Injured Runner, looking for advice

[Christirei]

Hello all, I'm an injured distance runner who is looking for a new form of cardio. I recently bought a Concept2 model D rower and it should arrive in the next week. I'm excited to try something new after exclusively running for over ten years. I've messed around with the rowing machines at my gym (where I do strength and conditioning work) but am not sure how to make rowing my main workout. I've been looking at a book to buy but can't seem to get a good answer on solid book to get started with. I'm used to running 40 plus miles per week (at least an hour a day) and i'm looking to replace that work with a combo of swimming and rowing. I'm hoping to rotate every other day with the activities. I'll be maintaining my strength work as well. I've been a part of a running forum for most of the ten years i've been running, and I know how valuable a resource the opinions can be. Any recomendations for a good book to get started? or a thread on the this forum to read through? I just don't have any idea of where to start and what an endurance workout looks like on a rowing machine. I'll be starting slow since I'm also rehabbing a stress fracture. on the running forum I was apart of, the main advice we always gave to the newbies that came poking around was, mostly easy sometimes hard, and i'm guessing that the same rule applies, but don't know what that means as far as rowing goes. i've also figured out that i am completely lost when it comes to terms that people use!! would welcome any advice or books, thank you
Christi

[jamesg]

a combo of swimming and rowing.

Ideal.

Both are technique based, without which training fails. Make your stroke perfect, and all the rest falls in place. Both involve power transfer, so need both speed and strength, and are full body and rely on the extent and sequences of the action. Both are low impact and can be done as long as we live. Both free us from gravity.

There's a million videos showing how to a swim freestyle; not so many for rowing, sculling or erging.

The basic guidelines are here for erging:
https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/ ... que-videos
Note the low drag, low feet and low ratings. And that these factors together let the legs do most of the work.

Rating (spm) is a major factor in erging, since the stroke if we are tall and strong and use both our strength and our height, can be very hard work. Most training is low rating, so that we can use and train that full stroke. The C2 Rowerg shows us our rating and power output directly, so offers complete control.

As a runner you'll notice quite soon whether in freestyle swimming you are using your shoulders or not. When already fit, if we keep relaxed with eyes on the bottom and roll to breathe, a mile or so a day in open sea takes only a week to reach.

[Dangerscouse]

the main advice we always gave to the newbies that came poking around was, mostly easy sometimes hard, and i'm guessing that the same rule applies, but don't know what that means as far as rowing goes. i've also figured out that i am completely lost when it comes to terms that people use!! would welcome any advice or books, thank you
Christi

Welcome to the forum. You're right about mainly easy and occasionally hard, and there are two ways of doing 'easy'. Using a HR monitor, or working off RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion).

For either option you'll need to do a 2k test, as we usually use this pace as a baseline for other sessions. For a steady (easy) pace it will probably be circa 2k + 25 seconds. This should be about 70-75% of max HR, or if you're using RPE, this is rowing at a conversational pace (sing a few lines of a song, or speak a few sentences relatively easily).

I don't know of any books that will help, but this forum is a goldmine of information, either through previous posts or asking us anything you need to know. There is a great pinned post on the 'Training' page, about newbie advice. That is well worth reading. As James says, there are loads of great videos to watch too.

You're clearly active and fit already, but make sure to slowly build up to the longer distances/ times as you'll be using tendons / ligaments / muscles that you're not used to using, so you'll need some adaption to the rowing motion.

Good luck with it all

[gvcormac]

It'll take you a few weeks to work up to it, but you should be able to do the same sort of mileage on the rower.

I've used a rower for 30 years, including while training for marathons, half marathons, 10 milers, and 10K. I found it great.

I did not find that my legs atrophed much at all when I occasionally had a week or two away from running.

Mind you, I'm almost always cardio not muscle limited. (40 min 10k, 3:40 marathon, on the road and on the rower).

[Elizabeth]

Hi Christi! Welcome to the forum.

My background is also in running. I ordered our erg from Concept2 in February 2021 and used it occasionally for cross-training, and then developed a stress fracture in my tibia about three weeks out from a goal half marathon running race in October 2021. I'm not sure where you are in your recovery at the moment, but I started with a limited amount of back&arms rowing with my one leg in a boot, plus lots and lots of cycling. My sports med doc was a big fan of cycling and swimming, but I'm barely competent at swimming and would have had to travel for an indoor pool. I then progressed to full stroke rowing without the boot, and gradually added both distance and speed work, transitioning gradually over time from bike + erg to mainly erg.

