Sprints and Stuff- training/questions 1k and below

[left coaster]

BZZZ there it starts. lol.
No worries, I've always viewed the low HR rate UT2 stuff as a way to warm up muscles and clear lactate in an effort to speed recovery. I thought that's why they were called 'recovery' rows lol. I know there are many experts who swear by it, doing those miles has really done nothing for me in terms of speed or endurance. It might be body type.

[christopherregisryan]

BZZZ there it starts. lol.
No worries, I've always viewed the low HR rate UT2 stuff as a way to warm up muscles and clear lactate in an effort to speed recovery. I thought that's why they were called 'recovery' rows lol. I know there are many experts who swear by it, doing those miles has really done nothing for me in terms of speed or endurance. It might be body type.

There is no "right" answer and one size does not fit all. I benefit from both the research people post and from shared experience of other rowers. The longer stuff works for me because aerobic fitness is my weak area. For sure, you should use your own experience to guide you. As for 1k training, I am convinced that you have to do work at 1k pace or faster. Those workouts require recovery time to get improvement. This limits how much of the speed work one can manage. I can recover while doing UT2 as well for the reasons you state, at the same time I am training my aerobic system. All good. - Chris

[G-dub]

I think the reason I didn't feel I got much from a period of UT training was I wasn't doing any lifting and wasn't doing any sprints intervals. I'm not sure that a pure block of just easy aerobic for a length of time is something that works for me. Maybe that has to do with age, body type, an erosion of stroke power or whatever. But going forward, keeping some balance in the training, even if it's slanted one way or the other depending on where I am schedule wise, makes sense to me.

[christopherregisryan]

I think the reason I didn't feel I got much from a period of UT training was I wasn't doing any lifting and wasn't doing any sprints intervals. I'm not sure that a pure block of just easy aerobic for a length of time is something that works for me. Maybe that has to do with age, body type, an erosion of stroke power or whatever. But going forward, keeping some balance in the training, even if it's slanted one way or the other depending on where I am schedule wise, makes sense to me.

In "Fast After 50", Joe Friel says that the most important training to maintain is high intensity. According to the research Friel provides, going long periods without high intensity work will definitely cause some degradation of your ability to go fast. UT is icing on the cake, but AT/TR is essential to getting and staying fast. - Chris

[Shawn Baker]

So to be fair I definitely have some training ADD- I have a hard time sticking to a plan and often have many competing training interests going on at the same time- example of internal dialogue - "do I feel weak? Better get some deadlifts and squats in this week" am I getting slow- go outside and run some sprints, do some jumping or Olympic lifting- starting to get fat drop carbs and do some intermittent fasting- going to do some really hard training or TT throw in a few extra carbs, back a little sore drop down and do some higher reps weights, oh yeah need to do some rowing- what was my goal again? And so on.

When I tried to stick to a plan Xeno gave me with 60-90 minutes of daily LSD stuff I felt awful about the lack of variety and was constantly wondering about what it was doing to my ability to jump, deadlift run sprints etc...- after several months of rowing at 2:05-2:10 I just couldn't take it anymore and had to do something harder- just was getting weaker and my ability to sprint went way down- maybe if I could do it for a year I'm might of gotten more "mitochondrial density" but no way I could sit there and row at a low heart rate and not feel like I was wasting time- played with some lactate stuff and found in order for me to train below 2.0 mmol I would basically have to be asleep- I would be at 2.0 without doing anything and even light rowing didn't clear it out, if I rowed even with slight effort I'd be at 4.0 or higher so I abandoned that stuff as it was entertaining but not helpful.

For the 1k- (for me) I will probably follow something along this vein- lifting 4-5 days a week- 2 fairly heavy, 2 days of speed work (Olympic lifting, jumping, sprinting) maybe 1 day of met con type work- rowing probably also 5-6 days a week- likely 3 of which trying to get around 3-4K of rowing work in probably in the 1:45 range
2 days of intervals around 1k pace hopefully around 1:27, and 1 day of speed work- 1:15 stuff- probably will do quite a few 1k tests just to get used to pacing and the level of discomfort likely involved- this might by some to be seen as too much "hard" work but that is what I've done for 35+ years of training and what seems to get me results- never had any injuries and rarely miss training session- longest I've taken off in 35 years is about a week- also a frequently flopping back and forth from high altitude 5500ft and sea level so need to adjust for that as well

Who else has a plan?

[hjs]

Will try to stay out a bit more, Driving people away is not very usefull

Few pointers Shawn, age you can,t compare yourself to 20/30 years old. Your body reacts less to training.

Improving, the first 90%/95% of improvement comes relative easy and fast, lots of olympic atletes already perform on a very high level around 20. For the rest of there carrier, improvement will be very limited, nomatter what training they will do.

Bottom up approach for 1k. What do you need?

The faster a rower gets the relative closer the splits stay together, due to the watts cube increese.

For a 3.00 min 1k, bottom up. What is needed on average?
500 around 1.22 ish.
And for a 1.22 500, you proberly need a 1.12 lowpull.
2k is roughly 5/6 seconds above 1k again.

