Rowland Smith 8 Hour Strong Wool Ewe World Record Attempt & Journey

Rowland Smith 8 Hour Strong Wool Ewe World Record Attempt & Journey

Picture of Rowly in action on the day with a few words of encouragement from his brother Matt

Quite clearly a blog article will never give you the full picture of what makes up a world record score…… that would be a life story…..but I thought it was my duty to spend a fraction of the time that Rowly has put into his goal in writing a review that you can all share with your friends and family to hopefully inspire others to go after their life long goals and their wildest dreams.

Last year I wrote a review of a successful world record attempt that I was lucky enough to be part of with Matt, Rowly’s brother. To be honest I wasn’t sure that I would ever experience anything like that again……but fortunately Rowly is also one determined man!

Now….I deliberately haven’t looked at the article I wrote about Matt’s day in 2016 because I don’t want that to alter the way I write this blog.

So…..

If we go back to October/November 2016 when I started coaching Rowly online and we got him going with some basic bodyweight routines to help improve his ability to manage his own bodyweight and improve mobility with this big record day in mind….

Unfortunately, this block of training was dealt a huge blow when Rowly didn’t make the NZ team for the world championships….. we decided (Rowly and I) that it would be best for him to have a bit of time out to think about what he wanted to do.

With the full support of Ingrid and his family, ultimately his reaction to that blow has been phenomenal. Lesson there for us all…… step back, assess your end goal and crack on again!

Rowly and his brother Matt obviously had a good chat and discussed what they thought Rowly needed to do in order to make the day of July 24^th another BIG SUCCESS of a day!

Matt Smith, asked me would Mike or I be up for going out to New Zealand to help Rowly get ready and basically set his home gym up and make sure he knew how to lift properly to get strong and fit for the attempt.

Around this time Rowly was getting into the bulk of his competitions and the important ones were coming up…..

It was a quick chat with Mike to see if he wanted to take this opportunity and head to NZ and within a couple of weeks, Mike was on the plane to Rowlys home. The thing that is really impressive and particularly caught Mike’s attention was Rowlys commitment to being the best, the time he dedicated to pursuing shows several times per week and his eagerness to learn new skills.

Rowlys reaction since then was a 26 open competition winning streak….

So the programme itself….

We needed to get Rowly strong, he clearly is a phenomenal shearer, but he also really wanted to get stronger for the record attempt. After all, 644 sheep at 55-65kg being dragged for around 4-7 seconds makes for a draining day! Strength endurance was going to be key.

Mike, who is an excellent lifting coach took time to make sure Rowly knew how to lift properly with some technique sessions. It was always going to be a different challenge to getting Matt ready for his 9 hour record…..Rowly is 2 meters tall, had no history of weight training and had a lot of new skills/techniques to master.

Picture above of Rowly learning some of his techniques with Mike in February 2017

Mike and Rowly went to watch Leon Samuels successfully beat the record for 8 hour record and I think this was a great motivator for Rowly to get his focus further dialled in. Mike set about sorting out kit, although initially it was placed in the corner of a wool shed, which meant stuff had to be moved before each training session to get the session done! Within all of this organisational and technique based phase there was the added challenge of fitting in a lot of training whilst making sure he peaked for the golden shears….in which Rowly had a phenomenal few days!

Picture above of Rowly winning at the Golden Shears 2017

Once Mike left Rowly often trained at 5:30am before work on his own, in less than ideal conditions, 2-3 degrees and a very busy work schedule. It didn’t go all smoothly as we had to make tweaks to nutrition as the increased work load and training was leading to weight loss…..fortunately we have a library of recipes to help with that which Mike sent to Rowly and Ingrid, plus the smoko cookbook that I made off the back of a phone call with Pip .

With three weeks to go before the record, Rowly arrived in the UK and we were then able to see him in person. Clearly having done his work at home, we just needed to fine tune and prepare him for the day. The only tricky thing was blending his commitments to the NZ team and shearing days with creating a nice build up to the big day. The transition from shearing for the team in shows and a big tally shearer (world record day) is a bit like a sprinter to a marathon in terms of duration difference.

Mike and I decided that in the best interests of consistency he would work with Mike each time he came to the studio, some sessions he actually shared with our other clients, which is always nice for everyone involved.