Technique is a big deal. Concept2 and Dark Horse Rowing both have some good videos on YouTube. "Practice makes permanent" and so you want to have a general sense of a good stroke sequence early and work on it. I think every rower I've talked to is working on something, so it's a process.

As someone who is in shape, it's also really tempting to throw yourself an hour a day into a new thing when the old is taken away. I haven't heard people preach the max 10% mileage increase with rowing the way they do with running, but rib stress fractures are a thing and you generally want to be smart about it. There are plans tailored to beginners as well as experienced rowers, and neither felt appropriate for me - my cardio was above the beginner plans and the experienced plans were too high in both meters and intensity. It was helpful for me to focus on building technique and a rowing base, continuing with ~one hour of training per day and shifting it away from bike and to rower over time. (So at first this may have been 15 minutes rower, 45 minutes bike.) This may look different for you since you're swimming instead. When I was in a good place for adding speed work, I started out with Concept2 's workouts of the day (available online and now in the ErgData app), and then eventually transitioned to the Pete Plan (also available online).

I'm also going to push back on Stu's 2k time trial advice for a couple of reasons. It wouldn't have been appropriate for me in my back+arms rowing phase (again, do you have limitations?) and may not be needed. Do you already know your heart rate zones from running? If so, you can recalculate for rowing by subtracting 10 from your max heart rate. Since you're seated rowing, your heart rate won't get as high and a 10 bpm difference is pretty normal. If you determine a different rowing max with time, you can reset again.

Best of luck!

[Mike Caviston]

Any recomendations for a... ...thread on the this forum to read through? ...would welcome any advice

I have combined competitive rowing and running (all distances from 5K to marathon) for several years and have won a fair share of races in both sports. I’ve written at some length a few times. You might search through my post history if you are interested.

I am not a fan of HR-based training though if you already use it for running it might be the way to get started. I recommend pace-based training and the 2K is the gold standard, but as mentioned that’s not appropriate for raw beginners. You only need a rough estimate to get started since once you have a training history you don’t worry about your past 2K but just incrementally improve your workouts until you decide you are ready to test your 2K again (or in your case, for the first time). There are a few simple, easy-to-execute workouts that can give you a ballpark pace to start with. You can poke around and see what you find on the forum, or someone else will give you more detailed advice. Good luck.

[Christirei]

Thank you all so much! I am not currently in a boot, just got out of it, but it was a tibial stress fracture. I'm currently swimming three times a week for about 45 minutes. I really don't enjoy it, but trying to make myself like it I'm looking forward to the rower arriving, in the mean time, I'll start watching the videos you all suggested. I wasn't a heart rate runner, instead i almost always judged my effort, but i do have a rough idea of where my HR was during my easy pace.

[Christirei]

So, some follow up questions.

I have watched at length many youtube videos from Concept 2, Dark Horse Rowing and Tall something or other rowing videos. I've learned alot.

My rower arrived and it is assembled i have created an account here on the forum page, also in the Concept 2 logbook page and also downloaded the ergdata app. i don't know how to connect all of these three separate things. I did a thirty minute row this morning. i connected my app to my rower, but nothing loaded. i'm not sure where to go to get it to load to the app and then how to get it to load to the logbook website. it's kind of confusing for me because the running forum i used it was all just one single website, the website connected to my watch and automatically loaded my workouts from Garmin, and the forums were all connected. any tips on how this works together??

i'm very interested in the workout of the day that Concept 2 puts out, would you all recommend it for a beginning rower? so far i have done two workouts, one steady row for twenty minutes, one interval row for thirty minutes. follow up question here, what does a "normal" base training week of training look like for the average person? as an example, when i was running and just building base miles, i followed the schedule of easy run, easy intervals (fartlek run), midweek long easy run, tempo run, weekend long run (2 plus hours). i almost always ran five days per week, approximately forty miles per week. how should that translate for the rower? one of the youtube videos i watched (they kind of are blurring together right now) said four rows per week, two steady rows and two interval rows. is that pretty common? i'm shooting for about thirty minutes right now and am not sure how quickly i should try to add on minutes. i might be doing something wrong but so far, twenty to thirty minutes doesn't break me out in a sweat. the damper is set to 4 and my strokes per minute for the steady row was around 26-28 and for the intervals i rowed hard around 30 strokes per minute and my rest was very easy light rowing

last question, technique thing. are your feet supposed to rock top to bottom just a bit? or stay flush against the foot rest?

thanks for the advice!

