Training To Break 1:14 - 500m

[aussie nick]

Interesting responds, but to much to answer it all But it clearly says you know a thing or two.
Re volume, pure endurance sports, high volume is needed, nobody is succesfull otherwise. Pure 2k rowers all train lots. Talking about the sub 5.45 guys. But thats not 500m

Re 95% effort (which is just a general number) how we could measure that is not possible. Think you maybe could name that the Bulgarian method. Think you know it, but if not, a daily squat, with one max set at 90% minimum of your daily max. And the daily max again being 90% of your training max. This should give a number you can always do, nomatter what form of day.
After this a few back up sets. If you feel good you go for a (training) pb, most days you settle for that 90% of 90%.

This tough idea was transferred to 500/1k rowing by a guy called (Shawn baker) now the carnivor promotor. He did a daily row, rate restricted. 1k and later 500. Nothing more nothing less. Starting at rate 20 (very low) and slowly building up to race rate 2 spm per rate up. Having a goalpace per rate.
He ended up at 1.14.x age 50 6.4 250 ish (from memory) Maybe you can ask him yourself (twitter?)
Later is was broken and set on 1.13, guy from Australia, who actually died soon after, while doing an easy 30 min row No speculation from my side.

I myself, also being 49/50 at that time, smaller though. 6.1 95kg tried that a bit. I pulled 2.56 and 1.20 flat. I lacked raw power to be really fast. This way of training gets you used of doing a hard effort, but you know you can, and you really build your body around that one thing. It gets very natural.

Back to the 95% idea. You know (race) your 500 at max, going off hard and dying full blown. The 95% idea is not starting so fast, but get to goalpace and not faster. Use a rate restriction, and ofcourse lower your goalpace. An effort like this will be way easier on your body and also you mind. Goal should be to keep goalpace for the full 500m. So you miss the dying part, which is part that taxes your body the most. Doing this makes is possible to do much more hard, but never 100% efforts.
Ofcourse, at times, you do go, full 100%, with the dying part included.

In short, no advice , but just thoughts about things could be done. Up to you to use of not what you want. In the end it should suit you and should work.

Good luck and enjoy.

this is fascinating. thank you for sharing

So the goal pace would be calculated at 90% of what the perceived effort of what that stroke rate would be....and you'd do a 1k at 20 then the next day at 22, then 24 etc up to his racing sr eg 38?

then what...immediately back to 20 and start again...ideally a little faster?

and no weights, no longer conditioning pieces etc?

[hjs]

this is fascinating. thank you for sharing

So the goal pace would be calculated at 90% of what the perceived effort of what that stroke rate would be....and you'd do a 1k at 20 then the next day at 22, then 24 etc up to his racing sr eg 38?

then what...immediately back to 20 and start again...ideally a little faster?

and no weights, no longer conditioning pieces etc?

I did some longer work, but not do much, Shawn did nothing more. We both did weights on top of that, but that was not the main training. Forgot to mention drag, I used 150, Shawn himself always max drag on his machine.

Rating was fixed for some time and after a certain goal reached up 2 spm higher.

My best (low) rate stuff was 122.2 rate 32 and 2.59 rate 30. 2k did not go well though, only could pull 6.26, strange thing was I did 3 races that winter. And, kid you not. 626.0 626,1 and again 626.0 all three max efforts.

Re goals, nothing overly scientific, bit on feel, but you will be amazed how fast you can get once you get feel for it. Strokes are also long, no short sprint work. Which will take time to adjust again when going back to free rate.

[Tsnor]

This is the thread on how often to PB viewtopic.php?f=3&t=204382

[btlifter]

Great to see how active this thread has been!

I'll briefly try to address 2 quick points:

1. Alex- the importance of technique: Yes, I think this is hugely important. I dropped my 500m approx 3 seconds last year. And I would likely attribute about half of that to technique changes (in my case this primarily involved raising my feet a couple holes, and allowing for more upper-back-rounding to increase my stroke length without (much) reduction in rate.). By no means are those the precise changes that will help everybody, but refining technique will provide a worthwhile ROI in most cases, I'd imagine.

