Serious Training Can Be Seriously Fun - An Interview with Volker Nolte

“Rowing should be fun.” In the course of a wide-ranging conversation, Volker Nolte keeps coming back to this point. Fun might not be the first word that comes to mind when you think of Volker. Icon seems a more likely choice.

Fun is what Volker wants to talk about, however. It is an underlying theme in his most recent book Masters Rowing: Training for Technique, Fitness, and Competition. This book is a new focus for him, but not a new direction. He is perhaps best known as the very respected coach for the University of Western Ontario and the Canadian national team. His book Rowing Faster has been reprinted, and he is a speaker at high-performance coaches’ conferences and a popular guest on podcasts. Volker is an internationally acknowledged expert in biomechanics and is also recognized for his work in boat design. It all sounds very serious. But he insists that rowing can be fun, even when it is serious.

How to Make Serious Training Fun For All

In the new book, Volker discusses the technical aspects of rowing, but he emphasizes that it is essential to consider the challenges rowers face. He shares that the key to retaining people in the sport is ensuring they have fun. He is not referring to hijinks in the boathouse, skills rodeos, or dash for cash events. Rowing has to be fun on a regular basis. Which begs the question, what affects the fun? What enhances enjoyment, or what reduces it?

Rowing stops being fun if it is too hard. Or with poor equipment or good equipment improperly set up. Or if training leads to injuries. Or if rowers get frustrated by lack of progress or poor coaching. Happily, there are solutions. Serious data is one of these.

To row better, whether as an elite athlete, a competitive Masters, an aspiring junior, or a rower who just wants to get more pleasure from the sport, you need knowledge. But the required knowledge comes from sound, accurate data that is interpreted well.

“What I see very often now is that people are using their smartwatches,” say Volker. However, he points out that smartwatches in fact, do not work very well for monitoring rowing training and performance. Because we are moving our hands, the feedback from a smartwatch regarding boat speed is not very reliable. This is where Nielsen-Kellerman products come into their own for the quality and consistency of the meaningful data produced.

“The NK SpeedCoach is the gold standard,” Volker states. He also has good things to say about the Empower Oarlock. The Empower Oarlock helps him monitor effort. Boat speed alone is not indicative of intensity because conditions are always changing and impacting speed. He has been consulted on the development of both of these and other NK Sports products. He continues to use them on a regular basis for his own rowing improvement and for fun. It is fun to get better, to see what adjustments in technique or equipment make a difference and to know that you are rowing at your best. The consistent and reliable data he gets on every row means he knows he is training appropriately. It ensures that he is not overtraining and risking injury, which is definitely not fun.

Fun with Sliding Riggers

Not many people can boast that their research is a display in the famous River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames in England. Hanging from the ceiling is Volker Nolte’s sliding outrigger single scull.

Volker did not invent the sliding rigger. It was patented in 1875, about the same time that sliding seats were designed. Both innovations allowed legs to be involved in rowing faster. As Volker points out, the principle of the sliding rigger was known for a long time, but a usable system had not been developed which matched the standard of the day. To take the time to invest in development, there must be some certainty that it will work.

Cue Volker Nolte, working on his doctoral thesis in Germany. He was playing with computer simulations and feeling a bit stuck. At the time, computer models could only estimate the recovery, not the drive. When he tested a sliding seat vs. a sliding rigger in the model, the data was clear that the sliding rigger meant that the boat would not lose as much velocity. Volker approached Leo Wolloner of Empacher, “a genius of boat building,” according to Volker, who ultimately built the boat. In the process, Wolloner built the first wing rower, something still used in rowing today. Other manufacturers, such as Van Deusen in the USA, started experimenting, and medals were won with the new design beginning in 1981. The fun was short-lived, however. After just two years, FISA as World Rowing was known at the time, banned sliding riggers on the basis that they were too expensive for some rowing nations to afford.

Fun Fixes for Equipment

While the sliding rigger now is a museum piece, Volker still has a lot to say about riggers as well as oar length. He reiterated that poor equipment plays a role in removing the pleasure of the sport. He is convinced that most masters row with oars with outboards which are too long. He knows because he has tested it. Any rower can do this themselves, using a SpeedCoach or better a SpeedCoach plus an Empower Oarlock. Volker suggests making significant adjustments of 2 or 3 or 4 cm, then rowing a consistent pattern to check boat speed. Don’t forget to change the settings on the SpeedCoach each time. While it takes a commitment to learn to do this, the effort will be rewarded.

Fins on rowing shells have also come under Volker’s scrutiny. In an article for Rowing News, he analyzes the functionality of fins and makes suggestions to boat builders on potential improvements. This article is one of many recently published, covering a diversity of topics consistent with the breadth of his knowledge and experience. When asked about the articles, Volker shares that his vision is to provide good information to advance the sport of rowing. He adds three reasons why he is writing the reports:
He has faced limitations during his rowing development and wants to have other people avoid those experiences.
He is a scientist, and one part of science is the exchange of information. Plus, he learns more from the responses he gets.
He knows and likes the people of Rowing News.
He also knows and likes the people of Nielsen-Kellerman and enjoys working with them.

When someone like Volker Nolte endorses you, your product, and your service, it is worth paying attention to. It is all part of making rowing fun.