Book Review

[[old] Mel Harbour]

Got this book for my birthday, so thought I'd post a little review of it here.<br /><br />It's written by Paul Thompson (GB Chief Coach, Women and Lightweights). As you can see from the title, it's primarily targetted at sculling on the water, but much of the information is equally relevant to erging for those only interested in that.<br /><br />All in all I thought it was a pretty good book, full of quite a lot of useful information. Paul's attention to detail comes out quite strongly in the book.<br /><br />The book is probably strongest on its areas on structuring a training programme. Unsurprisingly, his picture of how to write a training programme is pretty much in line with Xeno's as seen on other threads. The information it contains is obviously pretty closely based on many of the things that the national squad rowers are doing at the moment. There are some areas, notably the suggested protocol for maximum weight lifting testing that appear to be missing bits of information. Having been at the coaching conference last week it would appear that this is because the protocol suggested has only recently been adopted, so may have been included late on in the process of writing the book.<br /><br />In short, I would heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in improving their sculling/rowing/erging, but it may be somewhat at odds with people who like to believe that they need to do lots and lots of hard intervals all the time! <br /><br />Mel

[[old] PaulS]

First off, Happy Birthday! It's good to know that you'll now be able to order at the Pub. <br /><br />Is this a recommended addition to the library, or has the information been covered in things like Rowing Faster, Fairbairn, Bourne, etc... already?

[[old] Mel Harbour]

<!--QuoteBegin-PaulS+Feb 7 2006, 10:18 AM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(PaulS @ Feb 7 2006, 10:18 AM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->First off, Happy Birthday!  It's good to know that you'll now be able to order at the Pub.  <br /><br />Is this a recommended addition to the library, or has the information been covered in things like Rowing Faster, Fairbairn, Bourne, etc... already? <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />I would add it to the library, particularly if you're interested in on-water stuff. It adds quite a lot of specific guidelines with regard to the use of %Gold Medal Speed work that I haven't seen covered anywhere else before.

[[old] TabbRows]

It's available "used" on Amazon for under $20. # 430,892 on the best seller list.<br /><br />Also you can get Charles Kuntzleman's erg workout book for anywhere from 83 cents to $2. Better order something else or you'll pay more to have it shipped than you do for the book.