Another sub 7 wannabe!

[AndyNewland]

As suggested by James I just did 5 x 1k @SR21 with 3 mins rest. I averaged 1:54.7 or 231w. This was flat out!

I found this workout really tough! Muscles start to burn quickly and then HR also very elevated. Final int got to near max HR. I could not have done 8 without slowing down considerably. What rest interval were you thinking?

Anyway good workout and really makes you focus on trying to maximize efficiency of every stroke.

Andy

[max_ratcliffe]

As suggested by James I just did 5 x 1k @SR21 with 3 mins rest. I averaged 1:54.7 or 231w. This was flat out!

I found this workout really tough! Muscles start to burn quickly and then HR also very elevated. Final int got to near max HR. I could not have done 8 without slowing down considerably. What rest interval were you thinking?

Anyway good workout and really makes you focus on trying to maximize efficiency of every stroke.

Andy

Nice work - looks very tough at r21, but no doubt a great stroke-builder.

The "traditional" workout is 4x1k 5'r (5 mins rest), but free-rate. This would be a completely different animal to your workout, being done at close to (or in rare cases, even slightly faster than) 2k race pace, and as I say, at free-rate. I was going to say that lots of forumites have a love-hate relationship with the 4x1k, but I don't think that's true: it's much more hate-hate. This version shouldn't be done frequently as it's demanding physically and mentally.

[jamesg]

There are some interesting applications of intervals in these plans:

https://www.britishrowing.org/indoor-ro ... ing-plans/

[Ernits]

They are ... interesting. Taking a look at the advanced plan, it says " You will start to work at increasingly higher stroke rates," but the workouts cap out at 28 s/m max.

Another thing is, it's an "advanced" plan for 2K time improvement, but the first page takes time to explain what is a split, spm, and what is the correct rowing technique.

And not a single word about pacing except suggesting negative splits in a very roundabout way: "Aim for consistency by rowing at a slightly higher split in the first set to ensure you can maintain it in the second set." This took me a few reads to finally understand.

[max_ratcliffe]

I agree with Ernits. I know they're free, but given their provenance, those documents are disappointing. Better resources are available. I will post urls later (when I'm not just scribbling on my phone), but for Googling:

Most people are familiar with The Pete Plan. There are two main plans, one for beginners and one for 2k (there is also a 5k plan, but that's not much used, it seems).

The pp is based on The Wolverine Plan. That has 4 levels of workouts ranging from 500m intervals to long (l3) and fixed rate (l4) pieces. Well worth reading and understanding. The creator of the wp is much- respected coach Mike Caviston who used to post a lot on the forum so there is plenty of informed explanation in some of the legacy pages (and of course some trolling).

The indoor rowing training guide is long but has lots of good stuff about preparing your own plans and has sample 2k and marathon plans. It's related to the "interactives" which some promote as the be-all and end-all of plans.

For video resources, Eric Murray has a YouTube channel with lots of interesting workouts. There's also darkhorse (ignore the stuff about heel raising), Training Tall and Rowalong. The last has some 500m, 2k and 5k plans. IIRC the 2k is very similar to the pp2k.

[max_ratcliffe]

Okay, URLs as promised:

Pete Plan:
https://thepeteplan.wordpress.com/the-pete-plan/

Wolverine plan:
https://www.concept2.com/files/pdf/us/t ... nePlan.pdf
https://quantifiedrowing.files.wordpres ... -notes.pdf

Indoor Rowing Training Guide, Version 2:
http://www.hettel.dk/lib/exe/fetch.php? ... ide_v2.pdf


Rowalong:
https://rowalong.com/rowalong-training-plan/

And this too:
https://www.concept2.com/files/pdf/us/t ... _Guide.pdf

[AndyNewland]

Thanks Max, really helpful.

[HowardF]

Got this book today:
https://www.amazon.com/ERGSTRONG-Months ... B08NTQS3M5

Very interesting day by day tasks.

The book claims that you will improve your 2K time of 7 mins with 10 sec. I belive this can be true, but you will have 60 hard days in front of you.

