Getting in season
shape isn’t like it used
to be. Captaintoby
harks back to the
‘good old days’.62
Sailing Fitness
I
t seems repetitive that every generation bemoans
how its antecedent ‘has things easier’. Whether it be
professional sportsmen who have their own personal
trainers, masseurs and therapists, to ‘singlehanded’
sailors who are in 24/7 contact with their basestation
support team, have satellite routed weather information
and can plot their entire course through an Ipad, never
has the ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ Monty Python sketch ever
been more pertinent – just check youtube if you need a
refresh.
While I was hardly wet behind the ears when I arrived
in the mid noughties, after a quart of seasons sailing
with DOSC’s finest, I certainly now look at the modern
club sailor with their branded ‘breathable’ gear and
AC-inspired rigs with the same sigh my grandfather did
when I suggested shin guards for rugby.
So for you fresher club racers out there who have never
been “Stuckied”or “Shockwaved”, but have undoubtedly
got a personal trainer to look at improving your physique,
take a leaf out of the old guard’s book (that’s something
not available on Kindle by the way), and look at six of the
best beatings, I mean training exercises, for keelboat
racing – how we trained them back in the day, and how
your modern gym instructor would interpret them. And
of course, I’d be fair to assume that my peers and I would
consider our training regime ‘before the mast’ as much
tougher than these gym junkies...