[Dangerscouse]

So, some follow up questions.

I have watched at length many youtube videos from Concept 2, Dark Horse Rowing and Tall something or other rowing videos. I've learned alot.

My rower arrived and it is assembled i have created an account here on the forum page, also in the Concept 2 logbook page and also downloaded the ergdata app. i don't know how to connect all of these three separate things. I did a thirty minute row this morning. i connected my app to my rower, but nothing loaded. i'm not sure where to go to get it to load to the app and then how to get it to load to the logbook website. it's kind of confusing for me because the running forum i used it was all just one single website, the website connected to my watch and automatically loaded my workouts from Garmin, and the forums were all connected. any tips on how this works together??

i'm very interested in the workout of the day that Concept 2 puts out, would you all recommend it for a beginning rower? so far i have done two workouts, one steady row for twenty minutes, one interval row for thirty minutes. follow up question here, what does a "normal" base training week of training look like for the average person? as an example, when i was running and just building base miles, i followed the schedule of easy run, easy intervals (fartlek run), midweek long easy run, tempo run, weekend long run (2 plus hours). i almost always ran five days per week, approximately forty miles per week. how should that translate for the rower? one of the youtube videos i watched (they kind of are blurring together right now) said four rows per week, two steady rows and two interval rows. is that pretty common? i'm shooting for about thirty minutes right now and am not sure how quickly i should try to add on minutes. i might be doing something wrong but so far, twenty to thirty minutes doesn't break me out in a sweat. the damper is set to 4 and my strokes per minute for the steady row was around 26-28 and for the intervals i rowed hard around 30 strokes per minute and my rest was very easy light rowing

last question, technique thing. are your feet supposed to rock top to bottom just a bit? or stay flush against the foot rest?

thanks for the advice!

Good to hear you've got your own erg.

The forum and your logbook aren't linked, so there's no connection between them. I can't remember exactly how it's done now, but linking your preferred app (Ergdata, Ergzone etc) is simple, and they automatically log your sessions as soon as you finish.

I'd guess the workout of the day is a good option, but I've never done it, or looked at it. My only concern is that it might not correlate with your easy / harder days.

A normal base training week is very different for all of us. As an example, my normal is circa 75-80k a week, but I'd guess that 40-45k is probably more like what others will look like. The only real consideration is that you do enough to create adaptions, but not so much that you can't recover, so this will always guide your thoughts.

If you can do 40 running miles a week, you should be capable (eventually) of a similar, or more, for rowing as it's less taxing on your body. Theoretically at least. Obviously you'll need to build up to that sort of distance, but thirty minutes already is a great start.

Personally, I'd lower your stroke rate for your steady state to circa 20-22, but it's not essential. There are different schools of thought for steady state (some say 60-65% of max HR (i.e. no sweating), or 70% (some sweating) and others advocate up to 80% (notably sweating). If you've not got a HR monitor, use the old fashioned way of singing a few lines of a song to know if you're going about 70% ish.

I work off circa 70% for most of my steady state, with occasional 80-85%, just because I enjoy them, and hard intervals. Maybe try and do two slow, one medium and one hard session, and see how you recover? Finding what works for you is usually trial and error, as you'll get results with any of the chosen systems until you slowly and subtly start regressing or at least plateauing.

It's a common issue for newbies, and experienced rowers to rely on the footstraps to stop them flying off the erg. I row everything, apart from hard intervals, strapless so it's possible to get used to doing it without them, but that is a (possible) task for another day, when you're far more comfortable with the technique. Like I said it's not essential, but it's something I prefer to do as it keeps me focused on my core strength and holding myself properly.

[MPx]

last question, technique thing. are your feet supposed to rock top to bottom just a bit? or stay flush against the foot rest?

If you mean can you lift your heels at the catch and then return to full contact early in your drive...then yes, most of us do that. Some get very agitated about driving with feet flat on the rest - to maximise power. And too much heel lift might suggest you're reaching too far forward in an attempt to aritficially lengthen your stroke - don't do that. If you rock right down onto your heels - effectively lifting your toes - then that's all kinds of wrong.

