Jack Burns - Edge Rowing

Jack Burns - Edge Rowing The one and only Online Rowing Coaching specialising for Busy Professionals.

Head to https://mailchi.mp/edgerowing/freeresources if you want to get some of our free resources to help you row faster.

05/09/2026

Watch the video to find out how to claim the free pacing tool

04/09/2026

Imagine training consistently for ten years, then stopping completely and letting scientists measure exactly what leaves, and when.

Seven endurance athletes did exactly that in a famous 1984 study.

After twelve days their aerobic capacity was down seven per cent,

…and the first thing to go was the heart, with stroke volume, (which is the blood it moves each beat), down ten per cent inside two weeks.

By eight weeks the aerobic enzymes in their muscles had fallen by about forty per cent.

But here’s the part every busy rower should hold onto.

After twelve full weeks of nothing, their muscles still sat around fifty per cent above untrained levels, and the capillary networks built by years of training hadn’t budged at all.

A decade of consistency left a floor that three months of no training couldn’t touch.

So as long as you’re tracking your data, one missed session changes nothing, and even a rough fortnight isn’t the disaster it feels like. The damage lives in either over training or stopping completely.

Follow for more of the science of rowing faster after forty.

03/09/2026

Some rowers look like they’re pulling themselves up the slide, and if your stroke rate falls apart every time you take the rate up, this might be you.

Good crews use the swing of the body to carry themselves forward, so the slide is something that happens to them.

The momentum of your body swinging forward from the rock over is meant to transfer you onto the second half of the recovery.

Waste that momentum by rocking over slowly, and the only way to reach the catch is to drag yourself there, and everything about the stroke gets harder than it needs to be.

So rock forward faster.

To emphasise this, try an exaggerated rhythm to feel it: speed up the arms away and the bodies forward, and slow the slide right down.

Speed early in the recovery buys you the time on the slide.

When you get it right, the rhythm and flow improve and everything feels easier.

Your rhythm will feel different while it settles.

Follow for more on what makes fast crews look so unhurried.

02/09/2026

Masters rowers love to blame weak arms for a soft finish, when a lot of the time the real problem is a bent wrist.

Watch your hands as you draw through. If the wrists are bent, you’re pulling with your weaker forearm muscles, and flat wrists are what let you use the stronger part of your arms and back.

Bent wrists also add unnecessary movement to the finish, exactly where you want to be still.

Here’s why it happens.

If you hold the handle in your fingers, because your fingers are weak, when you go to turn the handle feathered, you have to get the wrist involved.

So move the grip of the handle further back into your palms.

Like you would if you were hanging from a chin up bar.

Then the drill: tape a ruler along your wrist so your hand has to stay in line with your forearm, and row like that until flat is normal.

Pause at the finish and check it, every few strokes.

The finish will feel more awkward for a while, and in the boat the feather will feel harder until the new grip beds in.

Like this video if you found it useful, so that I know whether or not to make more of them.

01/09/2026

Losing two hours of sleep a night can cost you around fourteen seconds on your 2k, and your fitness has nothing to do with it.

In a 2019 study at Deakin University, nine competitive endurance athletes performed hour long time trials on consecutive days under three different sleep routines.

On their normal seven hours, they set their baseline.

Cut to just under five hours a night, they went about three per cent slower.

Stretched to eight and a half hours, they went about three per cent faster than normal, with nothing else changed.

Three per cent of an eight minute 2k is roughly fourteen seconds, or three to four seconds per five hundred, and plenty of rowers train for months chasing less.

So in a heavy work week, an earlier night might do more for Saturday’s session than an extra session would.

And while sleeping more isnt always an option, having consistent night time routines, avoiding screens, and reducing caffiene and alcohol is.

For a busy rower, sleep is free speed.

Follow for more of the science of rowing faster after forty.

29/08/2026

Watch the chain on your erg and you’ll see it dip on the way forward, then lift again in the last few inches before the catch.

That last second lift is why your back opens early.

Your hands and your shoulders travel together.

If your hands come up at the catch, your shoulders come up with them, and shoulders that are rising can’t stay in the down and fixed position while your legs push.

