This Joe McMullin’s take on what to do between a heat or semi and a final on the same day in high school rowing.

So your crew had a pretty good heat or semi and made it to the grand final that’s later in the day, what should you do to keep your crew fresh?

Athletes always feel better and perform better when they feel “fresh,” instead of sleepy, groggy, tired, etc. Here’s my list:

1. Ice their legs right after their heat: use a kiddie pool and fill it with roughly 100 lbs. of ice and water so that when the athletes get in, it covers their lower half. The athletes should stay in the ice bath for at least 5 min. If it’s raining, get the athletes back to their hotel and do the ice bath in the hotel tubs. If it’s not feasible to go to the hotel and it’s raining, fill gallon zip lock bags with ice and have the athletes put a gallon zip lock bag on top of the quad of each leg for 5 min. Use roughly 20 lbs of ice for 8 1 gallon bags. So 40 lbs of ice for an 8. There’s a whole bunch of science out now in ice to healing and recovery post exercise.
2. Limit walking as much as possible. The athletes should find a cool shaded place to rest for as long possible. Any time spent exposed in the sun walking around is energy wasted. Ideally athletes can return to their hotel or get in air conditioning.
3. Limit interactions with other teams and their own team members. The athletes should find a cool shaded place to rest for as long possible. Interactions with other team members and other teams is a distraction and will disrupt their rest.
4. Rest with their legs above their heart. Inversions are an excellent way to help the recovery cycle between races. The athletes should be doing this any time they have down time.
5. Do not let the rowers stretch for extended periods of time. Muscles are like rubber bands, if you stretch them too much they lose their explosiveness. Rowers can stretch for no more than 10 second holds if they have to.
6. Eat a solid lunch after the semi. Fueling up is obviously critical, but timing it is important too. If the athletes are eating less than an hour and a half before the GF, they won’t have time to digest the food.
7. Have the athletes do a quick erg to wake them back up. Roughly an hour before the Grand Final the rowers should do a 2 to 5 min warmup on the erg. They should do at least 1 very hard 10 stroke piece during that warm up.
8. Give the athletes a little bit of caffeine right before getting hands on. I won’t go into the specifics of what kind or how much, but it should be just enough to give the athletes a little pep and not too much that it gives them jitters. Caffeine takes roughly 30 mins to metabolize, so doing it right before they get hands on assumes the caffeine will kick in a little before the start of the race.

Good luck and I hope this helps you!