20 metres. 10 metres.
Holy cow. Lord!
(HITTING THE WALL)
(KELSEY AND DC TRAIN FOR ROWING)
So, Kelsey Lee, guess what we're doing today.
Something with boats.
Good guess, actually.
Today we're going to be meeting Tom, who's an Olympic rower.
And he's going to be putting us through our paces
and showing us what his training is all about.
Sounds terrifying. And fun.
- Are you excited? - Yeah, I'm excited.
- OK. Let's go find him. - All right. Let's do it.
(CORSHAM, UNITED KINGDOM)
I'm Tom Ransley. I'm an Olympic champion
from Rio in the men's eight.
My team were able to be the first-ever British crew
to win the World Championships.
And we've also won the London 2012 bronze medal
and the Rio 2016 gold medal.
Hitting the Wall is pertinent to our sport.
It's all about pushing the limits.
The only way you're going to do that
is to absolutely go 100%.
I think that's the enjoyable part of the sport,
is to try and find what you're capable of.
- I'm Kelsey. - Kelsey, nice to meet you.
- Hi. I'm Daniel. - Tom. Nice to meet you.
Good to meet you, Tom.
How long do you train when you go out there?
About an hour, hour and a half.
Sometimes it is a big session, like up to two hours.
How many of those sessions
would you be doing over a day out on the water?
We might do a gym session, and then a water session, and then
another gym session or another water session.
One or two water sessions a day.
Up to how long are each of those?
Somewhere between an hour to two hours.
- Six hours a day of training. - Yeah.
In terms of cardio to weights, what would the ratio be?
It would change through the...
but we probably do a lot more strength-based
and try and push our maximum capacity through the first four
months or so of the year.
You've got elements of the aerobic and the stamina.
And you've also got elements of the sprint.
Are we going to do some training?
- Yeah, let's do it. - Let's do it. OK. Let's go.
(ROWING WARM-UP)
Welcome to Caversham. This is where we train.
So I though we'd start with some stretching and then
get into some lifting.
So the back leg is straight.
And then this one's coming up to sort of an angle.
And then you just go over the top
and you should feel it through your right glute.
Oh, yeah.
How serious is injury prevention in this sport?
Back is quite a vulnerable area.
OK.
So you're trying to let the core muscles take that load.
This might be a bit too long for you. Sorry.
What are you trying to say?
I'm saying you're very flexible.
This is for the back.
Right.
If you keep the hamstrings nice and long,
it will help you off-load the back a little bit.
It's a whole body sport, which is quite useful.
Everything gets a workout.
People think it's more arms,
but actually the legs and the back
are the massive instigators of power.
Because the seat slides.
Oh, it does. I didn't know that.
So that's why you're getting a lot of leg workout.
OK. Here we go.
(ROWING TRAINING)
So here's trap bar dead lift.
And it's like a global strength exercise.
Grip up, you're trying to keep that strength through here.
And then it's obviously a leg-driven sport.
Think of rowing, you think of upper body strength,
but obviously having a strong core,
strong leg muscles is going to be so important, isn't it?
Yeah. So obviously in the boat, we're hanging off the arms
and driving through the foot plate.
You're here, like the weight is hanging through the arms.
We're getting it down through the lats,
keeping the strong trunk, and then driving it off the floor
- through your feet. - Oh, nice.
So you see that kind of chain happening here.
- Yeah. - Glutes.
It's like the perfect exercise to replicate
- what you're doing out there. - Yeah.
You really have to engage the core there
to stabilise yourself. Yeah.
So you throw in a few waves and instability
and it gets a lot more fun.
I'm there. Get the wind in my hair. I'll be a wave god.
You can borrow some of mine.
So we've got bench pull.
Although the arms are probably only the third most
important part, you know, you've got the legs
and the back that are really producing all the power,
arms are still important.
You want to be able to transfer that power that you've already
generated through the back end of the stroke.
You want to try and smash it against the bench down here.
(BENCH PULL, 50 REPS)
Nice.
You've really got to smash it.
It's just a lot more fun if you do.
Dave, there you go.
It's a lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be,
actually. Heavy weight.
You made it look very easy.
Do I have to put my face in this person's face right here?
