Exercise 3 - Basic strength Intro.

Being fit enough to sail your boat hard is one aspect of competitive dinghy racing but it is not the only one - as important is your ability to play the sheets with muscular force.

The stronger you are the more force you can apply to the sheets and the quicker you can sheet in, pump, hoist and drop kites, all of which means wind in to the sails quicker and therefore more boat speed.

Strength training is a complicated training area and before you start strength training you need to consider a few things:

How strong do I need to be? Normally the stronger the better but the strength needs of a Tornado helm are vastly different to that of Finn sailors or an RSX windsurfer for example. What is the biggest load/strain when you sail, how hard do you find it and do you lack strength at later stages of the race course? Undoubtedly most sailors would benefit from being stronger in the major muscles and movement planes.

Do I need to be strong in upper and lower body? If you hike then the answer is yes but the strength requirements for non-hikers vary depending on what class you sail (e.g. 470 crew and Tornado crew). You need to consider which muscles you use most and which get tired quickest.

Am I training for muscular strength, muscular endurance or muscular power? Again, it depends on what you sail but chances are you may need to train all three aspects in different proportions which all require different training structures. 
    i) Muscular Strength how much force you can generate in one singular effort. If you struggle to sheet in fully and quickly then this is the first main area you need to concentrate on. 
    ii) Muscular Endurance the ability to sheet in or pump with the same amount of force on every effort. You can be as strong as you like but if you can t reproduce that same force and intensity time and time again you are losing out on potential boat speed. If you find you are unable to play the sheets with as much force as the first effort or you fatigue quickly when pumping downwind then you need to look at developing muscular endurance. 
    iii) Muscular Power the explosiveness of the muscle to generate a high force quickly. If you sail a class where you can pump the sails then this is another area for you to pursue. Power is a combination of speed and strength so if one of those two attributes improves then so will muscular power. As such improving strength is the first area to target.

Once you have decided the answers to the three above questions above you will have a better idea of what you are actually targeting and how to structure your training.

There are three main methods to train for muscular strength circuits, machine-based weights or Olympic/free-weights.

If you are new to strength training then your best bet is to start with circuit training using your own bodyweight as the resistance.
Once you are strong enough from circuit training, then you can progress by overloading the body with machine-based weight which further develop the strength attributes.

Unless you are technically sound in weight lifting I would stay clear of Olympic weights as the chances of being injured are greatly increased if you re not sure what you re doing.

Over the next couple of install we will look at the different exercises for training upper and lower body for strength, endurance and power by circuit and machine-based weights and what training structures are needed depending on your goals.