[quote]infin|ty wrote:
I’m interested in getting started in rowing. Would doing cardio be considered a good way to get in shape for it? or are there better ways?[/quote]
Yeah, find a rowing machine(Concept 2 ergometer) and ask someone who knows how to use it. (Good luck)… there should be some animation on their website.
[quote]OARSMAN wrote:
The question is how much POWER were you cranking out in your “old” UT2 sessions? What were your old splits as compared to what you are stroking now at the higher rate? [/quote]
My power has improved at higher ratings, but I’m relatively new to this (10 months) so I would expect any training to have a positive effect. It’s about getting maximum improvement from the training time I have available.
24
[quote]
Absolute bullshit. Try erg rowing with low drag (DF less than 115), unstrapped, at low rating (16-20), with high power and tell me that is a waste of time. Better yet tell me that after doing an off-season of that kind of training, and then strapping in and putting the drag back to “normal”… it’s the equivalent of upgrading from an automatic 4 cylinder to a turbo V8 stick. ZOOOOOOOM !! [/quote]
What part of this is bullshit? The physiologist’s name is Stefanos Volianitis and he does research/seminars for FISA. Doing loads of unstrapped, low rating, low drag work is one way to spend an off-season, I suppose. If it works for you, that’s great. On the other hand, there are other ways to approach the off-season. Rob Waddell did most of his UT2 work at 24spm, according to Xeno Mueller. I can see that you could disagree that low rating work is a waste of time - obviously many rowers do make it a big part of their off-season, so you’re certainly not alone. Volianitis simply feels it’s not an efficient use of time. Some others prefer to do all their rowing at >20 as well - I believe Eskild Ebbesen and the Danish national team are among them.
I’m not planning to trade much rate. The next few months (early off-season) will consist mainly of long rows at 23-24spm. Then I’ll gradually work in some anaerobic threshold work over the course of the next 4 months. Then I’ll start hitting some intervals. I’m still planning to build my fitness on a base of long steady rows.
Hey Don,
I think what your friend is referring to is REGULAR LOW SPM ROWING. yes, that is crap. Why? it’s just slow rowing for the sake of rowing - there really isn’t an emphasis on POWER.
What I am referring to is a whole different animal.
Basically, we can debate the physiology all we want on this forum, but I recommend you try it out for yourself.
For example, if your erg goal is 6:38 you should be stroking in the 1:52-1:53 range at 24 spm for your steady state work. 1:57 is what you should be stroking for 20 spm given that erg goal.
What you are doing is trading rate for pace - you are overstroking in order to go faster. The problem is that you will eventually run out of rate - to the detriment of speed. i.e. since you never developed your power to the fullest, you will never have that fifth gear in which to really lay down the hammer in those final 250 of an erg race.
Using this new training I was able to maintain the same 2k splits (my last 2k was 6:21.4 my all time PB is 6:12.4) at 4 spm lower - i.e. I rowed the 6:21 at 32 spm and did my all time PB and all my previous tests (prior to this season) at 36-38 spm. As you can see, once the spring season rolls around and all the speed work fitness kicks in I will literally have 2 more gears that I can crank. Therefore, given the results I have gotten from this training, I fully expected to be sub 6:10 come May.
Your friend can debate that all he wants.
I would ask you this: Imagine how much faster Waddell could have been if he trained this way. He could have probably broken 5:35
About strapless rowing: you should definitely try it. It cleans up your technique big time. It forces you to use 100% of the leg drive and it turns your hamstrings into iron. You can’t cheat on the recovery by pulling on the straps to bring you up.
Low DF rowing forces you to be really quick at the catch and at the finish,(which more than raw power is the real secret to speed on the erg and in the boat ) because you can’t cheat by using the momentum the flywheel generates at the higher DF settings - it really cuts down on your leverage thus forcing you to work harder.
The beauty is that once you ratchet the DF back to 130-140 for your erg tests - ZOOOOOM!! It’s like going from a Honda to a Ferrari.
Like I said, give it try, I think you’ll like.
Hey Don,
I think what your friend is referring to is REGULAR LOW SPM ROWING. yes, that is crap. Why? it’s just slow rowing for the sake of rowing - there really isn’t an emphasis on POWER.
What I am referring to is a whole different animal.
Basically, we can debate the physiology all we want on this forum, but I recommend you try it out for yourself.
For example, if your erg goal is 6:38 you should be stroking in the 1:52-1:53 range at 24 spm for your steady state work. 1:57 is what you should be stroking for 20 spm given that erg goal.
What you are doing is trading rate for pace - you are overstroking in order to go faster. The problem is that you will eventually run out of rate - to the detriment of speed. i.e. since you never developed your power to the fullest, you will never have that fifth gear in which to really lay down the hammer in those final 250 of an erg race.
Using this new training I was able to maintain the same 2k splits (my last 2k was 6:21.4 my all time PB is 6:12.4) at 4 spm lower - i.e. I rowed the 6:21 at 32 spm and did my all time PB and all my previous tests (prior to this season) at 36-38 spm. As you can see, once the spring season rolls around and all the speed work fitness kicks in I will literally have 2 more gears that I can crank. Therefore, given the results I have gotten from this training, I fully expected to be sub 6:10 come May.
Your friend can debate that all he wants.
I would ask you this: Imagine how much faster Waddell could have been if he trained this way. He could have probably broken 5:35
About strapless rowing: you should definitely try it. It cleans up your technique big time. It forces you to use 100% of the leg drive and it turns your hamstrings into iron. You can’t cheat on the recovery by pulling on the straps to bring you up.
