THE SPORT OF ROWING two years I was there, he was maybe two or three times in the motorboat. “We did a lot of single and pair racing, and if your time was not within the top few, he would not consider you anymore. He did not coach any detail about the body motion or what you did or if you sat crooked. He wouldn’t see it. It was fascinating that he could see anything as we rowed by at 40 strokes a minute.”4229 Sports Illustrated: “Since it was difficult to get eight men together at the same time, they generally practiced in singles. In the light, extremely narrow boats, Dr. Adam reasoned, oarsmen get a better feel of the water. Besides, it is easier for the coach to determine who the strongest rowers are simply by pitting them in races against each other.”4230 In retrospect, the physical size of the athletes that Karl Adam initially gathered from around Germany was not as spectacular as their reputation would have one assume. Three members of his 1960 Olympic Champion Eight were under 6’0” 183cm and weighed less than 180 pounds 82kg,4231 but those eight men combined to win the doubles, both the coxed- and coxless-fours and the eights at the 1960 German Championships.4232 Training Methods In order to prepare his crews for the challenge of rowing 2,000 meters at unprecedented high ratings, Karl Adam also brought to rowing the latest speed, strength and endurance training techniques from sports such as swimming, boxing and athletics.4233 4229 Rose, op. cit. 4230 Lardner, op. cit. 4231 See Chapter 91. 4232 Lovesay, op. cit. 4233 known as “track and field” in the U.S. Sports Illustrated: “During the winter, Adam set his aspiring oarsmen to a strenuous program of gymnastics, running and weight lifting. (German crews never practice in tanks in the winter as many Americans do.)”4234 Walter Schröder, a cofounder of the Ruderakademie at Ratzeburg, studied under Woldemar Gerschler, running coach at Freiburg University, and when he returned to Ratzeburg in 1956, he brought back interval training and fartlek, which were then adapted to rowing.4235 Allen Rosenberg: “It was the teachings of German track and field trainers that Adam first adapted to rowing. In the mid- 1930s, German middle distance runners were among the best in the world, and runners like Rudy Harbig were at the fore. “In the throes of the Depression, good coaches from all sports were employed in Germany by the National Socialists, and the cross pollination was overwhelming. I always believed that there was equivalence between running 1,200 meters and rowing 2,000 meters. Hence, there should be some training lessons.”4236 Sports Illustrated: “From track, Adam borrowed a system of conditioning called interval training, in which a runner goes as fast as he can for a set period of time or distance, jogs for another set period, then sprints again. He never stops to rest during his entire workout. “Ratzeburg’s coach also found, by experimentation, a kind of magic number for applying this system to whip his rowers into condition for best performance over 2,000 meters – the Olympic and international championship distance for eight-oared crews. The magic number lies somewhere between 500 and 600 meters. 4234 Lardner, op. cit. 4235 Schröder, op. cit. 4236 Rosenberg, personal correspondence, 2007 1164
