Stretching and stability

There are many, many good things about rowing. Fitness, finesse, peace, competitiveness, blah blah.

There are quite a few not-as-good things as well. Like a car full of smelly socks and desperately trying to nap mid-afternoon whilst at work. (And instead writing a blog).

So in an effort to keep our athletes fully-functioning, this edition of the WA Rowing Club blog brings you two things:

Stretching (see above): Yoga for athletes with Greg Zhender on Wednesdays from 6pm to 7.30pm, $15 cash at the WA Rowing Club. No experience necessary, you don't need to bring anything and added bonus: It's not Bikram and does not involve chanting "Om Shanti".

Stability (see below): We have recently adopted Kay Robinson, who previously worked as the physiotherapist for the British Skeleton team.

Not this skeleton:

(for some inexplicable reason, this skeleton pic reminds me of John Cicerelli)

But this Skeleton:

Having looked after insane punters who hurl themselves down an ice luge headfirst, Kay knows a thing or two about avoiding injury. And presumably, she knows a bit about people who do stupid things. Kay has written us a brief on core stability in rowing here:

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So what is our ‘Core’?

Everywhere we seem to go in the rowing world we hear coaches, physios and fellow athletes harping on about our core. But, what exactly is it?

Core is defined as “the dense central region” of something or “the part of something that is central to its existence”, both of which we can relate to in rowing! In the physio world our core is much more than the abdominal muscles alone and describes the group of muscles that (should) work simultaneously to stabilize the spine in all directions of movement, like our own in built corset! 

This includes the diaphragm, glutes, pelvic floor muscles and hip flexors to name a few.

In rowing we have all chosen a sport where our core needs to be engaged before we even begin our outings from lifting boats onto the water, stepping on unstable and slippery surfaces and then of course is needed to continually right our bodies following each postural and balance change in the boat. Hence, why we need to train it in different positions and challenge muscles to work together through movement. Sit ups are great but try to add rotation and build in using your extremities too for an additional challenge.

A strong core gives us the necessary base to produce the power and speed to win races while avoiding injury!

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Moral of the story?

If you need to stretch out, come to yoga at WARC.

If you need some stability in your life, Kay is at Physio Atelier. As this blog isn't in the habit of endorsing third party providers... we should point out Kay is one of many awesome physios who keep WARC athletes in something resembling functioning order.

But we're pretty sure she's the only one who gas a yarn to spin about Sochi Skeleton athletes.

Rowerverse

Masters. I was 26 when the "veteran" category of rowing turned to "masters." At 26 I barely considered myself a master of anything, least of all rowing.

Masters is a cooler word: It conjours academics, Jedi Knights, golf tournaments and flavoured milk.

And today I remembered there are also Masters of the Universe.

Saga of the Slips: Part six

Quick deck update for you all: Project timeline:

The Building Management Committee has put together a project management timeline and sheet to make sure what gets done is done when it needs to be. This was a significant piece of work and we're incredibly grateful to them.

Funding and fundraising. 

As you are all well aware, we have been knocked back by Heritage, Lottery West, and the Department of Sport and Recreation. We have also now been knocked back by the City of Perth which does not have a fund for projects like ours. Tijah from the COP was kind enough to write back and suggest we approach the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority (which is also one of the approving bodies for this project).

We have written this letter to the Minister for Sport, Tuck Waldron, which we've been advised is under active consideration. So there is hope, if only a little hope.

Thanks very much to vice president Jess Donnelly for handling this for us.

Why we can't have a floating deck

I am regularly asked why WARC is not considering replacing our aging deck with a floating structure such as at Champion Lakes and elsewhere around the world.

There are a couple of reasons:

1. The tidal nature of the Swan River does mean the verticle movement is fairly significant. Tall pylons would need to be secured to the end of the deck to allow the vertical movement.
2. The strong river currents also mean the deck would have to be fastened with pylons no more than eight metres apart - far shorter than an eight. This means it would be virtually impossible to launch an eight on a low-tide day.
3. The structural integrity of the building is such that the additional pressure applied to it by the east-west flow of the river and strong winds means the building itself could be damaged by the floating deck.

Now, this list is by no means comprehensive, but I wanted to reassure the membership that a floating deck has been considered, it has been carefully considered and it has been deemed something that will not work well for our situation.

The next steps

The next steps are for the Building Maintenance Committee to put together some drawings that we can take to the Heritage office to start getting the approvals ball rolling. You can read about the requirements here. 

If you would like to know more about the engineering and design of this project, please don't hesitate to get in touch with Clem Williams on cwillia7@bigpond.net.au.

Best of the Boat Names

We have a new boat. It's been bought largely by donation and we'll have a blog post in the future about how AMAZINGLY AWESOME all our donors are and yada yada yada.

But in the meantime, it kicked off a bit of a discussion on the naming of boats.

The new vessel is an ex-WAIS heavyweight men's pair. Thus, the banter started with the appropriately masculine suggestion of "Speedophile".

Drawbacks include: there is already a Speedophile out there somewhere in the world (in Aberdeen, I'm told), and then someone sent this around, and that rapidly bought the discussion to an end:

One of the more amusing suggestions sent around when I was looking to name my own boat was the simple phrase "Meh." Whether winning, losing, training of whatever... meh.

