efagerho wrote: ↑January 1st, 2020, 5:50 pm
I started training again a few weeks ago after not having done much of anything at all for a few years. I used to row somewhat regularly and bought a C2 rower back in 2014 and used it quite a bit for about a year. The kids are finally getting old enough that I have some time to spare, so I would like to start training more seriously.
Last week I rowed 32km, which was mostly SS with a few higher intensity pieces (mainly strength work at a high pace but low stroke rate).
How fast is it OK to add SS volume and how much would be beneficial? With this volume I've felt just fine, i.e. no issues with recovery and no soreness in my arms. When lifting weights I've been told to never do more volume than necessary for getting results, i.e. if you go to high too early and hit a plateau, then you've just removed adding volume from your toolbox. In other words, how should one proceed? Any guidelines for how much volume one should add?
Regarding my current shape, I haven't tried a TT 5K yet, but it takes about 23 minutes to do it at SS heart rates...
How much SS is beneficial depends on your goals and also how you do it depends a little bit on what you're like, individually.
First off, just to say it, your lifting buddies are wrong. Lifters regularly use increased volume as a way of building work capacity; working hard at 80% 1RM vs working hard at 30% 1RM gives you the same amount of muscle mass, but going to failure at 30% 1RM leads to the biggest increase in markers of mitochondrial function -- i.e., those little powerhouses of your cells.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5FsYuLnSDF ... _copy_link. Competitive lifters regularly do blocks of high intensity (as a % of 1RM) to build the specific skill of lifting heavy, until work capacity starts to become a limiter, then switch to volume, then switch back to intensity, but with a higher 1RM. You're not losing out on a tool, just different tools are the right tool for the job at different times.
Second, about how much SS is "beneficial." In order to get fitter, you always have to progressively overload. Your body wants to maintain homeostasis and be lazy to conserve its precious resources. The only way you can force it to stop being lazy (and do things like build more capillaries, increase heart stroke volume, build more mitochondria, etc.) is to stress it, so that it decides to become stronger to withstand that stress. If you want to just stay as fit as you are that's different, but if you want to build fitness, for any purpose (racing, "general fitness", or whatever else), you have to gradually increase the stress.
Adding SS volume is one way of increasing that stress, and it has benefits. The general view is that going long and easy tends to increase your body's ability to make power using aerobic lipolysis (fat burning), probably by muscle recruitment and mitochondrial density, and going harder increases your body's ability to make power using aerobic glycolisis (stimulating your muscles to store more glycogen, stuff like that).
how fast you can build this up is kind of individual. I've had running and cycling coaches who used 10% per week as a rough guide, but at different times for you you could probably go faster or maybe not go as fast, depending on how much sleep you're getting, life stressors outside of training, etc. I use minutes rather than meters because it's easier to normalize for your current fitness (i.e., 10K is more taxing for a less talented rower vs. a more talented one, whereas 45 minutes at the same relative intensity for each rower is the same). Also, your body doesn't care about meters. Your energy systems don't know meters. They DO know how much time they are spending producing energy from a specific source.
and then how much to build it up, first it dpeends on your goals. having a higher aerobic capacity (in V02max, which you build up through "intense aerobic" work, such as hard intervals 3 minutes or longer)) and/or higher efficiency (which you build up through long and low) is always better, all else equal. but if you want to get fast at shorter distances, you can't spend too much time building up your aerobic engine at the expense of strength, power and speed. So what you're trying to do definitely matters.
Second, it also depends on you individually. When i ran track back in the day, my coach used to talk about there being two types of 800 meter runners. 400 runners who were trying to race up, and 1600 and 3200 meter runners who were trying to race down. And even though we had some of the same goals, we trained very differently, taking into account strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, a lactate curve for a marathoner is very different from a lactate curve for a 200 meter runner. They are shaped similarly but go to very different places. Which one are you more like? You can figure this out in a very rough fashion, probably by looking at your best 100 meter time vs. best 500 meter time vs. best 2K vs. best 5K.* And then you can start thinking about how to tailor your training to your individual athlete profile as well as your goals.
*PS, this is why finding your steady state pace as a percentage of 2K pace (or 2K pace plus a given number of seconds) doesn't always work. For some rowers naturally better suited to endurance instead of pure speed, 2K pace plus, say, 15 seconds might be slow for SS. For others who are naturally more suited to pure speed, that might be far too fast. And both of these rowers could have the same 2K time, although they would generate that power using proportionally different energy systems.
Sorry for hte long post.
The TL;DR is, most of my coaches in the past used 10% per week (in minutes) as a starting point, but you can tailor that as needed
Age: 36. Weight: 72kg ht: 5'10"
5K: 19:21. 10K: 41:42. 30min: 7,518