With only a few weeks left before their competitive season starts, the McLean boys crew team is taking advantage of the remaining winter days to get some training under their belt. Traditionally, winter conditioning starts in late November and ends in late February.
“Winter training has been especially hard this year because Coach Nate wants to make sure we can take on competitive schools like Yorktown and Jackson Reed,” said former coxswain James Millward. “It’s our goal this year to sweep states gold. We also hope to perform well at [the Stotesberry Regatta] and Nationals.”
Crew’s workout schedule is divided into red-line pieces, which are fast-paced, short-interval anaerobic workouts, and steady-state pieces, which are aerobic and longer. During the week, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., they do calisthenics as a warmup before they hop on their rowing machines for the rest of practice.
“When it comes to workouts, it’s our goal to beat the previous workout record from last week and meet the expectations from previous years,” Millward said.
This year, the coaches favored the more intense red-line pieces over steady-state to bring the team up to speed in preparation for the upcoming season.
“As of right now, there’s still a considerable gap in speed between the top eight guys and the rest of the team,” Millward said. “We’re still working on closing that gap and being competitive as a whole when we get on the water in late February.”