Ranger's training thread

[jliddil]

This one is junk, too, would be more accurate as a description.

It's pretty universal these days in the US.

Our companies are getting whipped.

My MacBook Pro is a spectacular machine.

ranger

Junk, like the quality of your teaching based on the reviews I've read. "Your" mac belong to UM. Recent Apple iphones have been ridden with probelms

[luckylindy]

I too can row 1:32 (in my mind) if I unplug the PM.

I now pull 12.5 SPI, across the board.

If I rate 36 spm, I go 1:32--automatically.

I just hold my technique steady, and there it is.

ranger

In all seriousness, wouldn't SPI be much harder to maintain as your SPM increase? I am a brand new rower (1.5 weeks), so I really don't know much, but conceptually it would seem like applying a static force to a fast spinning wheel would be far harder than applying the same force to a wheel that has slowed down considerably (i.e. which would happen at a low SPM).

My only personal example is a 500 time trial I did (I know, very scientific </sarcasm>). At 28-30spm, I could maintain 1:28/500 for ~300m. However, when I tried again at 35-40spm, I could not even hit 1:28 until I slowed down the spm. The idea of maintaining the same approximate power output / stroke across a varied SPM range seems illogical, but maybe I'm missing something.

[KevJGK]

My only personal example is a 500 time trial I did (I know, very scientific </sarcasm>). At 28-30spm, I could maintain 1:28/500 for ~300m. However, when I tried again at 35-40spm, I could not even hit 1:28 until I slowed down the spm. The idea of maintaining the same approximate power output / stroke across a varied SPM range seems illogical, but maybe I'm missing something.

That's a Very impressive effort as you are so new to erging. What are your stats LL? age, weight, height etc.

That 01:28/500 for ~300m shows a fair bit of potential.

[ranger]

In all seriousness, wouldn't SPI be much harder to maintain as your SPM increase? I am a brand new rower (1.5 weeks), so I really don't know much, but conceptually it would seem like applying a static force to a fast spinning wheel would be far harder than applying the same force to a wheel that has slowed down considerably (i.e. which would happen at a low SPM).

My only personal example is a 500 time trial I did (I know, very scientific </sarcasm>). At 28-30spm, I could maintain 1:28/500 for ~300m. However, when I tried again at 35-40spm, I could not even hit 1:28 until I slowed down the spm. The idea of maintaining the same approximate power output / stroke across a varied SPM range seems illogical, but maybe I'm missing something.

Yes, rowing is substantially technical and skeletal-motor.

It is not at all just about aerobic capacity.

Rowing demands a complex combination of quickness, agility, precision, coordination, flexibility, timing, strength, etc.

Ironically, given your example, most experienced and skillful rowers pull at a _higher_ SPI in a 500m trial than in any other trial, including a 2K.

Why?

It isn't very long.

ranger

[ranger]

As it turns out, my erg has indeed been resurrected.

It just needed a rest.



I guess even machines need a couple of days off, now and again.

ranger

[ranger]

My top 1x speed is 1:30 pace
Yours (as stated) is 1:5x pace.... hmmmm

As stated?

I have stated many times that I can easily pull down into the middle 1:40s in .my Fluid.

Next year, I wouldn't be surprised if I get to 1:45 for 500m.

I would be happy with that.

Sure, it's not 1:30, but so it goes.

I am still improving.

I:45 for 500m might predict 1:50 for 1K.

No?

ranger

[ranger]

Junk, like the quality of your teaching based on the reviews I've read. "Your" mac belong to UM. Recent Apple iphones have been ridden with probelms

Actually, I got a 4.7 out of 5.0 on my evaluations in my upper level Williams, Cummmings, and Frost course last semester. And as everyone here likes to say, you're only as good as your last performance.



Even so, along with many others, I'm not sure that student evaluations have much to do with the evaluation of the quality of education, even if my teaching _is_ ranked highly. Student evaluations can vary widely for no substantial reason. One year, I won a college-level teaching award for perfect evaluations, but as you have seen, I have also gotten many very low evaluations. Student evaluations tell us what students want. But it is not clear at all whether that has much to do with educational quality. These days, highest on the list, I think, students want convenience, familiarity/continuity, relevance to their past and present experience, entertainment, and high grades. All of these things reduce anxiety and help low self-esteem, but they don't have anything to do with education. Anything inconvenient, new/unfamiliar, and difficult usually gets wretched student evaluations because it makes students anxious. But unfortunately, most substantial learning, especially at the university level, involves confronting things that are inconvenient, challenging, and unfamiliar. The Wolverine Plan got such bad reviews from Mike Caviston's women rowers that he lost his job at UM, but it also (repeatedly) made his rowers champions. Go figure. Mike wanted his rowers to win; his rowers didn't have enough experience to understand what it takes to win and therefore thought that Mike was demanding something that was unnecessarily inconvenient, unfamiliar, and difficult. Mike was right, but the university believed Mike's rowers, until they started to lose when they no longer followed the Wolverine Plan. Then what happened? After Mike was fired, his women rowers took up the Wolverine Plan again, this time, out of necessity, rather than choice; but, of course, the damage to Mike was already done--beyond repair.

Do you have children? How were your "parental evaluations" on nights/weekends/weeks when your children were grounded for behavior damaging to their own long-term well being?



In a local Jimmy John's I was in recently, by the cash register, there was this saying: "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."

