is summarized below: First, all selection regattas will continue to be held at Mercer Lake, West Windsor, NJ. US Rowing's view is that fewer athletes from US Rowing Training Centers will attend these regattas in the future -- boats will more commonly be selected via the camp system, prior to the NSRs. Given this, they will send only a limited amount of athletes to these events, to finalize selection. Regarding the separation of the men's heavyweight and lightweight teams, Kalmoe said that her feeling is that there is currently insufficient space to run two programs out of the Arco facility. Apparently, many of the heavyweight men will already have to seek offsite housing, as the their number exceeds that of the available residency spots. By making...

The upcoming changes regarding US Rowing's training programs and facilities, acknowledged last week following a meeting of the High Performance Committee, have yet to be explained in full by the governing body, nor has any official announcement been made regarding the release of former coach Kris Korzeniowski. The decisions regarding the movement of the men's heavyweight and lightweight teams marked a drastic break with the system in place for the last two decades, with Princeton as a focal point for the US National Team, and the new rationale seems to focus on regional, weight-class specific training centers. This much can be deduced from the text of the announcements -- but will the reasoning behind such massive changes be revealed? There are a number of questions that immediately come to mind regarding the movement of the men's squad(s). The first has to do with selection. Since the new training centers are both over 1, 400 miles from Princeton (Chula Vista is 2, 700 m...

Yesterday, I published an article regarding the changes taking place with US Rowing. After reflecting upon it, I later decided that it was too early to form a strong opinion about the moves, given that so little of the background information has been released. I do, however, feel that it is important to acknowledge the changes taking place, as they have a great effect on the athletes training for London. Up to this point, the most informative article is posted to megankalmoe.com , as she sits on the HPC (High Performance Committee) as an athlete representative. From her position, she has access to the information behind the scenes, and being that she is there as an athlete representative, presumably she has a sense for how her fellow athletes are handling the situation. Overall, she describes the feeling coming out of the meetings as positive. The facts are as follows: The men's heavyweight program will move to the Arco Training Center in Chula Vista, CA, under the direction of...