Woohoo! I'm doughnuts and beer! Yeah, baby...

I helped Greg and Cacey Scace obtain a rowing machine as a major part of their exercise routine in their Olympic quest. the US Sailing coach was firm that this was the single most useful piece of equipment for sailing conditioning. It makes sense as you have, a) a cardio workout, b) develop your arms and upperback, strengthening them for pullling (we pull a lot in sailing), and c)develop your leg muscles (good for trapeze work). With cats, one doesn't use the abdominals like dinghy sailors do, because we trap instead of hike. In trapeze work, the thigh muscles are worked out as one extends and squats while adjusting their weight.

Stretching, cardio work and strength work; three major elemets of a proper exercise program are all very helpful for cat sailing, or any other active sport.

Here's the aweful truth. The design of the human body was "locked down" about 100,000 years ago. It hasn' t really changed since. What were our ancestors doing then? Running, jumping, lifting, throwing, chasing, being chased...all this activity is what exercise now mimics. They definitely weren't spending the day sitting on their butts! Today's exercise helps the body be involved in doing what it was designed to do and what it thrives on doing. So, exercise should be a lifetime activity.

Hi Mary:

Actually this a pretty interesting thread. We got a fitness program as part of being on the US Sailing Team last year that really changed the way we went about preparing for sailing. Casy and I are Masters swimmers, but swimming really isn't related to sailing at all, and we have over the past year stepped away from swimming a bit and focused more on the US Team program. The program that Rob Slade (the guy who was the strength coach for Chessie Racing during the last Whitbread, before it became the Volvo Ocean Race) set up focused a lot on core strength, balance, and strength in muscle groups that are used on the boat.

Here's a laundry list of what they recommended for trapeze dinghies, including Tcats.

Core stuff: We do a variety of abdominal exercises. We do lots of crunches with a balance ball under our butts and our feet together so that we have to balance while doing them. We do medicine ball situps where we throw a medicine ball back and forth to each other as we "sit up". These develop quickness. We do back exercises to strengthn our backs.

We do a variety of stuff to develop our legs since you're using your legs to grind sheets from the wire. These include one legged squats, with the other leg on a balance ball, wall sits, lunges, leg extensions and curls.

We do several different rows to develop pulling muscles. We do the traditional bent over rows with free weights, inverted rows (like a pull up from lying horizontal) and one armed cable rows using a machine.

Pullups develop muscles needed to pull yourself up so that you can come in off the wire standing up. We also do dips, chair dips, and triceps pulldowns.

Other stuff we do includes free weight stuff including bench press with either bar, or dumbbells, shrugs, biceps curls. We also do shoulder strengthening exercises with shock cords and light weights.

The biggest eye opener to me was the indoor rower. Many gyms have these things and they are the most efficient method of crushing your butt that I know of. The rower is really great for sailing because it really works the muscle you use in sailing cats. You drive the sliding seat with your legs and pull with your upper body. And since you are using nearly all muscle group, including all the really large ones, you consume a ton of energy. The rower is a huge aerobic workout. We do at least a half hour on the rower. We like the rower so much that we got one for home, which we named Destiny, as in "I have a date with Destiny." We've incorporated interval training into our rowing workouts, such as we do in the pool.

The weight stuff is really good to do and the benefits are obvious within a few weeks, but the program that we were given is not manageable as soon as you go on the road for weeks at a time, or have a job and fundraising to do. It was like working two jobs to go to our regular job, do a three 1/2 hour workout, and then try to raise money. And coming back from regattas and just diving into the weight room is a recipe for problems. I started to develop an overuse injury to one of my shoulders last fall and was advised to substitute other exercises for dips and anything that put one's shoulder at extreme angles while supporting full body weight, since I'm older. As I understand it, as people age the circulation in the shoulder area becomes reduced compared to that of a 20 year old and it becomes easy to wear the joint. I've recently been very careful about my shoulders, and have started concentrating more on the rower since Tcat helms don't do the full-on, constant sail trimming that the crews perform. The rower rocks totally.

More info on the indoor rower can be found at www.concept2.com. Those things are amazing!

I had thought that I was at a disadvantage compared to the younger sailors that we are racing agains because of my age. I thought that my strength potential was prolly less. Then I learned that a long term study of elite swimmers and other masters athletes showed that as long as people remain injury free and stay fit, they do not lose muscle mass as early in life as was originally thought. Many of the athletes in the study were putting in as good or better times in their sport as they aged into their 50s and later. According to the study, muscle mass loss begins in early 60s for women athletes and late 60s for men, not in the 30s as was previously thought. I have to say that I have a long way to go to be an elite athlete, but the results gave me hope that a geezer in his late 40s can race competitively against anyone.

-Greg

Greg,

I agree, rowing on the Concept II machines can be good conditioning for sailing. Or, if you want a taste of some maritime tradition, you can opt for the old wooden pilot gigs. Below is our crew (top boat) after finishing second in the 2001 Snow Row on Boston Harbor.


And this picture as we prepare for the Lemans style start in the 2002 race. (Yours truly holding the bow of "Red Wing".)


I'll be in Boston for the 2003 race tomorrow. So far, the training has been mostly of the "visualization" variety. That, and a healthy dose of Vitamin I (Ibprophen) seem to get us through to the finish.

I have never gotten into the concept of weight training. It always seemed too boring to me, and I always ended up hurting myself by pushing just a little too hard.

I stay fit by doing Bikram Yoga, done in a really hot room so it protects your muscles. It works ALL muscle groups, builds strength and flexibility.

I supplement the yoga with bicycling, kayaking, and rollerblading, depending on what the weather recommends.

As long as I make the time, these activities keep me in great shape for cat sailing, and pretty much anything else I want to do.

If you want to see if there's a Bikram instructor near you, check this out: Bikram Yoga Class Locations

See you out there,
Shambie

Hi Mary:

I didn't see you at the Mega, but I did see Rick, and it's obvious he's strong enough to still muscle these boats around. I'm fifty-five, 5'10", and 172 lbs and I do use weights. The extra strength helps me set the boat up; move it on the beach by myself, and handle the main with a simple 7:1 one handed.

Using a righting pole, I can actually get my 18 magnum up myself with little work. I can't imagine being able to do any of this if I did not use weight resistance. It's not a hard program; maybe I have a total of four hours a week in it.

I want to thank you for bringing this to our sailing friends' attention. I know there are many that are in really good shape either because of their work activities or exercise disciplines, but I've always worried about others that are extremely out of shape and I've actually seen sailors that cannot even get themselves back on their boats if they fall off, or decide to take a swim.

Maybe you'll bring it to their attention that they are actually helping other sailors besides themselves when they try to stay fit.

Wyatt