It would be tough to say just how far back this hack goes - possibly almost as far back as cement itself, if the Romans happened to be into winter cross-training. In our sport, it may have arrived when crews used to take ships across the pond to Henley, or a small group of intense lightweights used to duke it out to be the Olympic single sculler, or perhaps when teams started running a certain stadium stadium near Boston to train in the former off-season that Winter once was: Cement Can Weights.
This hack is so common that we've even had one rowing coach chastise us for not including this obvious hack as one of our very first columns (and we would have been happy to oblige if said coach had ever followed up with a photo!). He was right though, this is the perfect hack: low-cost, easy to make, and completely perfect for the job it needs to do.
We know that most rowers have used these, either as juniors rowing at a small club that wisely spent money on boats and entry fees instead of weight equipment, or maybe even in other sports before coming to rowing. While there may be fewer in the shinier college boathouses springing up of late, there are still generations of rowers who learned how to lift in some dusty corner using this very sketchy training tool, and many a speed circuit has relied on this humble bit of hacking.
Now this hack's time has come, mostly because we finally have the photos we needed, having recently found a set "in the wild" at a boathouse down south. Here is how you can add this hack to your training arsenal. All you need is a length of pipe for the bar, some cement, and a paint or coffee can to pour it into. The Cement Can Wight Bar nearly always seems to come in about the same size and weight, but we are confident that you can make a whole range of weights to work with if you vary the size of the can you are using. Power-lifting with a Home Depot bucket-sized block on each end? Sure, why not--though you better get a pretty stout pipe or bar if you go that heavy. To keep the weights from falling off the end of the pipe, Charles Huthmaker adds that you should use galvanized pipe, and then drill a hole on each end and stick a 3-4" galvanized nail through the end of the pipe in the concrete.
Once you master the concrete pour, you may find lots of uses for cement-filled buckets around your place: as anchors for buoys and docks on your race course, as "stake-free" tie down weights for the parent tent at your next regatta, and maybe even a set of "poor-man's" kettle bells every bit as home-made looking yet really effective as the Cement Can Weight Bar itself.
Have a great "cement weight" memory or another nifty training hack we need to know about? Share your tips--and tricks--in the comments below.
Have a great rowing hack to suggest for future inclusion here? Send it to us!
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03/26/2014 1:41:17 PM