This is Joe McMullin’s take on how to keep your crew fresh and focused going into a championship weekend. This can also be called peaking a crew at the right time or preventing it from going stale.

Many teams that row that 8+ are happy to find the right rowers through seat racing, erg testing, or just finding the right cast of characters much earlier in the season, like dual or sprint racing season and assume that the lineup should stay the same into championship season. That may very well be the case, but lineups can get very stale very quickly, think 4 to 5 weeks. Staleness can involve a lack of focus from the rowers, less power during hard strokes, the technique isn’t as sharp, the drills aren’t executed as well as they once were, the high strokes aren’t as high, or any combination of the above. Changing things up for 1 practice, ideally the Monday before the Friday or Saturday racing, can give the crew a bit of freshness and hunger to find more focus and energy for the endeavor when the crew comes back on the Tuesday of the racing week.

If you have at least 2 8+s worth of rowers you should run mixed lineups between the two crews and focus on technique. I try to be as creative as possible in the lineups so for example: stroke seats will get moved to 6 or 2 seat and I’ll move some other rowers into stroke that normally don’t sit there. I will try to ensure that 4 rowers from each lineup are in each other’s shells to make the lineups as even as possible. Usually I go back to the very basics of the stroke on that Monday, which means a lot of pause drills with square blades rowing by 4s and 6s, and keeping the stroke rate below 20 strokes a minute. The row is usually about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.

If it’s only the 1 crew, switch the lineup around. Switch your stern pair and bow pair and switch your middle pairs. Again, go out for a technical row to focus on the basics.

Return to the established race lineups on Tuesday for race pieces and I guarantee the crew will find new life in the shell.