Low DF rowing forces you to be really quick at the catch and at the finish,(which more than raw power is the real secret to speed on the erg and in the boat ) because you can’t cheat by using the momentum the flywheel generates at the higher DF settings - it really cuts down on your leverage thus forcing you to work harder.
The beauty is that once you ratchet the DF back to 130-140 for your erg tests - ZOOOOOM!! It’s like going from a Honda to a Ferrari.
Like I said, give it try, I think you’ll like.
OARSMAN: what makes you think that what you’re doing is any better than what Rob Waddell did? Low SPM stuff works for you. Great. It worked for me, too. But that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily the best way of going about training. I’ll admit that I’ve always been led to believe that it is the way to go, but presumably Don’s friend knows what he’s talking about, and is far more knowledgable on the subject than you or I.
DonM: you’re right. There is a huge emphasis on the Boat Race here in Cambridge (to the extent that all the other races entered are largely viewed as “performance indicators” for the Boat Race).
Hi Grey Area,
Just because a guy has a lot of fancy degrees and “works with FISA” doesn’t mean he’s right. Just like all those personal trainers with “certifications” at the local gym right?
By the way, what I described is not something I came up with, but a lot of the techniques they use at the University of Michigan - whose women’s team is constantly in the top 5 nationally, and whose men’s team, despite being a club and not being able to recruit talented oarsmen coming out of high school, is able to compete with the best crews in the U.S. They are usually ranked among the top 20 in the U.S.
They also put 4 oarsmen (3 women, one man) on the U.S. Olympic Squad in 2004.
It works. Period. Is it the BEST way ? who knows? But it is a very efficient way to get fast. Much more efficient than inflating your erg score by trading rate (stroking at higher spm) for a moderate increase in speed. Power, not high spm, is what makes you fast.
About Waddell: we will never know unless he tried it, would we?
The only thing that would of made Waddell crack 5:35 would have been MORE doping
[quote]OARSMAN wrote:
Hi Grey Area,
Just because a guy has a lot of fancy degrees and “works with FISA” doesn’t mean he’s right. Just like all those personal trainers with “certifications” at the local gym right?
By the way, what I described is not something I came up with, but a lot of the techniques they use at the University of Michigan - whose women’s team is constantly in the top 5 nationally, and whose men’s team, despite being a club and not being able to recruit talented oarsmen coming out of high school, is able to compete with the best crews in the U.S. They are usually ranked among the top 20 in the U.S.
They also put 4 oarsmen (3 women, one man) on the U.S. Olympic Squad in 2004.
It works. Period. Is it the BEST way ? who knows? But it is a very efficient way to get fast. Much more efficient than inflating your erg score by trading rate (stroking at higher spm) for a moderate increase in speed. Power, not high spm, is what makes you fast.
About Waddell: we will never know unless he tried it, would we?[/quote]
Are you talking about the “Wolverine Plan” that’s been mentioned on the Concept II forums? If so, I’ve heard that some people have had good results with it and that others have found the pacings for the Level 4 workouts to be too difficult at such low stroke rates.
I pulled a 6:42 today at the British Indoors. Was a bit disappointed as I really wanted sub-6:40.
I’m thinking about how to plan my training for this year, and I’m looking at a variety of approaches. Would be very interested to hear how you structure your off-season. In particular, do you try to increase your volume (metres per week) over the course of the off-season, or do you focus on increasing pace over given distances? Do you do any anaerobic threshold/speed work in the off-season, or just the long stuff?
GreyArea - same questions to you!
Cheers,
Don.
[quote]Kieran wrote:
The only thing that would of made Waddell crack 5:35 would have been MORE doping[/quote]
Do you know something the rest of us don’t?
Are there rumors that he dopes?.. do tell…
Hi Don,
Yeah, pretty much the Wolverine Plan - although I don’t follow it to a “T”
Yeah - but the Level 4 workouts are the business.
Those who complain about not being able to meet the splits - wussies!! It’s supposed to be challenging - Mike Caviston (the creator) even admits that he can’t meet a lot of the splits at times - but it’s the constant striving to meet those goals that makes you fast in the long run.
To answer your questions: in the off-season my first four weeks will be 100% Level 4 work
My longest L4 will be a 2 x 40 min. piece
Then I start gradually adding in interval and long anaerobic intervals.
Basically by spring time I will be about 70% total meters rowed at L4 the rest at varying degrees of near 2K to sub 2k.
Total volume per week - begin at around 60K/week and build to around 125K/week.
Oarsman - had a look at the Wolverine Plan and its use of long, low rating rows seems to make sense. In my previous training the low rating stuff has always been quite easy/gentle, but in the Wolverine it’s challenging. I did a 10k piece yesterday using the target paces for my 2k split (1:40.6) and alternating rating every 500m at 16-18-20-22 and it made me a believer.
I think I’m going to use Wolverine Level 4 sessions as the basis of my steady distance training. One thing I didn’t like about the Wolverine Plan was the lack of periodisation but it sounds like you’ve used the Wolverine sessions in a periodised way over the course of a year. That’s what I’m planning to do. I’ll probably do about 3 months of pure level 4 and build up the volume. Then I’ll gradually add in anaerobic threshold work and then later, race pace work. Seems like a sensible way to go. Thanks for the advice.