Conditioning for Rowing Conditioning for Rowing Conditioning is essentially about preparing the body for physical stress. It is generally achieved, one way or another, by repeatedly stressing the body at progressively higher levels, or workloads, in order to bring about long-term changes in the body s response to exercise and therefore, improve or increase, the time, power and efficiency with which the athlete can perform a given task. In rowing, as in all physical activities, the body s job is to perform work, i.e. pull on the oar to propel the boat down the course. All types of physical work require muscular contraction, the muscles pull on the bony skeleton to produce movement.
Muscular contraction requires energy.
Each muscle cell must have its own energy supply if it is to contribute to the overall movement of the body. It is important to have a basic understanding of the production of energy at the cellular level if you are to understand how different forms of training will affect your athletes. The energy source for all cells, including muscle cells, is a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP for short. Simply put, this molecule contains four parts, one adenosine molecule and three, high energy, phosphate groups. Because ATP is the only energy source that can be directly used for muscle contraction, ATP must be constantly supplied for muscle activity to continue.