What's Wrong With Masters Rowing?

As a developing sport, there are aspects of masters rowing which we need to improve, change and adapt. Three signs of dysfunction and four solutions. Timestamps 01:00 What are the symptoms and cures to move our sport forward? Most clubs now have a masters group and a good waiting list of people wanting to learn to row. 02:00 Signs of dysfunction Rowing is designed to take a beginner towards higher performances. As we age we generally have diminishing strength each decade. Many of us love rowing but don't want to compete - so masters rowing is different. 1 - Cliques - people who only row with the same other people all the time. This is a long term limiting factor for the whole club group. Isolationism is antithetical to a successful masters group 2 - Club Priorities are Inflexible - they focus on juniors and young people. This means boats cannot be shared, it's hard to get a trailer to go to a regatta. Combining juniors and masters is an innovation. 3 - Skills Progression - if you think you aren't making progress it could be because there is not flexibility to enable you to progress. Failing to solve these leads to sclerosis, group size falling, limiting your ability to form crews across age groups, buy new boats. 07:30 Enabling solutions 1 - Have a pathway for masters to enable "looping" in and out of the sport year by year. Allow flexibility to change training groups and come back over time. 2 - Structure of the skills in your group. Starting from beginner, intermediate and advanced. Almost everyone wants coaching and to advance their skill. What are the entry requirements for each group - give transparency. 3 - Agreed club priorities across all groups. Measure actions and budgets against the priorities to see if you're achieving them. 4 - Racing classes for masters. Insert a step between novice and age group racing because it takes us longer to acquire the equivalent skills as a young person novice. A New Masters racing category allowing up to 5 years of learning to compete against similar people would smooth this path to racing. 12:00 How can these be set in place? How to bring your board / committee along with you so they understand what the masters group is trying to achieve. What are solutions we haven't yet thought of? Want easy live streams like this? Instant broadcasts to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Faster Masters uses StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/d/5694205242376192