How Much Erg Training Should You Keep During Water Season?
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
For many rowers, the water season brings a shift in training priorities. Sessions move onto the river or lake, training becomes more focused on technical quality, crew cohesion, and race preparation.
But how much erg training should you actually keep? The answer depends on your goals, crew setup and available water time. The erg does not suddenly become useless once boats return to the water. It remains one of the best tools for maintaining fitness, controlling intensity, and supporting race preparation.
The real question is which erg sessions still matter.
Why Erg Training Still Matters
A common mistake is assuming all water sessions automatically replace erg training. In reality, many outings, especially in crew boats, are interrupted by congestion on busy stretches of water, or stopping to turn the boat. A two-hour outing may contain far less continuous work than athletes think.
I experienced this myself when rowing on a 2km stretch of river shared by two clubs. Frequent turning and queues during busy periods often created more unplanned rest than expected. Alongside overtaking, steering, and stream conditions, these factors can make it difficult to control intensity consistently for set durations on the water. Erg sessions provide a more precise and controlled training stimulus.
On the other hand, some water sessions provide an excellent aerobic stimulus. If your outings are long, continuous UT2 rows with minimal stopping, it often makes sense to reduce some steady-state erg work.
How Much Erg Training Should You Keep?
For many rowers, erg work during the water season may reduce to roughly 30–60% of winter erg volume, although this can vary significantly depending on crew level, water time, racing schedule, and whether indoor performance still matters to you. Athletes whose water sessions are highly technical or relatively low in volume will usually benefit from keeping more erg work in place.
Erg volume also does not need to remain constant throughout the entire water season. During heavy racing periods, many rowers spend weekends competing and travelling, often alongside additional boat time and race preparation during the week. In these phases, reducing erg volume further often makes sense to allow recovery and maintain quality where it matters most.
The erg sessions that usually still matter most are threshold work, race pace work, high-intensity intervals, and controlled rate work. These are often much harder to reproduce consistently on the water, especially in large crews.
Although the goal in crew racing is collective boat speed, keeping some erg work allows you to track individual progression more clearly. If indoor racing matters to you, maintaining regular exposure to threshold work and race pace training year-round becomes far more important.
Water fitness and erg fitness overlap heavily, but they are not identical. Many athletes are surprised by how quickly split control, muscular endurance, and tolerance to sustained erg discomfort begin to fade once regular erg exposure disappears.
Aerobic fitness is also far easier to maintain than rebuild. British Rowing physiologist Jack Brown has described steady-state work as “the glue that will hold your rowing training programme together”, highlighting the importance of maintaining aerobic conditioning consistently across the year.
Water training can provide excellent conditioning, particularly when sessions are well structured. But athletes who remove erg work entirely during the season often find themselves rebuilding fitness in autumn that could have been maintained with small amounts of ongoing erg work.
Research on endurance detraining has shown measurable declines in aerobic fitness can begin within as little as 2-4 weeks of insufficient training stimulus.
Signs You Have Reduced Erg Training Too Much
Some common signs include:
Threshold work suddenly feeling unusually difficult
Erg splits drifting despite regular training
Difficulty sustaining pressure late in races or pieces
Loss of confidence at race pace
The erg feeling noticeably harsher or less familiar than usual
Often the issue is not technical. The aerobic engine has simply detuned quietly in the background.
The Goal Is Balance, Not Replacement
The best water season programmes treat the erg and the boat as complementary tools rather than competing ones.
The boat develops technical skill, rhythm, crew coordination, and racing instinct. The erg helps maintain physiological conditioning, controlled training intensity, objective pacing, and consistent aerobic stimulus.
You probably do not need the same amount of erg training during the water season as you did in winter, but for most athletes, removing it completely is rarely the best option.
The rowers who manage the water season best are often not the ones doing the most training overall, but the ones who understand what each session is actually trying to achieve.
If you’re looking to improve your technique or follow a custom programme in preparation for a race, I offer options that cover both.
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