2. A few people have mentioned the importance of recovery. Obviously this is the case, yet what I haven't seen is anybody speaking directly to the importance of a caloric surplus. Speaking personally again, I attribute much of my progress to my ability to simply do more work than my competitors. While there are several reasons for this, the biggest is that I eat more than anybody I know. And when I go just a single day eating fewer than about 4k calories I feel wrecked the next day.

[AlexFergus]

Hey all, just an update and I'll respond to the comments I'm yet to address.

So the last 7 days was rather intense, and I didn't do any training. In fac it's been 9 days since I've trained. Which is a bummer as I was making good progress.

Last sunday my boy was unwell at night time, he's epileptic so we have to watch him when he's sick. I stayed up all night with him and at 5am he had a seizure. Fortunately it was a short one but as he was unwell we had to take him into hospital. That night I had no more than an hour sleep.

We returned from the hospital and as he was still no good that night (he was actually worse), I stayed up all night monitoring him (my wife was with our baby). I got 3 hours sleep that night.
I thought I better not train Wednesday until I've caught up on sleep.
Wednesday am my wife woke with a sore throat, soon body aches and a fever.
Wednesday evening the fever and aches hit me.
She tested positive for covid. So the next few days were pretty rough - I was only hit hard for 12 hours - and the hard part was caring for our kids and wife. Otherwise I would have laid on the couch and rode it out.
Combine this with the fact I had 4 hours sleep int he previous two nights and I knew I had to write off the week.

I bounced back better quick - but stayed around 70-80% for a few days. It's funny my symptoms were so different to my wife (she had a cough, sore throat, tried etc, I had joint stiffness, sensitive skin and a headache)

Oh and then our baby came down with a fever, so yeah it was a full on week!

Yesterday (sunday) I felt good, did some gardening and chopped some firewood. I handled it well. Oura and Polar metrics all show my vitals to be back at my normal rates (RHR, HRV, respiration rate etc).
So I plan to get back into the gym today (maybe a row, with some power bursts in there) then leg weights tomorrow.

I've been sick/injured in the past and I know your numbers come back quickly. So I'm cool with that. But it is a bummer as I was making great progress and was dialling things in.

I'll weigh myself today as well. i wouldn't be surprised if I'm a few kg's down

[AlexFergus]

Great to see how active this thread has been!

I'll briefly try to address 2 quick points:

1. Alex- the importance of technique: Yes, I think this is hugely important. I dropped my 500m approx 3 seconds last year. And I would likely attribute about half of that to technique changes (in my case this primarily involved raising my feet a couple holes, and allowing for more upper-back-rounding to increase my stroke length without (much) reduction in rate.). By no means are those the precise changes that will help everybody, but refining technique will provide a worthwhile ROI in most cases, I'd imagine.

2. A few people have mentioned the importance of recovery. Obviously this is the case, yet what I haven't seen is anybody speaking directly to the importance of a caloric surplus. Speaking personally again, I attribute much of my progress to my ability to simply do more work than my competitors. While there are several reasons for this, the biggest is that I eat more than anybody I know. And when I go just a single day eating fewer than about 4k calories I feel wrecked the next day.

Wow that is really interesting about techique. I will start putting more emphasis onto it and do some experiments as well.

Caloric surplus - I'm with you on that. When I started this journey I started having 'compulsory ice cream' every night - and I'm talking a BIG bow with a big scoop of whey powder and a heap of cream. Every night I've been doing this. Just as a 'top up' (I already eat a lot and drink about 1.5L maybe more of raw milk a day).

My weight has been increasing, I hit 105.6kg before this recent illness. I started around 100kg.

[Dangerscouse]

Hey all, just an update and I'll respond to the comments I'm yet to address.

So the last 7 days was rather intense, and I didn't do any training. In fac it's been 9 days since I've trained. Which is a bummer as I was making good progress.

