Pondering the Beginner Pete Plan

[Nomark]

Regardless, I did 3.3 today and was thinking about rates. I find it quite comfortable and natural to stay at 18 SPM, but I am definitely stronger as opposed to possessing of aerobic fitness.

I was/am the same with more strength than fitness (and I'm not even very strong! :sad face:) and found myself at quite slow rates but it has been beneficial to me to play around with my stroke. I did it deliberately as a way of working on what I'm weakest kind of thing as well as mixing things up helps because I have a short attention span so it keeps things interesting for me. I see you ramped it up at the end which I think is a good idea because it's virtually impossible to spend 80% of your time at <20 SR and then try and do a 30+ interval. YMMV but consider some interval like SS sessions where you do the first split at 18 then one at 22/24 then back to 18 or whatever you feel like. I don't know what your experience on the erg is but as a newbie myself I found just playing at different strokes rates gave my body some vital feedback and knowledge that it didn't have before which has benefited all of my rows even if it means I am not being as optimum as I could be day to day. My understanding is that the goal is to have a consistent(ish) stroke power at all rates and then you can increase wattage proportionally by increasing rate (i.e. 200W@20 and 300W@30), but in the meantime just getting the feeling of moving quicker sometimes helps me.

[p_b82]

I personally think it is more about volume & load + individual's time/habits + recovery ability.

Most plans recognise that it is good to do mixed work - far too much evidence around to say that a single training stimulus eventually causes stagnation.

More volume = fitter as a sweeping statement - until the point that the body can't recover.

the more training you do, the more you condition your body to recover - but this is done gradually/slowly over years not months; that's how some folks can crank out HM + with relative ease multi times a week.

Ideally therefore any of us should push hard enough every session we do so that the next time we do some exercise we are recovered enough to give that session 100%. it makes it easy to add volume by doing it at a slower pace - because otherwise everything becomes too much and the body/mind says no....

We're going a bit OT here, but it comes back round to Jcross's point from the end of last year of "are we training too easy" - and made me realise the answer to that for me personally was yes - even though I thought it was no at the time!

[alex9026]

I stop completely. Get off the erg, have a drink walk around a bit. Try and get my heart rate down. I think you are supposed to do some light strokes to stay loose, but you are supposed to warm up as well apparently

I don't have any issues restarting each round.

Pretty much how I approached today's session. Although, any short interval pieces I wouldn't sacrifice a warm up, even if it is just five minutes of easy rowing.