Ranger's training thread

[ranger]

1:45 @ 22 spm is UT2 for a 6:00 2K.

Lancs is pulling 1:55 @ 22 spm?

Although in fairness, unlike you, I don't take breaks during my UT2 pieces...

O.K.

But this is the dilemma.

My rowing a lwt 6:28 when I am 53 is 2003 is like you rowing a lwt 6:05 when you are 30.

You don't do something like that unless your fitness is maximal.

So what then?

Once you are doing a lwt 6:05 at 30, and your fitness is maximal, and now declining, how do you get better, given that you are already the best in the world for your age and weight, by quite a margin?

As far as I can tell, no one knows.

For whatever reason, no one has ever done it.

And thererfore, we might assume, no training plans, as they are now designed, address the issue.

Consider this:

In 2003, I did 60'r20 @ 1:52 (12.5 SPI), when I was 53 years old.

So, how do I train myself to do better than that when I am 60?

I assume that just doing more of the same won't make me better.

If I just try to do the same thing, I assume that I will just do the same thing--and then as my fitness declines, worse.

And, certainly, I assume that rowing a lot of 1:55 @ 22 spm (10.5) won't be very relevant, either.

No?

So what is to be done?

You could also ask this question of those who devise training plans for rowing.

For instance, my rowing a lwt 6:28 when I was 53 was every bit comparable to Caviston's rowing 6:18 when he was 40 or Eskild E.'s rowing 6:06 when he was 30.

But once they had done that, how can they use the Wolverine Plan, or the Danish Lightweight Training Plan, or whatever, to get better yet?

Answer?

Clearly, they couldn't.

Why?

Their fitness was maximal, and by and large, training plans for rowing just address your fitness, trying to make it better.

ranger

[macroth]

I am into a nice routine at the moment that I don't want to alter:

a triple session: OTErg, bike, OTW.


ranger

Lord knows that's the type of routine you never break out of. You wasted the entire winter doing something very similar instead of sharpening and getting your oft-promised 6:28 2K done and moving on to 6:16, even though you were already claiming to row perfectly.

So it sounds like you won't be sharpening and will be racing "unprepared" throughout the season. Not the best way to go about shattering world records, you know.

No, I'll be sharpening. Hard.

Not proper adverb form and word order. You forgot the "ly": "Hardly." Correct is "I'll hardly be sharpening."

Well, given my rowing now, I don't think I have to sharpen at all to row 6:28.

I just have to keep doing distance rowing.



ranger

Ah. Am I right or am I right?

[ranger]

Or the question might be put this way:

If, when my fitness was maximal, I rowed 60min, 1:48 @ 30 spm (9 SPI), with my HR flat at 172 bpm for the whole hour, pushing my HR to 185 bpm over the last 1K, even though I was 53 years old, how do I train myself so that I can do 60min, 1:44 @ 23 spm (13.5 SPI) seven years later, when my fitness is still maximal, but my physical capacities are certainly somewhat diminished?

I don't think any training plans ever devised for indoor rowing have ever addressed this issue.

Historically, at least, the erg is just a fitness machine, used for winter training by OTW rowers in order to stay in shape when ice is on the water and the boats can't be floated.

ranger

[ranger]

BTW, these questions are just rhetorical now, because I have already answered them with my training and documented that training on these fora for seven years and 20,000 posts.

I now row 1:44 @ 23 spm (13.5 SPI) very comfortably, with a HR below my anaerobic threshold.

I'll soon do it for 60min.

ranger

[ranger]

The answer to these questions, as I have demonstrated, is to learn how to row well at low drag.

By doing this, I changed the force contours of my stroke so that I get 50% more peak force and 50% more more power per stroke, just rowing easily.

I have learned how to use my legs and arms maximally, without diminishing my major strength, my core and back.

I have overcome my technical and mechanical weaknesses.

For seven years, I have trained, working on my weaknesses, rather than raced my training, parading my strengths.

That's how you get better.

ranger

[ranger]

Of course, in the full scope of things, what I have done over the last seven years is not a novel solution to my problem at all.

OTW rowers have used this strategy to get better from the beginning.

OTW rowers drill endlessly on technique.

In fact, almost all of the rowing that they do is focussed on getting more and more easy power per stroke by improving their mechanical and technical effectiveness and efficiency rowing at about 19 spm.

It doesn't have much of anything to do with fitness.

The solution to my problem is just odd for the erg.

Historically, the erg is a fitness machine, used in the winter, of necessity, by OTW rowers, just to keep their bodies in shape until they can get out OTW again.

Where they can do what really counts:

Work on their technique.

ranger

[ranger]

Rich (AGAIN)

What pace will you go out at at BIRC? What will be your 1k split?

Watch this space.

I'll log on November 20th, during the day, while I am relaxing in my hotel room at the Crowne Plaza in Birmingham, and tell you.

What I tell you will be just an assessment of what my sharpening has predicted for 2K.

November 20th is three months away.

So I don't know yet.

I will do the best that I can with my sharpening over the next three months.

And that will tell me (and you) what pace I should hold for 1700m at BIRC 2010--and then kick it to the end.

ranger

P.S. Right now, my guess is 1:35. But who knows? It might be 1:36, or 1:34, or none of the above.

[ranger]

MIke--

If you are fully prepared, racing on the erg is entirely mechanical.

There is no drama in it at all.

You just row, flat splits, what your sharpening has predicted.

All of your 2Ks have been entirely predictable.

When I have been fully prepared to race, so have mine.

So are everyone's.

ranger

[ranger]

Mike--

In rowing, what is dramatic is how effectively you can train, rather than race your training.

