How many times have you looked outside on a cold, rainy, winter’s day and said to yourself if I go out training in this will I get sick?

To answer this question we need to look at how exercise affects the immune system. Exercise represents a physical stress which the body reacts to with a certain pattern of hormonal and immunological responses. Depending on the volume and intensity of the exercise will determine the pattern of the response and whether the immune system is stimulated or suppressed. However, it should not be forgotten that other factors such as nutrition, psychological stress and training status will also influence the immune response to a specific training session.

During a strenuous training session there is an increase in stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline increases during exercise in response to both the intensity and duration of the exercise bout. Cortisol increases only in response to exercise of long duration (greater than 1 hour) and shows persistently high levels for hours after the cessation of exercise (Pedersen & Hoffman-Goetz, 2000). Both of these hormones have a direct effect on immune variables such as cytokines and lymphocytes which play a big part in the body’s defence against infection. Though lymphocytes increase in concentration during exercise, concentrations drop below pre-exercise levels after long duration exercise bouts (Pedersen, Bruunsgaard, Jensen, Krzywkowski, & Ostrowski, 1999). It therefore appears that after strenuous exercise there is an “open window” where the body is vulnerable to infection (Pedersen et al., 1999).

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What do you need to do this year to get a better result from all that training time in the kayak? More speed work; endurance and or technique? Maybe, but how do you know?

Easy! Use the “Three R’s”.

1. Revise (”examine and amend faults”),

2. Revitalise (”put new life into”),

3. Respond (”answer, action or feeling aroused by stimulus”).

Revise

This is where a good training diary comes into its own as an invaluable resource. Sit down and have a good, honest think about how you paddled last season. Be ruthlessly honest in your assessment as it will set the framework for the rest of the process. Try to get examples and the details that explain the results; don’t guess. If you use an ergometer and have collected meaningful data sit down with your coach and analyse this in the context of the year just gone.

Now you will need to set aside some time to go back through your diary from last season and summarise all your training sessions in the kayak in detail. Now, highlight them in a specific colour depending on whether they were endurance, speed / power, strength or technique based? Did you complete the whole session you had planned? Did you have injury or illness issues through the season? Did you have a plan for the season? Does your session summary follow the plan?

Look for patterns in performances and training that may signify a lack of emphasis that you either subconsciously, or consciously, missed. Look at your race performances and see if the training you did or didn’t do prior to them reflects the results you got. Do you see times when you did no power or speed work on the water and did not perform well on shorter or more technical courses? Go back to your season summary and try to find deficiencies that you can address in the next phase of your training. Make sure you write all these points down and rank them from most to least important.

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In the past the notion that rowing would boost cycling was regarded as borderline nutty but as this week’s events at the Olympic Games in Beijing have shown there may well be a strong correlation between the sports; Rebecca Romero (UK) and Alison Shanks (NZ) 2 cases in point of ex rowers making the grade as world-class track cyclists.

Research at Hundington College in 2003 by Barfield,Sherman and Michael set pout to confirm the unexpected similarities among progressive oxygen uptake (VO2), heart rate (HR), and lactate (La) responses between cycle and rowing ergometry.

In the research, eight recreationally active adults performed two progressive submaximal testing protocols, separated by 2–7 days. Subjects completed 3-min stages at 50, 100, and 150 W on both a cycle and rowing ergometer. VO2 and HR were recorded every 30 s. At the conclusion of each 3-min stage, blood lactate was measured.

Main outcome measures. For each variable, a repeated measures two-way (mode by intensity) factorial ANOVA was used to determine main effects for mode, intensity, and interaction.

Results. There was no significant main effect (p>0.05) for mode on VO2 (cycle M=25.88±2.96 ml kg−1 min−1, rowing M=25.94±2.74), HR (cycle M=136.75±10.27 b min−1, rowing M=135.30±9.08), or La (cycle M=4.34±1.06 mmol l−1, rowing M=3.78±98).

The results of the current study provide evidence that cycling and rowing exercise may be used interchangeably during rehabilitation.

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It’s a well established fact that runners with reduced ground contact time produce better results. Faster top running speeds come about mainly by the runner’s ability to apply greater ground forces and reduce contact time; bearing in mind that research indicates aerial time remains essentially unchanged as speed increases.

How do you achieve improvement in contact time? There is a lot of work going on in various quarters to determine practical protocols that may provide assistance from increasing muscle and tendon elasticity with specified stretching and activation routines to optimal toe dorsiflexion.

More to the point how can you determine your force, acceleration and contact time simply, quickly, conveniently and cost effectively? Until recently you really needed to book yourself into an exercise physiology lab that has a set of wired-up force plates ( preferably integrated into a treadmill ); an exercise that is not simple, convenient or cheap.

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