What Will Improve Your Rowing Most: Technique or Training?
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Improving your rowing may mean working on how you move, how you train, or both. Better technique can help you use your power more effectively, while a well-structured training plan can build the fitness needed to improve your performance. Both matter. The key is recognising which is likely to make the biggest difference at your current stage.
Why Technique Often Receives the Most Attention
Technical changes are often easy to spot: a smoother recovery, a cleaner sequence or a better position at the catch. They often feel better too. The right drill or cue can change how the stroke feels within a single session, making progress feel immediate and rewarding.
Changes from training are often less obvious from day to day. They build gradually through sessions completed at the right intensity, sensible progression and consistent work over time. There may not be one dramatic breakthrough, but several weeks later you may be able to row faster, hold an effort for longer or complete a session with greater control.
It is understandable that rowers are drawn towards technique. I often see rowers searching for another technical adjustment when their stroke is already effective. In those cases, the bigger breakthrough often comes from improving how they train rather than continuing to refine the stroke.
Why Good Technique Matters
Good technique is about more than just making the stroke look better. It helps you transfer power effectively, move more comfortably and reduce unnecessary strain.
“Good technique produces maximum speed for minimum effort!”
Technique may need more attention when the movement feels awkward, rushed or disconnected. It may also be a priority if the effort you put in does not seem to match the pace you produce.
For newer rowers, learning the movement well from the start can also help prevent inefficient habits becoming ingrained.
The aim is not a perfect-looking stroke, but one that remains effective as the work gets harder.
Why Structured Training Matters
Alongside good technique, the structure of your training has a major influence on progress. A good plan does more than provide a list of workouts: it balances different intensities, builds gradually, allows for recovery and keeps each session connected to your goal.
“The development of a systematic plan will improve the quality of training.”
That structure matters because fitness develops through consistent work and the right progression, not by simply making every session harder. A plan can help you avoid repeating the same type of workout, turning steady sessions into hard ones, or testing yourself more often than you train.
Good technique helps you make effective use of each stroke, but fitness, power, endurance and race-specific ability still need to be developed through training.
Different Sessions Have Different Purposes
Even a single race distance requires more than one type of fitness. A 2k row is predominantly aerobic but also relies on anaerobic energy, which helps explain why one type of workout cannot develop everything you need.
Some sessions build aerobic fitness, some develop your ability to sustain pace, and others focus on speed or the demands of a particular race distance. A workout should be judged by whether it achieves its purpose, not simply by how exhausted it leaves you. Harder is not automatically better; the right intensity depends on what the session is there to develop.
If most of your training looks and feels the same, a more balanced plan may make a bigger difference than another small technical change.
Different Rowers Need Different Things
Two rowers can have similar goals but need very different support. One may already be following a well-structured plan but lose connection at the catch or fall out of sequence as the stroke rate rises. Focused technique work could help them use their existing fitness more effectively.
Another may row well technically but complete three hard, unrelated sessions each week with little progression. For them, a structured training block is likely to deliver more than further technical refinement.
Where Technique Work Fits
Technique and training are not competing approaches. Better technique can help you get more from your training, while structured training gives you regular opportunities to reinforce it.
I usually encourage rowers to focus on technique during warm-ups and longer, steadier rows. This gives you time to slow the movement down, repeat it consistently and allow small improvements to build over time. World Rowing’s Basic Training Methodology also recommends placing technical work early in a session, when concentration is highest and fatigue is less likely to interfere.
As those changes become more natural, they begin to carry over into harder work. That is why a session with demanding pace targets is rarely the best place to introduce a new technical focus. Trying to chase fast splits while making significant changes to your stroke can leave you doing neither particularly well.
What Should You Focus On?
Use the flowchart below to work out whether technique, training or a combination of both is likely to make the biggest difference.
The biggest difference will usually come from addressing what is currently limiting you. Better technique improves how you row, while better training develops what you are capable of doing with that stroke. One may need more attention now, but both matter over time.
Find the Right Support for Your Rowing
For help with focused technique work, explore Technique Development.
If you need greater structure and progression, explore my Downloadable Plans or Custom Programmes.
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