Indoor Sport Services Training Guide

One of the biggest challenges that people face in sport and exercise is staying concentrated on the right things at the right time. The Indoor Rower presents some unique concentration challenges that you need to prepare for so that you can control your machine, and not let it control you!

The most important thing to focus on in any training session that you carry out is the process of rowing effectively. The more you can be aware of what it feels like to row effectively, and be in touch with your body's reactions, the more you will get out of the session. It is important therefore, that you have an aim of concentrating on your body and the various bits of feedback it gives you through the course of a session. The more you concentrate on these variables, the more you will be able to regulate your performance, become more efficient, and take advantage of your developing fitness. Therefore, for the first few training sessions, you will need to pay attention to what it takes to produce an efficient and effective work-out. Pick out the concentration cues that help you to feel relaxed, strong and get you into a good rowing rhythm. This might mean concentrating on a specific part of your body as you go through the stroke, it might mean concentrating on a particular sound that indicates the rhythm you are creating, or it might mean concentrating on saying something to yourself, or watching yourself in a mirror. Different people have different concentration preferences, so experiment a little and work out which works best for you, and how you prefer to concentrate. Set yourself the challenge of seeing how much of a session you can concentrate on the right things for. In time you should be able to concentrate more and more effectively on the processes that really work for you.

The other important concentration challenge with the Indoor Rower is how you concentrate on the information being displayed on the monitor during your work-out. It is important that you make some decisions about how you will use the information on the monitor during your work-out. If you concentrate too much on the numbers alone, you are probably diluting the amount of concentration you are using to row efficiently. In competitions, this can be particularly important as a small decrease in concentration might make an impact on your final performance. Be prepared to experiment with the monitor to see how it influences your concentration. If it helps to have the constantly updated feedback of how you are doing, then you should play to that need, but if the numbers distract you too easily, and result in you decreasing effort, then try putting tape over the monitor to cover those areas that you find most distracting or simply turn the whole thing over.

You'll really improve the quality of your work-outs if you get the right concentration focus. The most important thing is to try to stay in the present as much as possible. If you can take each session one stroke at a time, and concentrate on carrying each stroke out really well, then you will find the sessions much more rewarding, and likely to be over more quickly! If you are concentrating on how long or how far you still have to go throughout a session, then your focus will not be helping you as much. If staying in the present becomes really important, from time to time turn the monitor over, and set an alarm to sound when you want your session to finish. With no visual feedback all the way through the workout, you will be able to concentrate much more on taking one stroke at a time, and concentrating on getting the most out of your body.

Concentration is really all about having specific things to focus on throughout a workout. The more you have clear goals of what you want to think about for each training session, then the more effectively you will be able to concentrate. This idea is certainly made more compelling when thinking of carrying out a 2,000m race. As you can see below with the blank ideal race plan, you have the opportunity with a race to clearly decide ahead of time what you want to be concentrating on throughout the whole 2,000m. The idea of the race plan is to decide what the things are that you want to be focusing on through the specific parts of the race. Once you know how you like to concentrate, and what makes you really stay in the present, you can fill in your ideal set of concentration cues for the whole race. Your job then is to see how effectively you can stay concentrated on these cues for the whole race. The concentration cues identify the process that you want to go through in order to produce the best outcome that you are capable of at that time. And, if you get the process right, the outcome will take care of itself. For those of you competing, I would recommend using the race plan approach and testing out how good your concentration abilities are. For those of you not competing, you can use the same principles to help you to identify the general kinds of things that you need to think about in order to have an enjoyable and effective work-out.

In time you will get better and better at concentrating your way through training sessions, and as a result you are bound to get more benefit. Your brain is going to want something to think about while you are rowing, so as often as is right for you, make sure you tell it what it needs to think about! There will be other times when you just want to switch off completely and let your body go through the work-out.

Having time to just think about the day's events while your body gets a good work-out is a great stress relief, so if you need this kind of approach to thinking while you are on your Indoor Rower, make sure you take advantage of the time you schedule in for yourself!