Part of the build up did also include sports massages with Danny Groves who did a fantastic job with Matt last year. Rowly also went to see the guys at Precision Hydration, whose sweat test was used to make sure we gave Rowly the precise amount of electrolytes he needed to avoid cramp on the day. The Precision hydration supplements have been great for international level athletes, our clients no matter their events and having used them personally I trusted them to help Rowly on his big day.

So the BIG DAY has arrived!

4 x 2 hour runs of shearing between Rowly and a world record…..

With most of the team having been involved with Matt’s event last year, everyone knew their role….so much so that when Matt Smith went out to brief the team on the morning….they had pretty much all done everything already. This is what impressed me so much last year….. everyone just pulling together their own expertise to meet one common goal…..help Rowly achieve his dream!

The sum of all of these small influences, professional and friendly approaches sets people up for success.

161 sheep on each run was an unexpected bonus for everyone….a consistency you will rarely see in endurance sport. Even when you look at elite level marathon runners, their performance drops off at 30km out of the 42km.

From our perspective his fitness allowed him to sustain…. and that is one thing we talk about in the Shear Performance seminars we (Matt Smith and I) run for shearers – the simple maxim: “If you can sustain, you will succeed”. Like last year we put a big emphasis on making sure firstly Rowlys health was paramount, but also his hydration levels and fuelling were optimal to sustain athletic performance.

His stats for the day were this 7am – 91.8kg (after a breakfast)

9am – 89.9kg

9.30am – 90.9kg

11.30am – 89.7kg

12.30pm – 90.8

2.30pm -89.4kg

3.00pm – 90.7 kg

5.00pm – 90.4kg.

So as you can see at the end of the first run he was 89.9kg and then his final weight of the day was 90.4Kg…..a good job done on the hydration and refuelling. Ingrid and I discussed what would be on offer as she knows Rowly’s likes best….to be fair she nailed it….. and was clearly happy that her husband was in safe hands….

In the breaks we chatted with Rowly to see how he felt and Danny massaged any areas of concern….to be fair he was in pretty good nick all day with the help of Danny’s magic hands!

Picture of Danny Groves working his magic on Rowly

The mental strength Rowly showed, along with a “gentle” word in the ear from his brother when the pace dropped in the 6-7^th hour and he dug so deep to get 81 sheep in the last hour plus he got the catch (his hand on the gate before the time was up so he can finish shearing that sheep) to ensure he got 161 in all four runs! He put that record way out of sight……even with 28 minutes left on the clock he could have backed off but no……he got faster!

To put that in perspective he broke the record in 0.94 of the time taken by the previous holder, so 6% quicker. That is like the Marathon world record of 2:02:57, set by Dennis Kimetto being beaten and it becoming 1:55:34 or Usain Bolt knocking 0.59s off the 100m world record to make it 9s dead! Or for my ironman friends…. Tim Don’s Ironman world record of 7 hours 40 mins becoming 7 hours 12 mins.,.. Not very likely any of those….that just isn’t happening!

It is hard to sum up the feeling of the day…so many emotions……

To watch Rowly achieve his dream, but different to last year, everyone in the support team was more relaxed and I put that down to the fact that they had all been there before and knew what they needed to do to make it happen. There were some small tweaks to what we did as a team to improve on last year, but everyone was very calm….which I have to say did concern me, but not for long as you just watch everyone doing what they are best at.

The moment when Rowly got the pull cord in his mouth was brilliant and when he jested with the guys in the back of the pen that they weren’t working hard enough……just added to it….

Then there was the beautiful and tear jerking moment of silence for the great friend of Matt and Rowly and many of the shearing community , Beau St George…….a very poignant moment before the start of the 4^th run, one that I wont forget.

Credit to Emily Fleur for this picture of Beau with Matt and Ivan last year

So there you have it….another world record attempt successfully achieved by team Smith at Trefranck Farm…..

Who know’s what next for this family and the shearing community itself?…..so much talent and commitment in there!

If you want to have a look at the video from BBC Spotlight on the day please look here:

https://vimeo.com/227157214

The local paper wrote this review:

http://www.thepost.uk.com/article.cfm?id=108518

Emily Fleur took these Pictures:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/Emily-Fleur-Country-Photography-535020509999079/photos/?tab=album&album_id=841177166050077

The review of Matt Smith’s 9 Hour Record last year for you to look at if you want to see what we got up to last time around……(I still haven’t re read it)

http://www.mattluxtonhealthandfitness.com/what-did-he-do-to-break-that-world-record/

Pictured below is the main man himself (Rowland Smith) with Mike and I holding him up 😉