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DR MARK HOMER
Dr Mark Homer is a senior applied sports scientist with over 12 years’ experience in high performance sport, working with the world leading GB Rowing team at the Beijing, London and Rio Olympic Games.
Recent tales of football coaches hiding in camo outfits with binoculars to spy on their upcoming adversaries’ preparations has received feverish media attention. In the rowing world, catching a glimpse of other crews is often a little more straightforward, and rarely requires wire cutters. While watching (and even timing) the odd session on a shared river will give you an idea of how well and fast your opposition is moving, understanding and learning from their training programme is rarely as public. The same is true of international squads, whose training methods are shrouded in secrecy as rival nations hope to gain a competitive edge by doing things better or differently from each other. While each nation will have their traditional training approaches, there are rules of thumb that seem to exist with little evidence to support them – the Italian penchant for intensity and New Zealand’s fondness of long side-by-side efforts to name a couple.