Motivational Case Studies
Graham Benton
Related tags: Sports, Racing, British IRC
Date Added: Tue, 03 Apr 2007
Strength endurance and technique have long been the building blocks of great crews at club, national and international level and the conventional and accepted wisdom is that for great rowers, they must usually start this process early - or early-ish when moving across from another sport - to maximise their chances of success.
Two of those elements - strength and endurance - are addressed in part by indoor rowing sessions for athletes at most, if not all, clubs in the world - from the very smallest and most modest to the largest and most successful.
Conventional wisdom would suggest it isn't possible to come from a relatively sedentary background, jump onto an indoor rowing machines and pull scores to rival any in our national squad - especially if the person in question isn't stupendously oversized at seven foot something and 130kg.
Graham Benton might just have a recipe for success that questions conventional wisdom. Over the past 18 months, he's been blazing a trail on the indoor rowing circuit, winning championships, breaking records, and edging ever closer to the top British 2,000 metre times. On erg scores, he currently ranks third behind Pinsent and Cracknell, and in Olympic year. We wondered just how the 30 something former smoker had managed to achieve these outstanding performances, and whether there was anything to learn from Graham's regime and approach for all of us.
How often do you train?
In the summer, due to cricket commitments on Saturdays, I train 5 times a week (Monday to Friday) with an occasional bonus session on a Sunday. Each session is typically an hour, with some slightly longer and some slightly shorter. I clock up around 250 to 300k per month on the Indoor Rower.
Can you recall your first 2,000 metre race?
I have been a member of the Roko gym in Portsmouth since it opened about three years ago. To begin with, I was mostly training with weights and doing some running, but I generally avoided aerobic training where possible. The gym put up a sheet asking people to row 2000m to qualify for the gym competition. The top five times from each age category would qualify for a category final, and then the following week, the winners of each category would row to find the ultimate winner. You had to row on level 10. I think my qualifying time was something like a 6:36, which was pretty much the first time I had ever rowed a hard 2K.
This was much quicker than most people, though not the best as there was one guy who had gone sub 6:30 but he was in the younger category. I rowed in my age group final and did a 6:25 I think. The guy who had rowed quicker than me seemed to have disappeared so I turned up for the overall final thinking it was in the bag but they wheeled him out. He went off like an absolute train, I stuck to my rough idea about what I could do. He faded and I chugged past him to finish with a 6:17. I think he did about a 6:24, which was a PB for him. I had already looked on the web and started to realise that I was pulling good times, and had seen that a couple of non-rowers had gone sub 6 minutes but never thought that I could get there myself.
I remember doing a 500m gym competition in about 1996 and pulling a 1:19.1 but nobody told me it was a particularly fast time so I thought nothing of it.
How does a typical week's training work for you?
Until about two months ago, I didn't have any sort of structure to my training. If I was some way from a race then I would generally try and do more longer pieces and if a race was approaching then I would generally try and do more interval sessions. Most days though, I didn't decide what session I was going to do until I sat down on the Concept 2.
I've now started to work with Eddie Fletcher who has given me a programme, which I am trying to stick to. At the moment it is generally longer distance work focused at working at a particular heart rate to develop my aerobic fitness and power per stroke.
It is generally rate-capped work, typically rating 20 - 24 but we will be developing the higher stroke rates closer to the racing season. A normal week would be 2 x 5000m with 5-10 minutes rest depending upon whether it is a hard or easy week. The pace would be between 1:40 and 1:46 depending upon hard or easy week as well. There are generally a couple of longer sessions, 2 x 30 minutes or 1 x 50 minutes steady state.
Once a week I am also doing either 4 x 2500m or 3 x 3000m with 5 mins rest at around 1:39. And additionally one day a week, there is normally a session with a varying pace throughout the piece - 3 minutes steady, 1 minute hard, repeated eight times, and then the whole session repeated.
The paces, heart rates and stroke rate are all very specific and it has taken me some time to get used to the idea of not always going as fast as possible. Even so, my heart rate seems to be responding nicely and I pulled a 1:14.9 500m very recently which is only 0.1 away from my PB, was done out of race season and was not maximal effort. As Eddie would say, 'You don't need to train fast to go fast'.
Do you do any special preparation as you get close towards race day?
If I am racing on a Saturday, then I would normally train for the final time on the Wednesday evening. If the race is on a Sunday, then it would be Thursday evening. The final training session is normally a 4 x 500m with 90 seconds rest, trying to focus on each part of the race and the split I want to hold. So, hard sprint on the first one and settle into my split. The middle two are both steady split pieces. And the final one would have a sprint finish. Other than that, I try and eat well in the final week, sleep as much as possible and make sure I take plenty of Vitamin C and Echinacea to keep away illness!!
