I know a lot of people here (including me) are against the “work everyone like crazy and the people who don’t get injured will be pretty good” system of training. Rowing, however, tends to use that system a lot. (Although I can’t speak to what these specific rowers were doing for training.)
Charlie would go nuts with most rowing coaches. Many of them still subscribe to the “more is better” philosophy.
I’ve spent 3 years trying to convince the rowing coaches at our university, that there is “'practice” and there is “training”. I’m just beginning to scratch the surface. I actually insist that they use the correct word to describe what kind of session they are going to do. Practice is done on the water and on the erg. For training, push a wheel barrow, hill sprints, weights, sandbags.
Sometimes the coaches still try to do an on the water session longer than an hour.
If you have a large population to choose from, then work the shit out of them and the ones that survive will be good. Unfortunately you might also lose some that could have been great.
Our max race-type work was 2 times anywhere from 1 to 6 minutes or so (distance timed) with maybe 6 to 12 minutes of rest (we went short to long). Those workouts were 50’ to 65’, launching to landing.
Our drill work was 80’ to 100’, but between me talking and a lot of the drills being done six at a time rather than eight, each rower would row maybe 50’ to 65’.
On weekend mornings we’d go a bit longer, maybe 105’ to 112’, but each kid would still be only rowing 60’ to 70’.
We never did steady state, we never did AT, and we never worked on technique by just rowing the kids for 100’ straight and coaching them while they were rowing. We always explained a drill, ran the drill, and then evaluated some or all of the rowers. Then we went to the next thing.
As soon as we switched from the usual stuff (5 or more race pieces with minimal rest, AT work, steady state, 100’ of continous rowing for technique), the injuries just disappeared. And I think we got better results, not worse.