Post
by ranger » June 8th, 2011, 4:05 am
If you want to row, rather than just get fit using rowing, I would suggest this regimen as a training plan.
(A) Never use rowing just to improve your fitness. If you do, you'll never reach your potential as a rower. Sure, you'll get fit, but end up rowing badly. Rowing badly vs. rowing well is worth 10 seconds per 500 across all of the distances, a _gigantic_ margin that is large enough to convert anyone from one of the worst rowers to one of the best. If you aren't fit (e.g., because you are old, or because you have been a couch potato for a decade or two, or because you are young and have never had any experience with doing something that taxes your skeletal-motor and physiological capacities, etc.), get fit in other ways. Run, skip, bike, step, swim--a lot--a couple hours a day. Work easily at first, but long, and then work up to exerting yourself to the limit of your endurance, aerobic capacity, skeletal-motor abilities, etc. in as many ways as possible using your entire body. The most efficient way to do this, probably, is just hard, totally exhausting physical labor--chopping down trees, digging holes, carrying rocks, hiking mountains with a 50-lb. pack, etc.
(B) Always use rowing to improve your rowing. Make a checklist of the major things you must do in the stroke cycle to row well for your weight (13 SPI for lightweights, 16 SPI for heavyweights). These might be included in your list.
(1) Get good length. Get all the way to shins vertical at the catch. The front of your seat should be only six inches from front stops when you fire off with your legs.
(2) Keep your hips/back forward at a good angle when you fire off with your legs. Hold that angle until your legs are done. At this point, the handle should be over your feet.
(3) Get your weight securely up on the balls of your feet at the catch, driving with your quads. Do _not_ take the catch with your heels and hams.
(4) Relax your shoulders at the catch.
(5) Relax your core at the catch.
(6) After about .1 seconds set your heels and stand up on the footplate, flattening your legs out with your hams. As in (2), at this point, the handle should be over your feet.
(7) Open your hips and swing your back with your core.
(8) While you are swinging your back, roll back up onto the balls of your feet and drive down on the footplate with the front of your foot using your calves.
(9) Keep your shoulders relaxed even though you have engaged your core, back, and calves.
(10) Pull through with your arms into your chest.
(11) Keep your elbows level as you pull the handle into your chest.
(11) Get a substantial lean with your back at the finish.
(12) Keep in good contact with the footplate at the finish. Point your toes and push the footplate away from you by digging in with your toes.
(13) Recover your arms as quickly as they finish.
(14) When you recover your arms, sit up tall and push the handle down toward your knees.
(15) Keep your knees flat on the rail until the handle sweeps past them.
(16) Recover your back as quick and fully as you did when you engaged it in the drive, returning to shins vertical (Prep Position). As in (2) and (6), at this point the handle should be over your feet, legs flat on the rail.
(17) The movements from (1) to (16) should be _very_ fast, 3/8 of the stroke cycle, at the most. If you count "And-ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-and-FOUR" as you do the stroke cycle as a whole, execute the movements from (1) to (16) in the first three pulses of this counting/beating: "And-ONE-and."
(18) Set you heels firmly when as you get into prep position.
(19) Break your knees and move the seat slowly toward the catch.
(20) As you do this, roll your weight slowly from your heels to the balls of your feet.
If technique in rowing is worth about 10 seconds per 500m, then as an approximation, each of these 20 technical points, I think, miight be worth a couple of seconds over 2K (.5 seconds per 500m).
All twenty of these technical points, taken together and mastered completely, are worth forty seconds over 2K (10 seconds per 500m).
When you get on the erg, your task in training is to master these things.
Each time you row, work on one of these twenty things, or some subset of these twenty things, that you know you do poorly, until you have mastered them all.
Put in 20K a session.
If you are fit, master all of these technical aspects of rowing, and are a big lightweight (e.g., 6', 165 lbs., right at the weight limit), you should pull a nice 1:43 @ 25 spm (13 SPI), just naturally.
If you are fit, master all of these technical aspects of rowing, and are a big heavyweight (e.g., 6'5", 220 lbs.), you should pull a nice 1:36 @ 25 spm (16 SPI), just naturally.
You are now one of the best rowers in the world.
ranger
Last edited by
ranger on June 8th, 2011, 5:43 am, edited 6 times in total.
Rich Cureton M 72 5'11" 165 lbs. 2K pbs: 6:27.5 (hwt), 6:28 (lwt)