If it's not a major secret, what race strategy do you adopt to get your big scores?
I don't think my strategy is anything of a secret - nor is it that complicated. I basically go off absolutely as hard as I can, aiming to hit sub 1:10 within about four strokes. I do a couple of strokes at this pace and then gradually drift back up to my base split, which is the split I intend to sit on for most of the race. A base split of 1:30 will generally get me a 5:56/7 on that strategy. In Boston, I sat on 1:28/1:29's and it got me the 5:51.4. I would aim to sit on this split, at around 34 spm, until 666m to go ... an odd number I know but it's a mental thing. It equates to 2 mins @ 1:30 so I know that I am in my zone then. Depending on what the situation requires, I then gradually crank it up. I ease the split down until 300m, then look to kick down a couple of seconds per 500m, then with 150m to go I shorten the stroke and aim for around 1:20's.
In reality, it's a simple strategy - sprint, steady, sprint.
What about mental preparation - do you tend to go off to a corner and think about it, or get very psyched up 'in the arena'?
Mental preparation is something I am working on at the moment. Stuart McSorley, an experienced triathlete who is now living in America, has been helping me with the mental side of things and there is plenty of work to be done there. I get very nervous prior to a race but although it doesn't always seem so at the time, these nerves have always worked to my advantage. I tend to try and keep myself busy until the race is pretty imminent - chatting to people, watching the other racing, etc.
Once I get changed and warm up then I try and focus a little more. I have a little notepad with some positives written down in there that I read through, focusing my mind a little on past successes. I know this is an area I can improve and my times will come down as my self-belief gets stronger. There is no reason why I shouldn't have more self-belief as I have been very nervous before every race, even trying to get out of racing just prior to some events. I rowed in Belgium and decided I wouldn't race ... I just didn't fancy it. I had gone there with a chap called Kev Peebles and he told me to stop being stupid so I rowed to a steady plan, but one of the other rowers got me interested and dragged me into a race and I ended up PB'ing with a 5:54.3
What goals do you have now on the water?
That is a very difficult question to answer as the water rowing has unfortunately taken a back seat lately. I started rowing at Molesey in November. They were excellent, accepting me straight away. I got thrown in at the deep end by finding myself sat in the middle of an Eight within 20 minutes of arriving. This was a bit daunting as I have never even sat in a boat before and I felt that I was holding the other people up.
The rest of the crew were all very patient though, despite being considerably more able than myself. The standard of the coaching at Molesey was also excellent with Simon Cox and Martin Cross both giving me a lot of focus. I continued until about February when a couple of indoor races and the World Championships meant that I missed a few weekends, and I didn't get back into it after that which is a shame. The main issue was the distance. I was having to leave my house in Portsmouth at 6am at weekends to get to the club for 7.30am, and I found it difficult to get down there during the week. I went to see Mark Banks at Leander a couple of years back and he said that the Olympics in 2008 could be a realistic goal. How I stand against that now, I really don't know. Where I live makes it very difficult to put in any significant time on the water so unless that changes then I will have to accept that my success is going to be limited to the Concept 2. "My 2k is going to get a lot quicker ... Eddie has professionally tested me in the lab and is convinced that my best time is a lot quicker than 5:51.4. I genuinely don't see 5:50 as a barrier and hope to be around 5:45 within the next 12 months. I'd like to think that then I could go on to make a challenge for Matthew Pinsent's new British record."
If I could learn to row then I would hope that I could transfer this onto the water but at the moment my water progress has stalled. I have not given up on the idea by any stretch of the imagination but I am not sure how to move the situation forward. I'd be interested to know if anyone had any suggestions as to where I can go from here.
How difficult is the transition from indoor to water rowing?
I'd be lying if I said I found it easy. Well, the physical side was quite easy as most of the guys in the boat were around a minute slower than me over 2K so I didn't feel particularly taxed by the effort involved.
However, a lot of that was because my technique was not good enough to allow me to put significant power into the stroke. I did find it difficult on certain parts of my body, but again that was down to my technique. The natural tendency is to grip the blade too tightly so my hands and forearms would tire before the rest of me. It is an incredibly technical sport though, and I did find the technique difficult to grasp.
Experienced rowers make it look so simple - like breathing. But I was having to concentrate for every second of every stroke. I was worrying about blade heights, depths, coming far enough forward, driving with the legs, feathering. At times, this made me feel like I was not enjoying it but I did get a real buzz when a session went well and I felt I had improved. Molesey row on a lovely bit of the Thames and I did enjoy the winter mornings, although getting out of bed did sometimes prove tricky. The main difficulty was that I was only getting to train twice a week as a maximum and this made it very difficult to develop any momentum and make rapid progress - which was frustrating.
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