Help me improve my 30 minute distance

[Carl Watts]

You HR range is the same as mine so all of the training I do is UT2 and UT1 so an average for the row is in the low 160's or less. I find this "Sustainable" from one week to the next for the whole season and you wind up on about 5Km a day average with a decent average pace.

[Hanzo]

Wow, your making a beliver out of me. It sounded abit odd to me, training with much less intensity, but I figured I should follow the advice and see how it goes. So last night I did a 40 minutt session, trying to keep my pulse around 150 and raiting at around 20. I put the drag to around 125 and startet at it. The biggest shock was the split, I was expecting a horrible time for this, but with good work and technique I would be down at around 2:12, and that's splendid to me when I know how hard I have to work to get it down to under 2:10 in average. I did around 6450 meters in 30 minutes, and I think that's decent compared to the work I have to put in to push 7k in the same time. Also, with the lower raitings it was much easier to work on correct technique. I can see myself doing this for a full hour easy. I will stay in the range for a while now and see how it develops. I charged up a smal camera to film the sessions also so I can better judge what I'm doing and possible post it in here to get more feedback.

Thanks again for all the help and advice!

[Carl Watts]

Expect you pulse to gradually rise over the duration of the row if you keep the rating and pace the same. With a UT2 row at only about 150hr the increase should be quite gradual. I use the results stored in the monitor memory to give you the average heartrate for the row which you probably need to push up into the high 150's and you should find this comfortable, however like I said it does take a few weeks to really feel the effects. As you have found those extra few hundred meters are a killer and your better off then doing a 2000M cool down afterwards to compensate and do more metres overall once you start rowing with a hR average in the UT1 region or 160's.

[mattj7]

UT2
UT2
UT2

18-20 SPM, blocks of 24min (or 6k).

You will evolve

[Hanzo]

Hi again, so I have been trying to work on mt AT2 rowing. I finally checked my pulse while relaxing, and it turned my pulse dropped to 51, a lot lower than I expected, so it changed my heart rate band. I adjusted my rowing from 155 to down to around 147 today. I have had 3 sessions of AT2 and rowing for a full hour. So fare it's more enjoyable than the 30 minute sessions I used to do at 175+. I got my wife to film the end of the session today, and I was hoping I could get some feedback on my technique as well. Looking at the video, it looks like I push with the back to early, and possible swing to fare back? I will let you people be the judge, any and all advice and feedback will as always be greatly appreciated.

[Bruce W]

Hi Hanso, a couple of comments on your stroke.. 1) release your hands quicker at the end of the drive…2) you should be a bit more forward at the beginning of the drive - your back at 1 o'clock - right now it's pretty straight..3) then during the drive, keep your back closed, or a bit forward for longer.. legs drive first, then the back opens up and brings the arms through.. then quickly release your hands and get your arms forward, with your back going forward and finally your knees and legs moving back on the recovery.

One last thing: Row strapless. It will be difficult at first, but it will force you to really develop good technique and work on driving with your legs.. Stay with it and it will start to become second nature. Keep it up!! and good luck.
Bruce

[Bob S.]

Minor item: legs going just a tad past vertical at the catch.

Major item: breaking elbows before the knees are straight on the drive. The strapless suggestion might help to cure that. Get the most of of the strong muscles of the legs early in the drive. Don't make the weaker arm muscles compete with them.

Bob S.

[jamesg]

You're working hard but need to adjust a number of things:

your slouch will cause injury: sit up straight.
your recovery is all together rather than in sequence and so takes you to a weak position: should be hands away, then swing well forward onto your feet, then legs. The stroke must be the reverse: legs, swing back, arms.
your feet are too high which also stops you getting well forward.
as a consequence, you're forced to try to work at the end of the stroke with your arms rather than at the start with your legs.

You can see it all here:
http://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/t ... que-videos
The racing last week in Amsterdam should still be on the FISA site, lots of videos there (worldrowing).
This too is the real stuff:



Backstop drill for recovery sequence:

SIt up straight, relax and row arms only for a minute or so, hard and fast (say rate 60, 60W).
Then, AFTER hands away, with back straight add swing forward, a minute or two: (rating 40, 100 W).
Then add, AFTER the swing forward, a little slide, keeping your back straight; take the catch with your legs.
Then gradually add leg length until you reach say 150-200W at rate 20. Do not go beyond shins vertical.

By this time you should be almost warm so keep going.