Last sunday my boy was unwell at night time, he's epileptic so we have to watch him when he's sick. I stayed up all night with him and at 5am he had a seizure. Fortunately it was a short one but as he was unwell we had to take him into hospital. That night I had no more than an hour sleep.

We returned from the hospital and as he was still no good that night (he was actually worse), I stayed up all night monitoring him (my wife was with our baby). I got 3 hours sleep that night.
I thought I better not train Wednesday until I've caught up on sleep.
Wednesday am my wife woke with a sore throat, soon body aches and a fever.
Wednesday evening the fever and aches hit me.
She tested positive for covid. So the next few days were pretty rough - I was only hit hard for 12 hours - and the hard part was caring for our kids and wife. Otherwise I would have laid on the couch and rode it out.
Combine this with the fact I had 4 hours sleep int he previous two nights and I knew I had to write off the week.

I bounced back better quick - but stayed around 70-80% for a few days. It's funny my symptoms were so different to my wife (she had a cough, sore throat, tried etc, I had joint stiffness, sensitive skin and a headache)

Oh and then our baby came down with a fever, so yeah it was a full on week!

Yesterday (sunday) I felt good, did some gardening and chopped some firewood. I handled it well. Oura and Polar metrics all show my vitals to be back at my normal rates (RHR, HRV, respiration rate etc).
So I plan to get back into the gym today (maybe a row, with some power bursts in there) then leg weights tomorrow.

I've been sick/injured in the past and I know your numbers come back quickly. So I'm cool with that. But it is a bummer as I was making great progress and was dialling things in.

I'll weigh myself today as well. i wouldn't be surprised if I'm a few kg's down

That's a proper rough patch. Good to hear that you're through it now.

[AlexFergus]

Video of the 1:17 row is finally up on youtube, you can see it here:

https://youtu.be/Ia-dfmEsE3U?t=1126

I know I was rather negative at the end - despite having shaved 2seconds off my PB!
I was just kicking myself I didn't stick to my plan and nearly stuffed it up so bad (crashing at the 100m mark). But it was interesting to see my time at the end, and maybe there is some merit to that race strategy - i.e. Aim to go flat out for 300m and just hold on for the last 200m.

Maybe not a great approach to take in a race meeting, but if the goal is to break a PB in your own time it could have it's benefits.

And an update on the illness - went to train Monday, got into the gym felt flat so took another day off.
Did some leg weights yesterday though - felt a bit rough and rusty. Got in the full session though. Lungs were struggling with the higher rep stuff. Amazing how 1 week of illness sets you back so much.

I'm not sure if I'll just focus on the weights this week and hold off on erg stuff, as I really think it will be a struggle. We'll see.

[AlexFergus]

Hey, a bit of an update.

So my monthly time trial date arrived... Given I haven't done a proper week of training since the sickness I was just planninng on doing a 300m time trial this month. I figured it would be good to see that that for future reference, and would allow the body a bit more time to recover.
A wise idea right.
Well something overcame me in the hours prior to the session and I decided to do a 500m...
Which turned out to be a dumb idea!
I also put the drag up a few points.

Anyway I started great, a new low pull of 1:08.9 off the start (4th stroke I think) so that was neat.
But I noticed I was doing quite short strokes, anyway the numbers were good so I stuck with it.
At the 300m mark I knew I was cooked - was flatlining very fast. My projected finish at that point was 1:15 so I was going rather quick, but the tank was empty with 200m to go.

I tried holding on, but with a 100m to go my projected time was already at 1:17 and rapidly rising.

So dropped the handle in disgust (at myself!) and wrote off the session.

Silly me.

Splits were:

100m = 14.4 second = 1:12.0 @ 50
200m = 15.1 second = 1:15.5 @ 48
300m = 15.5 second = 1:17.5 @ 46
400m = 16.1 second = 1:20.5 @ 52
500m = don't ask


But there were some good takeaways:

1) Start was good, new low pull, so that is promising.