Given the colour code of WARC being cardinal (crimson, or fire-engine red, depending on what mood we're in), there was the suggestion of "Quantum Tunnelling" from the Flash, which is possibly a little obscure and does reveal just now geeky the WARC family is. It would, however, give us legitimate reason to render our oars as illustrated. And that would be awesome.

The last time I laughed out loud at a boat name, it was "Don't Panic," printed upside-down. I think this would be most appropriate for a novice scull.

For the boats WARC does have that have been named outside the normal parameters of the boat naming committee, we already have some pretty good monikers.

Slippery When Wet, comes complete with the traffic icon.

The Usual Suspects, which was purchased with donations from... the Usual Suspects

Then there's the Three Sisters. This boat was named after the athletes of the family who donated it. Phil, Sarah and Bridget rowed for a collective five or so years at WARC, although all three girls were rarely seen together in a boat. All have gone to far flung corners of the world now, and we miss them... lots.

This pic is of Phil and Bridge at the 2010 Nationals in rAdelaide.

The Moose was originally supposed to be named the Andrew Taylor. That is, until Andrew took over and made bucketloads of "The Moose" stickers and put them everywhere. On the subject of Andrew, his single scull Hoot Owl takes its' name from a throwaway line in an unidentified American sitcom. Andrew proceeded to spend a week walking around the shed yelling "lady you a Hoot Owl!" until he was satisfied the name was ridiculous enough.

Then we have Nomatés, named for the mythical Greek God of single sculling. It's a fairly apt name for a boat class for those who don't play well with others.

And there is a small but vocal group who want to name any new boat Ghostrider.

Here's a few other WARC boat names:

Maali: Means "Black Swan" in Ngoongar and we did seek permission before we named her that. Being a women's eight, we also considered "Maali Mia" which is "Black Swan women" and also Octopussy. Because eight chicks in a boat.

Alan Salisbury: The Big Al and the Little Al are named after this guy who if you don't know who he is, you're probably reading the wrong blog.

Bill Irvine: At 83, Bill is known for saying to a room full of people: "Rowing: That's what turns me on."

And then there's the name of our speedboats, which we can't explain but it is what it is.

May Action

Action items and decisions summary from the committee. If you'd like more information or would like to get involved, please contact PBR on president@warowingclub.org or 0428 923 661.

Perth to Fremantle debrief

Two eights and four single scullers from WARC belted through the ~16km from the Old Swan Brewery to the Fremantle boatclub for the annual long distance eight race this year.

The race was taken out by Swan River Rowing Club for line honours and fastest men. The Swannies men's crew promptly demanded the resident cox - former Westie-ite and now captain of Team Navy TC Maguire - to wear the cup as a hat. She's not the first person to wear it as a hat. We are reliably informed there is photographic evidence of said cup being worn Viking-style by at least one WARCer (you know who you are... Michael Jones). But for your viewing pleasure, here's the pic of TC post-race.

Over for WARC, we accrued at least 87 points for the club, or perhaps 94. There seems to be some ongoing dispute over points allocated to the minor places for the W1X - which means your trustworthy author may have in fact managed to score us 7 points, not just the measly 4 as listed to the right. Either way, this does highlight how pretty much ridiculous this whole points thing is. But whatever, we still love it Here's a few other entertaining highlights from the day:

This is Jess Bowyer photobombing Nel's moment of glory. Nel was awarded the fastest women for the day - and beat Jess's previous record-winning row for the Perth to Fremantle by almost a minute. In 2012, Freo's golden girl JB cracked out a 68.47. Nels' time of 67.58 set - as far as we can tell - a new record for the distance. This pair of frenemies were of course part of the WA crew which brought home a bronze in the Victoria Cup at the Sydney International Rowing Regatta back in March.

El Capitane took out both line honours and fastest sculler, but would like to make the point that unlike everyone else, he did not cut any of the corners - not even Pt Resolution which just about every other sculler snuck around on the inside.

In the women's eight, we need to give a big shout-out to Meg Downes who is currently training for surfboat worlds but did eventually cave to immense peer pressure to jump in the boat, and to newcomer Claire Lea who also joined in the fray. Meg reports the row received an emotional uplift when a pod of dolphins started practicing acrobatics somewhere just after the halfway mark.

For the blokes, there was a rousing post-race debrief from Bill H and Mick D following what was, by all accounts, a fairly reasonable row.

For the number crunchers among you, here's some Perth to Freo stats for you:

And now, some special mentions:

• Ange Nicholson and Shaun Brady for volunteering out in the speedboats on a cold and blustery morning.
• Gen for spending her first day as an eighteen year old with us.
• Shaun for some great pix - thanks so much.
• Kirsty Augustson for winning the afters party.
• Nel for losing the afters party. #DontDrinkAndCycle
• Jimmy for driving the trailer.
• PK for lining up the magic bus, and Ray the driver for driving us on his day off.

Jess B and Jules for ditching Freo in the lead-up to the Derby and joining the fray at the Shag.

Everyone from around the world who put their best wishes to WARC via facebook, we miss you all and any time you're in the West, you're always welcome to return for a paddlin'.

YOUR membership fees

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Membership 2014

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