Are pre- and post-workout exercises beneficial AND how much time do they take?

A dynamic warm-up activates and prepares the cardiovascular system, muscles, and joints for the sport-specific activity. This gradual segue into sport activity helps prevent injury by ensuring the body is ready to perform for training. Post-workout exercises like static stretching and foam rolling are excellent for helping the body recover from training and increase/maintain mobility of the joints and muscles. It is also important to use pre- and post-workout exercises to identify and address underlying movement deficiencies that can impact rowing movement, general movement, and overall health.

Our pre- and post-workout exercises are based on the thorough information presented in a 10-part Sports Medicine education series hosted by Marc Nowak, the Physical Therapist for the USRowing National Team since 2003. Marc felt there were too many injuries caused by bad movement patterns and felt that he was in a position to affect change in youth rowers by giving this webinar to coaches of those groups.

We believe it is our job as the coach to give our students the knowledge and practice to use and care for their bodies to support health and performance for their entire lives. Although these exercises are a critical part of our training plan, they only represent about 10-20 minutes of total work out of our daily training time.