2) I actually hit a PB for the 300m - 45.0s. In my 1:17.6 my 300m time was 45.4s - so I was quicker over the 300m (and it's why I shold have just stuck with the 300m race idea for this month, it would have given me a nice confidence boost).

3) I need to respect the body more, know that I was knocked around and I need a lot of time to recover - or more importantly I need A LOT of time to recover and exceed my previous best! In fact the last 2 days I've still be quite lethargic/needing a nap etc.

4) I need more work on the short strokes. My rating for my 1:17 row was 45spm. My rating for the 400m I did yesterday was over 50. I know this is a good thing - everyone says rate higher etc, but my strokes felt very short.
This cost me big. Because typically at the 150m to go when the legs are dieing I shorten up the stroke to take it through to the finish. This happened at 250m to go, but I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't shorten up more (arms/back swing may get me 30-50m tops). And this is a big reason why I just stopped. In fact as I type this I'm wondering if this was more of a problem than not being 100% recovered...
The thing is I did some shorter strokes at the start - and was seeing some great numbers, now typically I would lengthen my stroke for the middle 300m, but I didn't, just kept the strokes short and fast. But I couldn't hold on.

So this opens up a good question - do I 1) revert back to my usual strategy - with longer strokes for the middle 300m, or 2) do I keep training with the shorter strokes and build that endurance so I can hold on for the full 500m.

Anyway, something to think about. But i do know I can't hold 800w for 300m doing short strokes, after doing 1000w average for the first 100m. So if I stay with the shorter stroke plan, then I simply have to drop the watts down to say 750w


I was rather disappointed after the session, but feel a lot better for it now.
The interesting thing is my 300m time was quick, in fact the NZ record for the 300m is only 0.9 seconds off my 45sec yesterday, so that could be a good short term goal. I'm sure I'd be able to have a good crack at that record.

For anyone interested you can see the log here - https://log.concept2.com/profile/140341/log/63382656

My goal now is to get a few weeks of solid training under my belt.
Fingers crossed May is a lower stress month and I can get some solid numbers in.

As for what I'll do at the end of May for my monthly trial - I'm not sure yet.
I MAY try the 300m during the month and then do a 500m at the end.
Or I just do the 300m at the end of the month to get my confidence back and 500m in June.
OR I'll just do a 500m in May and 300m next month.

We'll see.
The main thing now though is to see my numbers going up in the gym and on the erg in this weeks training, and also to get those lost few kg's back on.

Oh - one other thing, I didn't warm up before yesterdays sprint. i was running of time, so i did some kettlebell swings, about 10 bigs strokes to adjust my drag then let rip.

That may have actually had a big impact on why I crashed and burned with 150m to go?

[Tsnor]

...Oh - one other thing, I didn't warm up before yesterdays sprint. i was running of time, so i did some kettlebell swings, about 10 bigs strokes to adjust my drag then let rip.

No warm up = big impact. (aside: I'm unable to see your results ".. user has made this result private." Are you able to hit max HR without a warmup, most people can't)

Suggest you try a few warmup variations and see what works for you. Here's a suggested warmup before 500M PB attempt.

1. *NO* Stretching before your piece. Lots of science says you give up power without any benefits (no injury avoidance value from stretching pre exercise). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1wjkdGouMk

2. 20 minute slow warmup rowing specific to get your muscle fibers up to temp. Lots of research says this works for injury avoidance. I didn't see anything I trusted re performance improvements, however claims like this are out there. "Researchers who looked at several studies found that 79% reported improved performance after warmups. " https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/ ... -exercises Maybe also try with and without inserting some hard pulls near the end of warmup ... I couldn't find any research to say if this helps, but most people recommend it.

3. A "do nothing" 5-10 minute period after the warmup to let your anaerobic systems reload. The really short first 10 seconds system, the ATP-PC System, rebounds to over 85% in about 3 minutes and is completely replenished after 10 minutes. I don't know how long to reset the main one, the Glycolytic System, but if you warm up slow enough maybe you are good to go after waiting the 5 to 10 mins for the ATP-PC system to reset.