[Tsnor]

last question, technique thing. are your feet supposed to rock top to bottom just a bit? or stay flush against the foot rest?

If you mean can you lift your heels at the catch and then return to full contact early in your drive...then yes, most of us do that. Some get very agitated about driving with feet flat on the rest - to maximise power. And too much heel lift might suggest you're reaching too far forward in an attempt to aritficially lengthen your stroke - don't do that. If you rock right down onto your heels - effectively lifting your toes - then that's all kinds of wrong.

Heels come up for most good rowers.

Some coaches use "keep your heels down" as a training aid. Here's a good explanation of what they are trying to accomplish. https://youtu.be/M6oYDu3EO6M "..Why? Because the minute that you allow someone to lift their heels, the hips slide underneath the shoulders. The minute you put someone's heels down, you eliminate the possibility of them putting their hips behind the shoulders. Does it shorten the stroke? Sometimes. BUT, we're teaching them good movement..."

I am not a fan of training wrong technique just to avoid another technique problem. Let your heels come up.

[Elizabeth]

i have created an account here on the forum page, also in the Concept 2 logbook page and also downloaded the ergdata app. i don't know how to connect all of these three separate things. I did a thirty minute row this morning. i connected my app to my rower, but nothing loaded. i'm not sure where to go to get it to load to the app and then how to get it to load to the logbook website. it's kind of confusing for me because the running forum i used it was all just one single website, the website connected to my watch and automatically loaded my workouts from Garmin, and the forums were all connected. any tips on how this works together??

I'm not going to repeat Stu's advice, but on this topic - ErgData asks you to log in when you first open it, right? Do you see your earlier workout in the ErgData "Logbook" tab? If so, I usually have to swipe down on that screen to get the app to sync with the online logbook. Give that a shot.

If you go to https://log.concept2.com, then click on User > Edit Profile at the top right corner, there will be a link for "Applications". Clicking on that will let you sync your logbook to Garmin. If you're on Strava, you can also link there. There are a few extra options that I haven't explored, like Training Peaks.

If you have everything synced up, you would connect ErgData to the PM5, row, and then afterwards go to the Logbook view in the app and refresh it. A few seconds later, it will pop up in the online logbook, Garmin, Strava, etc. Doing this does NOT incorporate erging into my Garmin Training Load so it's perpetually non-helpful for me. There may be a better way to set things up if you need good training load data.

A rowing training week will look a lot like a running training week. You have your Hal Hidden beginner plans starting at 3-4 runs per week, and you have your Pfitz 18/85 folks, and you have everything in between. I'm personally rowing five days, run or bike one day, off one day. Two harder sessions per week is pretty common. If you're interested in the WOD, I'd generally recommend doing it on your "hard" days and then doing steady state on the others, and go from there.

[jamesg]

i connected my app to my rower, but nothing loaded.

The procedure I use is Just Row:

Get on the erg and start pulling to warm up, with belt if so wish
Stop pulling after about 5 minutes, make any adjustments

Load ErgData
On PM, press Connect and Belt and do what's asked.
Wait for connections.

Start pulling and Just Row.

Options.
WOs can be loaded in other ways, on PM and in ergdata. There's a C2 supplied WOD that loads through ergdata if you've signed up. This shows in your mail. As far as I can see without looking, only today's WOD loads and only today.

At the end of the Work, take one of the 3-4 options suggested by ED: Save and...
This step is necessary (?) for autosave in logbook, but work done stays in PM anyway.

[jamesg]

Heels

Boats and ergs have the stretcher at about 45°. At the catch, shins are vertical and the knee angle is open (also about 45°) to allow fast action, an early catch and a long stroke.

For most of us, heels lift at that angle. But you maybe among the small group that can sit on their heels. I can't; and a pair of socks lasted about two weeks with fixed clogs.

[Elizabeth]

i connected my app to my rower, but nothing loaded.

The procedure I use is Just Row:

Get on the erg and start pulling to warm up, with belt if so wish
Stop pulling after about 5 minutes, make any adjustments

Load ErgData
On PM, press Connect and Belt and do what's asked.
Wait for connections.

Start pulling and Just Row.

With this order of operations, you're missing about 5 minutes of rowing per session counting towards your challenge totals, million meters clubs, etc. If you do six sessions per week, that's 6k+. Connect then warm up.