Train with Olympian Paddy Holt at UTS Row Club

Sunday, 8 am. For most of the city that hour is a negotiation: the alarm goes off, the couch makes its case, and the session you promised yourself slides quietly to later. In 2025, a group in Haberfield settled that argument before it started. By eight they were already strapped in at UTS Rowing Club, and on select Sundays the coach counting them through the warm-up was a Paris 2024 Olympian.

This page is now a piece of Row Club history. In 2025, UTS Row Club in Haberfield ran a dedicated 8 am Sunday class: a 45-minute, coach-led indoor rowing session, no rowing experience required, with select dates coached by Paddy Holt, a Paris 2024 Olympian in the Men’s Pair. That Sunday slot has since finished. The club itself is still going, with classes now on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and what made those Sunday mornings work was never really about the day.

What an Olympian coaches a beginner

It would be easy to assume elite coaching means elite content: secret drills, a language you don’t speak yet. The Sunday sessions ran the other way. Each class opened with a warm-up built around stroke mechanics and mobility. Then came structured intervals for rhythm, power and aerobic capacity, with technique and pacing cues the whole way through. Fundamentals, watched closely. That part transfers to any erg, anywhere. On your next row, give the first five minutes to the movement, not the effort. The power can wait until the pattern is there.

The wall the class quietly took down

From the outside, the distance between an Olympian and someone on their first row feels enormous. Inside the room it shrank fast. Same machine. Same stroke. Same cues for the person on their first session as for anyone chasing a time. Numbers were capped so every rower got real eyes on their technique, and nobody needed a rowing background to take a seat. That was the quiet lesson of the whole thing: an Olympian is further along, not different. So next time you row near someone faster, watch their rhythm instead of their split. The rhythm is the part you can take home.

Where the Sunday spirit lives now

UTS Row Club still runs at the boatshed on Dobroyd Parade, with 45-minute coached classes now held on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The live schedule and booking calendar are on the UTS Row Club page. Between classes, the Row Nation app carries the same structured, coach-designed sessions to any Concept2 you can get to.

The 8 am slot is gone. The Sunday-morning negotiation isn’t. The rowers who kept winning it in Haberfield weren’t built differently; they just had a seat booked before the alarm got a say. Book a class at UTS Row Club →