[AlexFergus]

...Oh - one other thing, I didn't warm up before yesterdays sprint. i was running of time, so i did some kettlebell swings, about 10 bigs strokes to adjust my drag then let rip.

No warm up = big impact. (aside: I'm unable to see your results ".. user has made this result private." Are you able to hit max HR without a warmup, most people can't)

Suggest you try a few warmup variations and see what works for you. Here's a suggested warmup before 500M PB attempt.

1. *NO* Stretching before your piece. Lots of science says you give up power without any benefits (no injury avoidance value from stretching pre exercise). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1wjkdGouMk

2. 20 minute slow warmup rowing specific to get your muscle fibers up to temp. Lots of research says this works for injury avoidance. I didn't see anything I trusted re performance improvements, however claims like this are out there. "Researchers who looked at several studies found that 79% reported improved performance after warmups. " https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/ ... -exercises Maybe also try with and without inserting some hard pulls near the end of warmup ... I couldn't find any research to say if this helps, but most people recommend it.

3. A "do nothing" 5-10 minute period after the warmup to let your anaerobic systems reload. The really short first 10 seconds system, the ATP-PC System, rebounds to over 85% in about 3 minutes and is completely replenished after 10 minutes. I don't know how long to reset the main one, the Glycolytic System, but if you warm up slow enough maybe you are good to go after waiting the 5 to 10 mins for the ATP-PC system to reset.

Hey thanks for that.
You should be able to see the log entry now, I changed the settings - https://log.concept2.com/profile/140341/log/63382656

Warmup, yeah you're right. I now realise my poor session was a result of a few things:
1) No warmup
2) Body not back to 100%
3) Shorter strokes/higher rating - that I'm not yet adapted to for a full 500m
4) Coming out too hard
5) Mentally not prepared (i.e I say in my video before rowing that I should probably do the 300m as I may not be fully recovered etc). And I think when things started getting tough I just pulled out rather than grind through as I had 'talked myself into this situation'. Not ideal no

I'll check out those resources you shared - thank you.
I'm curious to hear how others warmup for a sprint row. @BTLifter - what is your protocol?

Based on your ideas Tsnor maybe I do:
1. a few KB swings/squat jumps,
2. then a 10min aerobic row,
3. followed by a few practice starts, high intensity pulls - with say 30-60sec rests in between them,
4. then another 5-10min aerobic row.
5. Followed by 5-10mins off rower getting ready (fluids, setting drag, getting music going, visualisations etc)

[btlifter]

...Oh - one other thing, I didn't warm up before yesterdays sprint. i was running of time, so i did some kettlebell swings, about 10 bigs strokes to adjust my drag then let rip.

No warm up = big impact. (aside: I'm unable to see your results ".. user has made this result private." Are you able to hit max HR without a warmup, most people can't)

Suggest you try a few warmup variations and see what works for you. Here's a suggested warmup before 500M PB attempt.

1. *NO* Stretching before your piece. Lots of science says you give up power without any benefits (no injury avoidance value from stretching pre exercise). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1wjkdGouMk

2. 20 minute slow warmup rowing specific to get your muscle fibers up to temp. Lots of research says this works for injury avoidance. I didn't see anything I trusted re performance improvements, however claims like this are out there. "Researchers who looked at several studies found that 79% reported improved performance after warmups. " https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/ ... -exercises Maybe also try with and without inserting some hard pulls near the end of warmup ... I couldn't find any research to say if this helps, but most people recommend it.

3. A "do nothing" 5-10 minute period after the warmup to let your anaerobic systems reload. The really short first 10 seconds system, the ATP-PC System, rebounds to over 85% in about 3 minutes and is completely replenished after 10 minutes. I don't know how long to reset the main one, the Glycolytic System, but if you warm up slow enough maybe you are good to go after waiting the 5 to 10 mins for the ATP-PC system to reset.