[hjs]

Hi again, so I have been trying to work on mt AT2 rowing. I finally checked my pulse while relaxing, and it turned my pulse dropped to 51, a lot lower than I expected, so it changed my heart rate band. I adjusted my rowing from 155 to down to around 147 today. I have had 3 sessions of AT2 and rowing for a full hour. So fare it's more enjoyable than the 30 minute sessions I used to do at 175+. I got my wife to film the end of the session today, and I was hoping I could get some feedback on my technique as well. Looking at the video, it looks like I push with the back to early, and possible swing to fare back? I will let you people be the judge, any and all advice and feedback will as always be greatly appreciated.

Sit up more up,
Your back and hip need to get more involved, so turn your hip more over, you now keep it in one position. That shortens your stroke.
You indeed lead with your back, let the legs first do the work, does need to do the bulk of the work.
You do not lean back to far, nothing wrong with that.

So during the recovery, get up, instead of staying a bit hunched, lean more forward, legs and torso get closer that way. And push with your legs and wait with the back.

[Hanzo]

Another day, another rowing session. I tried to take all the information to heart and try to implement it today. I find that I'm really struggling getting my back to the 1 o'clock position in the start. Looking at today's video I'm not sure if I'm even at 12 o'clock. If I lean further forward I start to slouch. Not sure why, I know I have a very little flexible spine, and I should do some stretching to try and remedy that, and I got to admit my belly touched my legs and get's in the way... Very hard to work on the technique, I got to admit. I started of with warm up session Jamesg suggested, and I think I will check how my back moves when I don't move my legs back and forth. I filmed a short session from today's rowing as well, hopefully it has some minor improvements but I certainly see the technique aspect of rowing taking lot of work and getting used to.



Edit: After watching and comparing my technique on todays video with the video Jamesg posted, I went downstairs and did some more testing. I got a real back problem I need to sort out, I struggle to move my back much if anything at all. Sitting on the floor with legs straight out I struggle to keep my back straight, and I can barely get my hands under my kneecaps. I can forget about touching my toes! Seems I need to start stretching...

[Bruce W]

Hanso, I have found the best way to work on technique is to go SLOW…and row strapless. What really started to improve my technique was going at a rate of 15-16 spm.. it felt awkward at first, but after a couple of sessions I really started to get it - in terms of driving with my legs and having a proper recovery. It's really tough to improve technique when rowing at you normal pace.. give it a try.

[Bob S.]

Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 3.44.15 PM.png (73.94 KiB) Viewed 6993 times

Here's a couple of screen shots I got of stop action moments taken from that 2nd video. The first, done at just about the catch, 17 seconds into the video, shows what I meant about the shins going past vertical. It also shows that there is no forward body swing. The second, at 22 seconds and early in a recovery, shows that your knees have come up quite a bit and your hand have not quite yet cleared them.

Note: I had to crop them some, since there is a size limit on attachments.

Bob S.

[Bob S.]

Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 4.01.41 PM.png (68.41 KiB) Viewed 6992 times

Here's another, 9 seconds into it. I was trying to catch the elbow bending on the drive before the knees are down, and I think that I got it on this one. Leaving the foot straps undone can help a lot to improve that sequence. Don't depend on the straps to stop the back momentum of your body. The leg drive creates that momentum; the arm pull cancels it.Without the straps, late leg drive and early arm pull can leave you with too much back momentum unchecked and you go flying back off the seat When you don't use the straps. That is why going strapless is recommended for curing that particular technique problem.

Note that on the recovery the body movement is slow and the straps are not needed for the forward movement at low stroke rates. The heel cups are enough to do the job. At higher stroke rates, it gets trickier. You should be able to row without the straps at 20spm with no problem. Then you can try it at increasingly higher rates on up to 30spm or so. Strapless erging is not recommended for high rate stuff, like AN and TR intervals and short distance time trials (2k and less). Even on longer time trials it is probably best to leave the straps on in anticipation of using a high stroke rate for a final sprint.

Bob S.

[hjs]

But still it looks a lot better, work on your hamstrings and the rocks over if you get more flexible in your hips and hamstrings.

Ps for overshooting your shins putting a little piece of tape on the rail preventing you to ride up to far helps.

[Hanzo]

I must say I am pleasantly surprised by the level of good advice and effort people put in to help me out. I got a long way to go, but after all the feedback, and comparing my rowing to the videos on Concept2's pages I can certainly clearly see big differences that I did not previously see, and it does who what I need to work on.

I have been trying to do some stretching for my lower back, hips and hamstring, but so far all I can think of for this is the normal sitting on the ground, legs out and trying to touch my feet. This stretches my calf’s and hamstring, but my back is still firmly in place at 90 degree or so, and I'm unable to stretch any of the muscles in there at least until my hamstrings frees up. Is there any other good stretching techniques I should be doing, preferably something that works on my lower back at the same time?