For pure sprinters proberly bigger gaps, and vice versa for endurance guys.

Re programs. Shawn, a guy like Ewen pulled 1.18 and 2.55 on powerlifting mostly. Being short 1.83. 200kg squat, 260 deads. Erging was limited.

A guy like Nav Haz. Your age, pulled 2.54 and 121 on very high volume of intervals only on the erg. His blog is/was on the uk side. Every day 500 meter reps or 1min reps. Some rate 24, also lots free rate.

[jackarabit]

Who else has a plan?

Good on you, Doc.

[lindsayh]

Who else has a plan?

Good on you, Doc.

I have a sort of a plan! The usual cycle of things means that we have the IRL 500 in April to end the season which works well after the longer rows of the last few months.
So get the 10k out of the way early in March and then I hope to spend most of the next 2 months with sprint intervals and increase the weights. Pretty simple really but 100m-500m with intervals between 30" and 3 minutes done hard several times a week. The goal (I really shouldn't say this out loud) is to PB the 3 ranking "sprints" by the end of April. All good preparation for racing on may 14 too.
The march CTC is useful too - 9x 300m/30"r
There is a one hour race April 2 that I am flirting with which could be a distraction.

Don't forget also there is the world 1km challenge in March - will try to have a go at that as well.

[left coaster]

That's a good lookin' 1 minute PB Lindsay. Not sure if I've ever pulled at 1:22 yet.

I did the pre programmed 1:40 on, 20 seconds off, interval routine today. Felt good, although I'm a wee bit shredded at the moment. Just in the upper back though, every where else is fine -- rippin' on the djembe for an hour long dance class this evening probably didn't help . I'm thinking some dead lifts and cleans would go a long way to help with the back fatigue. My legs are still like stumps and have never gotten sore from the erg for more than 1/2 a day.

[Shawn Baker]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BB_4QEAjW5s/

More Sam Loch musings

[mdpfirrman]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BB_4QEAjW5s/

More Sam Loch musings

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/S ... story.html

Thought you might find this guy interesting Shawn. He's kind of the opposite of Sam Loch. Former Rugby pro turned rower. Heavy lifting guy now doing more cardio along with strength. His training program is one of the preprogrammed choices for the new IOS app Liverowing. If you get premium, he's one of three trainers that gives you some preprogrammed training workouts. That Liverowing app seems to be heavy on the Cross Fit type of stuff (using the rower as a cardio piece along with strength training).

[ArmandoChavezUNC]

I'm not really engaged with this conversation anymore, but I really wish you'd all get a bit of context with your Sam Loch adulation.

The guy participated in two Olympics, rowed at Princeton University, and rowed in HS before that. He has worked on his aerobic fitness for well over 15 years. He can afford NOT to focus on it now because he worked on it for longer than most of you have been training for. He's not magically pulling ridiculous erg scores by not ever doing any aerobic work.

Here's a quick transcript from an interview he did prior to the Olympics:

(Interviewer) JC: How long is a grossly extended period of cross training in the US College system? What are the kind of sessions you guys did in the winter in order to be rowing fit when you couldn’t actually row?

(Sam Loch) SL: During the winter when the lake’s frozen, we would do sessions that were as long as 2 hours on the rowing machine, which is quite a long time on that particular apparatus. Or on the occasion when the crew was disbanded for disciplinary infractions (not uncommon with college students), we would abuse our access to the communal campus gymnasium and do cardiovascular training on various machines such as stationary bikes, elliptical machines, stair masters, and treadmills for upwards of 3-4 hours.

So all of you using him as proof that you don't need aerobic work in rowing just get a grip on things.

[mdpfirrman]

I honestly see rowing as the perfect marriage between strength and cardio. I don't know if anyone is saying that you don't need one or the other. I guess I see this thread more as the concentration on the strength side versus the cardio side. You can't be a really top rower without both. I lack more on the strength side than the cardio side (but I could stand to improve both). The real challenge for most of us (us average Joe's) is how to train for both cardio and strength and have the time.

Personally, I'm looking at more lifting. I have a decent base from lifting but not done a ton of it recently and never really did power lifting (deads / cleans).

I think most of us need routines that are workable into our busy schedules. This is one I'm looking into:

http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/12/18/ ... our-lifts/

Another is the book Simple and Sinister by Pavel.

I personally need something that I can do within an hour (or much less) 3X or 4X per week and not be too exhausted to row.

[jackarabit]

Excellent post, Armondo.

[Shawn Baker]

I'll just point out

1- the point of this thread is to concentrate on sprinting distances (1k and below)

2- Loch was only able to PB his 1k time after devoting a great deal of time getting stronger (despite a nearly 3 year break from long cardio sessions)

3. Thanks for the link about Sam Blythe- he's been doing quite well the last few years

Armando- no one is saying rowing doesn't require aerobic work- it's definitely true for almost all distances, the question is how much is necessary for successful sprinting- does a good 500m time require 80% ss stuff?, how much for a 1k- conversely how much strength work is needed for the same