Hey thanks for that.
You should be able to see the log entry now, I changed the settings - https://log.concept2.com/profile/140341/log/63382656

Warmup, yeah you're right. I now realise my poor session was a result of a few things:
1) No warmup
2) Body not back to 100%
3) Shorter strokes/higher rating - that I'm not yet adapted to for a full 500m
4) Coming out too hard
5) Mentally not prepared (i.e I say in my video before rowing that I should probably do the 300m as I may not be fully recovered etc). And I think when things started getting tough I just pulled out rather than grind through as I had 'talked myself into this situation'. Not ideal no

I'll check out those resources you shared - thank you.
I'm curious to hear how others warmup for a sprint row. @BTLifter - what is your protocol?

Based on your ideas Tsnor maybe I do:
1. a few KB swings/squat jumps,
2. then a 10min aerobic row,
3. followed by a few practice starts, high intensity pulls - with say 30-60sec rests in between them,
4. then another 5-10min aerobic row.
5. Followed by 5-10mins off rower getting ready (fluids, setting drag, getting music going, visualisations etc)

Warmup for me ua event specific. Anything longer than 500m and I basically just set the rower for 30s on/off and do around 20 reps, starting slowly, gradually increasing pace until I achieve close to race pace.

*notes - I continue rowing during the "off" time as well, just very slowly. I also will take some of the "on" reps easily as well if I'm starting to breathe pretty hard.*

Then I wait 5-15 minutes. Then go.

For the 500, and especially below that, I will often include some sort of short, concentric-only weight-stuff as well, as my body sometimes feels it needs to be "primed". In this case I may split the erg workout in half:
1. approx 10 minute general easy warmup on rower
2. 5-10 minutes of "strength"/activation work.
3. 5 minutes back in the erg working at some low-pull stuff.
4. Wait 10+ minutes
5. Go

The above warmup is used infrequently though - only for important races/time trials, which inky happen a fee times/year.

[AlexFergus]

Thanks so much for that!
I'm definitely gong to build out a warmup routine and use them for my time trials and even big interval sessions.

Quick update while I'm here - body seems to be back to 100%, though I have done two interval sessions recently that weren't very impressive number wise (bettered my previous times, but only just) and I was absolutely wrecked afterwards. So maybe I'm still not back to 100%..!

Lifting numbers are going well. I did 170kg front squats for reps yesterday.

Weight is at 104kg - so still 1 or 2 kgs lighter than my pre sickness weight

[aussie nick]

Thanks so much for that!
I'm definitely gong to build out a warmup routine and use them for my time trials and even big interval sessions.

Quick update while I'm here - body seems to be back to 100%, though I have done two interval sessions recently that weren't very impressive number wise (bettered my previous times, but only just) and I was absolutely wrecked afterwards. So maybe I'm still not back to 100%..!

Lifting numbers are going well. I did 170kg front squats for reps yesterday.

Weight is at 104kg - so still 1 or 2 kgs lighter than my pre sickness weight

very nice FS!

have you seen this month's CTC? would be a good workout for your training, I'd guess?

[AlexFergus]

Hey no I didn't see the CTC, I'll check it out. Thnx

Just a wee update -
last week training was good. Massive improvement on my MAF row (30mins capped at 146hr or below). Added about 12 watts to my session. So that means my aerobic base and or technique is improving.

Strength continues to go up. I hit 2 reps for 180kg in the front squat. Strength was there for the 3rd rep, but wrist pain meant I had to stop at 2.

Oh I also hit a new Low Pull PB - 1:08.4

I'm taking this week off training - well no rowing and no leg weights. I'll do an upper body session.

It was the end of my strength training block, and tbh I feel sore - it's been a lot of heavy weights lately. Plus I've had a few old injuries starting to raise their head - back pain being the worst. And my knee - a new problem - has been quite sore in the lunge position.

So I figured a week off will be good. I'm going to try get an osteo or physio appointment, get in a few sauna sessions etc and just take it easy.

At this stage I think I'll just do a 300mm TT this month. I'm still a bit shaken mentally after my last 500m effort, so I need to build that confidence back.
Will report in at the end of the month anyway