This fortnight's top tip comes from Noel Frost. Noel set the 60-69 Hwt world record of 6:31.4 back at the 1999 World IRC; the record stood for four years until the US's Paul Hendershott broke it at the European Championship in Paris last December. If you've got a tip you'd like to share with the world, send it to [email protected]. As it was always difficult for me to keep the same stroke rate per minute (spm), as well as think about technique, the fastest split and breathing, I decided to have a series of spm tapes produced. These were the Mellow Theme (20 and 25 spm); the Sydney Theme (30 and 35 spm); the China Pulse (40 and 45 spm) and 2012 (50, 55, 60 and 65 spm plus Recovery). This took away one of the problems facing me; you'll be surprised how easy it is to train for 10,000m at 45 spm. Why on earth would I do this? Good question. The boat and the erg lose speed by the inverse square law. In layman's terms, it means that the maximum loss of speed is in the first fraction of a second the power is removed. You may have heard hundreds of coaches say 'Let the boat run' and it will, because of inertia, but not at the speed you had, and the same applies to the erg. What does that mean? A higher spm. One of my 2,000m heavyweight world records came off an average stroke rate of 37; my 10,000m world best came off an average stroke rate of 35 and you may be better than me. Now weights. I used them in two areas:- The first being for starting power and this was three repetitions at maximum load, in the form of a Power Clean, namely from ground to chin in one movement. The second was for aerobic power and was 250 repetitions to failure of bench pull, leg press, knee extension, partial hamstring curls, dorsal raises and partial crunches. I would start at around 250 and, when it got to 270, I would increase by 5%, which would bring it down to 230. I would then work at it until I reached 270. I was, of course, restrained by age and commitment and started to get weaker in year four.Terry O'Neill: Some little while ago, a seven minute bench pull session was quite the vogue and 250 reps would be in the region of 6-7 minutes. Around the same time there was an increase in the number of rib injuries including sprung ribs. Some physios put this down to the bench pull sessions, although I don't know if any specific research was carried out to substantiate this claim. They argued that when deep breaths are taken, the diaphragm would lift to allow for the expansion in the lungs. Because the athlete was lying on the bench, this restricted the expansion of the rib cage in this direction and the rib cage was forced to expand sideways and backwards. This then led to damage to the connective tissue of the ribs, which is very uncomfortable. The seven-minute bench pull is no longer popular and, it may be coincidence, rib injuries have declined.An alternative is to do it standing but bent forward at the hip with a colleague supporting the head or the head resting on a fixed support. For such a high number of reps this can become uncomfortable and so I would opt for the DYNO, which is safe. Because you are pulling in the same plane as you would during the rowing stroke, you will also be exercising the synergist and fixators muscles.