I see there is... My sweat was just there.
How many of these would you do?
You could go high volume on this one.
You could even do 50 reps or 100 reps.
- 50 reps? - Let's see 50.
Here we go.
Shoulder blades.
Rear delts are done.
I can't... Help.
All right. So we've done some lower body,
we've done some upper body,
but we were talking about the most important, or at least,
one of the most important components is your core.
So you've got some rotation work.
So it's going to be on the abs and on the obliques, as well.
Rotating from here through to there.
OK.
Feels good, actually.
You're just twisting through like that.
When you get out into the boat, it's obviously
an asymmetrical sport.
So there's that rotation element.
I can see how you really have to protect
your lower lumbar in this.
Yeah.
Right oblique.
OK. So we've got seated row here.
It's a upper body exercise - back muscles and arms.
And you don't want to go too much into traps.
You want to draw it down low.
I guess the great thing about this one, as well,
is it really is replicating more of a rowing motion.
Yeah. It's that last part of the stroke,
so really pulling down on the lats.
Well, you're well on your way to being an Olympian tomorrow.
Yeah, I've got my long levers.
I would like to see what your bench press is like, though.
Should we maybe try a little bit of that out?
- Yeah, go for it. - Let's do it.
So chest press, is it something that you guys do regularly?
Yeah. So it's probably not as essential
as some of the leg stuff and some of the pulling
exercises we've done, but it's still important to balance out
those pull exercises.
(CHEST PRESS, 2 SETS OF 10 REPS)
Oh, my gosh.
I don't bench press.
- OK. - Looks good.
This is a good weight.
It's not my max, just so you know.
I know for a fact I could do 20 of these
and they'll show my last rep.
This really is a lot of weight training,
a lot of strength training.
Do you do any extra cardio?
This is actually the smallest percentage
of our overall training.
So we do a lot more sessions which are out on the water
or on the ergo, which are more cardio-based.
But no-one likes cardio.
Rowing has been a part of the Olympic games
since the beginning.
The men's rowing competition now consists
of seven different events, same as the women's,
which was added in 1976.
Tom has won medals in the eights, which
consists of four rowers with one OAR
on either side of the boat for a total of eight.
Each race is along a 2,000-metre course,
and six boats race at a time.
Great Britain holds the third most medals
in the Olympic sport after the United States and Germany.
(ROW MACHINE)
OK. So you're fighting for this, Hitting the Wall medal.
It's what everyone's after.
And the challenge is going to be 750 metres, 500 metres,
first one to finish.
Feet in.
Just get rid of that.
Tom goes barefoot, DC goes barefoot.
Ready. Let's do it.
Handles are picked up.
Go.
Innovative technique.
My technique is terrible.
Technique is on point.
Last 350 metres for Kelsey, 500 metres for DC.
I'm going to have to speed up if I want to win this.
No, don't!
DC is in the lead on predicted finish time.
We are at five seconds' difference.
Leaving a bit of ground there, Kelsey.
Anyone hitting the wall, yet?
DC's now not in the favoured position, just to let you know.
Kelsey's taken the lead here.
Come on, DC.
Last 100 metres.
I'm dying.
Oh, my gosh.
20 metres. 10 metres.
Holy cow. Lord!
Yes.
I think Kelsey won.
How?
One second.
One?
I did it. I did it.
Just one second.
One flipping second.
Oh...
It's fine.
I thought DC is going to do it
because he was leading out front
but he maybe just sort of lost a little bit
of faith, a little bit of belief.
And Kelsey came through really strong there.
And it was only one second in it,
so it was a good effort for everyone.
Meeting Kelsey and DC was great fun.
It was really fun to show people around Caversham
and try and get a little bit of an insight in what we do here.
It was absolutely awesome to meet Tom.
Just to see what an Olympian goes through
in their training regime was something
I've never experienced before.
Having the opportunity to meet Tom, and hang out with him,
and do some of his training was really cool. Very intense.
And you can tell that there's a lot of focus that goes on.
I had fun until the challenge. I'm not going to lie.
I still can't believe I lost by one second.
It's just a second.
Next time on Hitting the Wall,
we're meeting up with Olympic ice dancer duo Anna and Luca.
Let's show them our moves.