ROWING PERFORMANCE AND SELECTED DESCRIPTIVE, FIELD AND LABORATORY VARIABLES

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships among mea sures of rowing performance and selected descriptive, field, and labor atory variables. Rowing performance of 20 intercollegiate oarswomen wa s assessed using a 2,500-m time test on a Concept II rowing ergometer, the rower's competitive experience, and the coach's ranking of the ro wers. The oarswomen also underwent standardized descriptive tests incl uding anthropometric measurements, field tests including 90-s rowing e rgometer distance and weight lifting tests, and laboratory tests inclu ding VO(2)max and isokinetic knee extensor strength tests. Rowing ergo meter times were highly related to competitive experience (rho = -0.86 ; p < 0.01) and coach's ranking (rho = 0.87; p < 0.01). VO(2)max was t he only other variable to produce correlations greater than 0.71 with rowing performance. Although most of the correlations observed in the present study were poor to modestly high, they do document and quantif y relationships, and suggest that training and testing techniques shou ld be modified to be more rowing specific and that their usefulness wi th respect to positive transfer and prediction should be examined.