So the load goes into your back instead of your legs, and your back opens as you drive.

On the erg only, come into the catch at the same height you drive at.

Do that and your lats are already loaded before you move, and the pick up is smoother because nothing has to change position at the front.

Carry your hands higher as you slide forward.

Put a small piece of tape on the cage of your erg at the height the chain runs on the drive, then keep the chain on that line the whole way forward.

Your shoulders will feel a bit odd carrying your hands up there for the first week or so.

Follow for more of the small things on the erg that cost you speed.

27/08/2026

How does rowing shorter make you row longer (time in the water)

How does rowing shorter, make you row longer?

At the root of this issue is the idea that length is about how tall you are, how far you reach forward and how far you lean back.

Length is about time applying force in the water.

And yes being taller or reaching further can help you do this, it can also compromise true length - length in the water.

You can have rower A is reaching further and leaning back more than rower B…

But rower a is in a weak position and rower b is in a strong position - rower b is going to be able to apply force better.

Which will allow them to push on the footplate for longer

Which will mean they have a force curve that extends further

Which means they row longer

And if rower a is lunging or slumped - they wont be able to connect to the footplate as they drive (and they also risk injury)

So, one of the things you can do to stay in this strong position is gym work or focus on posture or rigging…. But one of them is also simply don’t reach as far at the front.

I learned this stuff from getting into the GB team as a short rower, and it’s the stuff we teach our athletes and its the stuff put in some content…

So if you want more insider knowledge from someone who made it to the top of the sport, follow me for more.

26/08/2026

When I was 2 minutes off of first place at trials, my attention was going onto one thing, and it was why I was stuck.

When I reversed that attention, I came back and won those trials and pulled a 5:51.

This same flawed thought process is why you are feeling anxious on race day, nervous on the start line, and shying away from pushing harder in the middle of races.

The problem is your attention is going to things that you cannot control.

You tell yourself that for you to perform on race day, you need:

To feel physically good

To have minimal wind

Your competitors to have a bad race.

You cannot control one single element of that.

And when you are thinking about that before the race, you think about that during the race.

Instead of focusing on controllables during your race, your mind has built a reflex of paying attention to your ranking, your splits, your competitors.

When your mind thinks about things it cannot control, stress increases.

Stress blocks focus.

And focus makes you row well and push your hardest.

So stop valuing outcomes and external factors.

Today, develop a process focused mindset in training - that will be ready to perform on race day.

If you want tips on how to actually train your mindset, then follow my account for more.

25/08/2026

Low intensity UT2 is the hardest session in rowing.

Harder than intervals, harder than rowing square blades.

Intervals hurt your legs for fifteen minutes, tops.

UT2 hurts your ego for an hour plus.

Every stroke, the temptation is there to push a bit harder and get a little more run on the boat.

To chase a slightly faster split than yesterday, or to stay ahead of your training partner.

But let that creep in, and the intensity builds and builds.

You speed up to feel fast today, but you never properly build your engine.

So take the ego hit today and go slow.

Or you’ll take a far bigger one on race day, when it actually matters.

24/08/2026

Most rowers over 40 respond to a plateau the same way, they train harder, and for most of them, they are missing out on the easy fixes.

Here’s why.

If you’ve been training three or six times a week, consistently, for years, those hours have already given you most of the fitness they’re ever going to give you.

And while there are always gains to be made in your fitness…

The easiest speed you’ve got left to find is technical, because fast rowing is about doing less wrong.

Most people on the erg just zone out and treat it like a workout, so every stroke practises the same faults.

Treat every erg like a technical session instead, and your numbers start to drop without adding a single hour.

That’s how it went for me.

Having a technical focus is what helped me take over a minute off my 2k, after I’d been told I was too old and too short to make it.

I actually got slower for two or three months before I got faster.

The hard part is knowing which faults you’ve got and which one is costing you the most.

So we’ve put together a free technical checklist that breaks down every single technical point there is to improve in your stroke, so you can work through it and find out.

If you want it, comment the word “checklist” and I’ll send the free document over to you.

If you’ve been training consistently, you’re probably already fit enough to be faster than you are. Comment checklist now.

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