That is, how long, hard, and consistently you can work on overcoming your weaknesses rather than succumbing to the temptation of parading your strengths.

I did it seven days a week, two to three hours a day, for seven years.

I guess that's pretty good.



ranger

[NavigationHazard]

Sigh.

my HR flat at 172 bpm for the whole hour, pushing my HR to 185 bpm over the last 1K,

Let's play "spot the logical inconsistency." As you've been told numpty times, you didn't frickin' row for an hour with your HR frickin' flat at whatever frickin' beats per minute. It rose from some starting value to whatever it might have leveled off at. Then if you held effort constant it started to drift, whatever you might think to the contrary (and If it didn't drift you didn't hold effort constant). And at the end of the row, by your own bloviating, it apparently rose fairly sharply. What part of "it has to be flat to be flat" do you continue willfully to misrepresent? Oh yes. All of it.

And while I'm at it, WTF do you continue to assert that "fitness" (whatever the hell that means) declines after the age of 30? Look one more time at the frickin' absolute WR for 2k. Rob Waddell was 33 when he did it. He was faster at 33 than he was at 24, when he set the 19-29 record. Alternativey, look at the frickin' WLW record for 2k. Lisa Schlenker was either 34 or 35 when she set it. She was frickin' faster then than she was when she was 30.

Incidentally, Ebbesen was born on 27 May 1972. That made him either 31 or 32 when he rowed 6:06.4 in 2004, NOT "30." He was 31 going on 32 when he won Crash-Bs in 2004 with a 6:06.9.

[ranger]

This is my stroke back in 2003, rowing at max drag (200+ df., hauling anchor with my core/back, neglecting my arms, dragging my legs behind):



This is my stroke now at low drag (118 df.), leading with my legs, then still making full use of my core/back and arms.



In the two strokes, the contributions of my back and arms are clearly visible and nearly identical.

The initial dotted line represents the contribution of my legs; the darker solid line that follows, the contribution of my back; and the lighter solid line that follows that, the contribution of my arms.

The difference is the contribution of my legs.

In 2003, pulling at max drag (200+ df.), I fired off with my legs with about 75 kgF.

Now, pulling at 118 df., I fire off with my legs with about 105 kgF.

The 2003 stroke is 9 SPI.

My stroke now is 13 SPI, 45% stronger.

9 SPI is rowing like shit--for anyone.

For a lighttweight of any age, 13 SPI is rowing perfectly.

When you get used to them, including when you develop the skeletal-muscular capabilities required by each of them, these strokes feel somewhat the same in terms of effort.

But with the second stroke, I get to rest almost a second more per stroke, while the boat/wheel runs/spins.

Over the course of 60min, or a HM, this amounts to three minutes or so more rest.

So the overall effort using the second stroke is much less.

I used to do the first stroke with a HR of 172 spm.

I do the second stroke with a HR some 20 bpm less, 152 bpm.

ranger

[NavigationHazard]

Actually this is you from either late June or early July 2007. If spi is the measure of rowing well (it isn't, but that's another story), what happened? You were at 14 spi back then, and at a higher rating. Could it be .... age related decline? Detrimental technique?

FWIW, back in 2007 you rowed your 290m in the screenshot at 1:59 pace. In your latest greatest screenshot you've done 552m at 2:05 pace. You'd better do some more distance rowing. Paul's Law says you should be able to do 580m at 2:04 pace.

[hjs]

I am into a nice routine at the moment that I don't want to alter:

a triple session: OTErg, bike, OTW.


ranger

Lord knows that's the type of routine you never break out of. You wasted the entire winter doing something very similar instead of sharpening and getting your oft-promised 6:28 2K done and moving on to 6:16, even though you were already claiming to row perfectly.

So it sounds like you won't be sharpening and will be racing "unprepared" throughout the season. Not the best way to go about shattering world records, you know.

But it keeps you "unprepared" for ever, plus he can say he doesn,t sharpen, but we all now he does................

[ranger]

[removed]

[ranger]

Sigh.

my HR flat at 172 bpm for the whole hour, pushing my HR to 185 bpm over the last 1K,

Let's play "spot the logical inconsistency." As you've been told numpty times, you didn't frickin' row for an hour with your HR frickin' flat at whatever frickin' beats per minute. It rose from some starting value to whatever it might have leveled off at. Then if you held effort constant it started to drift, whatever you might think to the contrary (and If it didn't drift you didn't hold effort constant). And at the end of the row, by your own bloviating, it apparently rose fairly sharply. What part of "it has to be flat to be flat" do you continue willfully to misrepresent? Oh yes. All of it.

And while I'm at it, WTF do you continue to assert that "fitness" (whatever the hell that means) declines after the age of 30? Look one more time at the frickin' absolute WR for 2k. Rob Waddell was 33 when he did it. He was faster at 33 than he was at 24, when he set the 19-29 record. Alternativey, look at the frickin' WLW record for 2k. Lisa Schlenker was either 34 or 35 when she set it. She was frickin' faster then than she was when she was 30.

Incidentally, Ebbesen was born on 27 May 1972. That made him either 31 or 32 when he rowed 6:06.4 in 2004, NOT "30." He was 31 going on 32 when he won Crash-Bs in 2004 with a 6:06.9.

Wow.

You're gettin' pretty shrill, Nav.

Sounds preetty foolish to me.

Oh well, it's your call.

Embarrass yourself if you want.

To each his own.

I just wonder:

How are you even going to be able to show your face around here after all of this?

The mud in your eye...

The mud in your eye...

Looks wretched, dude.

Could you wipe a little of it off, just to look a bit more respectable.

We've got a show to put on here.

You're spoilin' the scenery.

ranger