[Tsnor]

Got this book today:
https://www.amazon.com/ERGSTRONG-Months ... B08NTQS3M5

Very interesting day by day tasks.

The book claims that you will improve your 2K time of 7 mins with 10 sec. I belive this can be true, but you will have 60 hard days in front of you.

Don't know the book. Be cautious of plans with more than 3 hard days per week and inadequate rest. They give great results short term, then plateau then start giving negative results.

Rest days (or long slow days) following hard workouts are where your body gets stronger. Omit the rest for too long and your body can't recover and does not get stronger.

[AndyNewland]

Just a quick update. I caught covid. I'm OK now but that has set me back somewhat....

Anyway it's given me chance to rebase my training and do more slower SR limited training to improve my stroke and basic fitness. I'm finding the hard interval stuff impossible right now!

[ampire]

Got this book today:
https://www.amazon.com/ERGSTRONG-Months ... B08NTQS3M5

Very interesting day by day tasks.

The book claims that you will improve your 2K time of 7 mins with 10 sec. I belive this can be true, but you will have 60 hard days in front of you.

Don't know the book. Be cautious of plans with more than 3 hard days per week and inadequate rest. They give great results short term, then plateau then start giving negative results.

Rest days (or long slow days) following hard workouts are where your body gets stronger. Omit the rest for too long and your body can't recover and does not get stronger.

Probably some of the extremely rigorous plans are suitable for high school and university athletes rather than Masters athletes, and its likely there's still a certain attrition rate to those younger athletes as well.

[Tsnor]

Got this book today:
https://www.amazon.com/ERGSTRONG-Months ... B08NTQS3M5

Very interesting day by day tasks.

The book claims that you will improve your 2K time of 7 mins with 10 sec. I belive this can be true, but you will have 60 hard days in front of you.

Don't know the book. Be cautious of plans with more than 3 hard days per week and inadequate rest. They give great results short term, then plateau then start giving negative results.

Rest days (or long slow days) following hard workouts are where your body gets stronger. Omit the rest for too long and your body can't recover and does not get stronger.

Probably some of the extremely rigorous plans are suitable for high school and university athletes rather than Masters athletes, and its likely there's still a certain attrition rate to those younger athletes as well.

Agree. Or something like US high school football where the season is so short that overloading for the entire season is not a problem.

[KeithT]

Just a quick update. I caught covid. I'm OK now but that has set me back somewhat....

Anyway it's given me chance to rebase my training and do more slower SR limited training to improve my stroke and basic fitness. I'm finding the hard interval stuff impossible right now!

Sorry to hear that - take time to recover and get back at it slowly - you regain fitness quicker than it takes to rebuild it but still a process that takes some time.

[HowardF]

Don't know the book. Be cautious of plans with more than 3 hard days per week and inadequate rest. They give great results short term, then plateau then start giving negative results.

Rest days (or long slow days) following hard workouts are where your body gets stronger. Omit the rest for too long and your body can't recover and does not get stronger.

Probably some of the extremely rigorous plans are suitable for high school and university athletes rather than Masters athletes, and its likely there's still a certain attrition rate to those younger athletes as well.

Agree. Or something like US high school football where the season is so short that overloading for the entire season is not a problem.

Yes, I have read the book and the impression is not for a senior newbie.
As you know the sleep quality reduces as you get older, especially the deep sleep that is important for recovery. I have taken my serios step to try prolog the deep sleep now (yesterday) with this solution:
https://somnomed.com/en/dentists/somnod ... nt-fusion/#
As you see there is also additional benefits using is…
Hopefully with better recovery, one can increase the level of training and better pacing.
My Garmin Fenix track the sleep quality ( deep, REM, light) and gives a score. Hence will be interesting to see the result. Hope for the best!

[Joebasscat]

Andy - I had a bout with Covid back in late March and early April. As you mentioned, it forced me to re-examine the Long Slow Steady work and yes hard intervals were out of the question for some time. HR was ridiculous initially. The silver lining is that by limiting my hard intervals to twice a week and four LSS sessions my interval times are dropping below pre-covid times. Recovery from Covid forced me to learn something. Who knew...