Multiple world and British record holder Cat Trentham tells us about her new book ‘Indoor Rowing Mastery: Unlocking Your Potential’
Cat Trentham, a British Rowing Indoor Master Trainer, indoor rowing world record holder and personal trainer, has launched her new book Indoor Rowing Mastery: Unlocking Your Potential. The book aims to pass on her successful indoor rowing experience to the wider community, helping to improve the performance of both beginner and intermediate indoor rowers. In the book, Cat uses her expert knowledge to answer questions on all aspects of indoor rowing, covering topics such as nutrition, hydration and training intensity. “By the end, beginner rowers are going to be quite knowledgeable”, Cat says, “I also hope it reaches people who have maybe rowed in the past and then decided it wasn’t for them, I want to encourage them to have another go too.”
The idea of writing an indoor rowing guide originally stemmed from Cat coaching her clients and collating answers to common questions she was getting asked in training sessions. Thinking back, Cat recalls how “originally, it was just going to be a 5-page PDF document to give out to my clients, and then it just got longer and longer until it became a whole book!”. Aiming to make indoor rowing as simple and accessible as possible, Cat tackles all components of the sport, including the answer to the question on everyone’s mind: “clients used to say to me, “I’m managing long distances, but I’m getting quite bad blisters on my hands. How do I deal with this and stop it from happening?”
Having spent over 20 years in the fitness industry, Cat first dabbled in indoor rowing through competing in cross-training competitions. Although getting praise from other competitors for her performance, Cat was initially sceptical: “I didn’t really think that I was anything special… whenever I looked at my scores I was just comparing them to the people next to me without knowing I would be classed in a separate lightweight category”. Keen to explore the sport more nevertheless, Cat decided to enter an indoor rowing competition. “I went to my first race and got bronze in the 500 metres… that competition gave me a bit of fire in my belly for it!” From there, Cat’s success knew no bounds as she went on to hold 9 world records and 11 British records in indoor rowing.
As a self-taught indoor rower, Cat became passionate about the sport as it offered flexibility and clear performance metrics for her to compare with other lightweight rowers. Now, she is passing on her learnings from her journey to everyone wanting to pick up the machine’s handles. “The main thing that sets my book apart from other books is that I’ve tried to make all of the information in my book as simple and as accessible as possible, even if you haven’t got a background in sports or biology”.
This year, Cat has become a British Rowing Indoor Master Trainer, providing coaching for volunteers, coaches, instructors and fitness professionals across the UK. “With this new role I’ll be able to reach out and inspire more people to take up, enjoy and get the benefits of rowing!” With this new step up in her fitness career, Cat will also become an ambassador for the Sport England funded Go Row Indoor programme and British Rowing’s dedicated indoor rowing portal, Inside Indoor.
Indoor Rowing Mastery: Unlocking Your Potential is available to purchase on Amazon.co.uk in paperback and ebook versions here.
Find out more about Cat Trentham on her website here