That says a lot about where are are ethically these days, I think. Most students these days do not go to college to gather the types of experience that will help them be good, successful people and social servants for the rest of their life. That is, they don't go to college to get an education. They go to college to get what they want. Therefore, if you try to educate them, rather than give them what they want, they are outraged, infuriated, etc., and express these sentiments when they are asked to evaluate their educational experience.

Luckily, tenure protects both education and my actions as an educator from naive students, crass administrators, jealous colleagues, and, I suppose, uninformed citizens acting on the basis of low motives, such as yourself, who undermine the interests and values of education, such as it is, and such as it always will be. Mike C. didn't have tenure, and so he wasn't protected from the misjudgments of others with more poltical/social power but less good sense and professional experience in the matter at hand, in his case, training for rowing.

Sure, my Mac belongs to UM, but only to my benefit. They repair it, replace it, etc. I even get to keep it when I retire. It is part of my retirement benefits, which also include health care, use of the library, an office, discounts on the use of athletic facilities, and other matters.

ranger

[mikvan52]

wouldn't SPI be much harder to maintain as your SPM increase?

My only personal example is a 500 time trial I did .... At 28-30spm, I could maintain 1:28/500 for ~300m. However, when I tried again at 35-40spm, I could not even hit 1:28 until I slowed down the spm. The idea of maintaining the same approximate power output / stroke across a varied SPM range seems illogical, but maybe I'm missing something.

Logic, mathematics and physics are not the strong points of this thread

SPI, when considered as an arithmetic magnitude, is nothing more than an artifact...much like a firefly after it hits the windshield of a car at 65 mph... It may glow for you for a minute but then it's nothing but a insignificant smear that needs to be wiped away..

Seriously: Look at watts and spm.

spm is a derived arithmetic magnitude from two arithmetic magnitudes: stroke count and time... 4 spm is, then, the double of 2...
watts are another thing: 400 watts (1:35.6 pace) is not twice as fast as 200 watts (2:00.0 pace)... IOW: Watts and speed do not line up one to one, arithmentically

Given that competitive ergers are interested in values that quantify speed in a meaningful way ...consider then...
Conceptually: What happens when you combine these two types of magnitudes by way of division? ... You get a garbage quotient.
Think about it... SPI based measurement as a viable concept "dies" and ends up as "crap on your windshield"... Get out the windex!

ranger evidently likes talking about SPI because of it's suitability for troll-posting...
Any physicist will tell you that, as a concept that quantifies boat speed, it is about a valuable as the color yellow which, parenthetically, is another ranger quality.
Anyway, ranger doesn't post stats to backup any of his claims about it... (more troll technique)

[snowleopard]

Luckily, tenure protects both my salary and pension.

[NavigationHazard]

SPI (watts/rating) is impossible to maintain as rate goes up in part because of the non-linear relationship involved in calculating watts.

The basic C2 formula for watts is 2.8*( 1/((elapsed time in seconds/distance in meters)^3)). Let's say you row 1000m in 3:30 and take 70 strokes to do it. Plugging those values into the watts formula you get 2.8* (1/(210/1000)^3)) = 2.8*(1/(.21^3)) = 2.8*(1/.009261) = 2.8*107.9797 = 302.3 watts. Your rating is 60/(elapsed time in seconds/strokes) = 60/(210/70) = 60/3 = 20.0. SPI therefore is 302.3/20.0 = 15.1.

Now consider trying to row another 1000m at spi 15.1 and rate 30 spm. You're going to need not 302.3 watts but 453 watts (15.1 * 30). That's equivalent to a pace of 1:31.75, or a 1k time of 3:03.5. You'll be rowing about 9% faster in terms of pace. And you'll have to produce roughly 50% more wattage to do so.

If the non-linear increase in watts as pace gets faster weren't enough to discredit the idea of holding spi constant and simply raising the rate, consider also what happens to your stroke cycle. Assume for the purposes of argument a drive of duration 0.7 seconds. At 20 spm a stroke cycle takes 3 seconds, so if your drive takes 0.7 you get 2.3 for recovery and your ratio is roughly 1:3.3. At 30 spm a stroke cycle takes only 2 seconds. If you take that same 0.7 second drive, you now have just 1.3 seconds for recovery (some 43% less time) and your ratio has slipped to about 1:1.9.

Not only are you asking your muscles to work harder at the faster paces implied by constant spi/higher rating (remember the non-linear increase in watts as pace rises). You're also going to be asking them to contract more times on shorter recoveries. For these reasons it is physiologically impossible to hope to hold spi constant and go faster simply by raising the rating. Something has to give, and that's distance/duration. As a general principle, you can't row as far/long at a given spi and a high rating as you can at the same spi and a lower rating. I admit it's possible to construct counterexamples. But any and all of those will involve the manipulation of the starting spi to create the illusion of holding power output per stroke constant. If you're anywhere close to as hard as you can, it simply cannot be done.

[jliddil]

Luckily, tenure protects both education and my actions as an educator from naive students, crass administrators, jealous colleagues, and, I suppose, uninformed citizens acting on the basis of low motives, such as yourself, who undermine the interests and values of education, such as it is, and such as it always will be.
ranger

Ha, love it. I struck a nerve. Substitute "unions" for the word tenure, except tenure does nothing to protect education. All it does is protect those who aren't intrinsically motivated enough to do a good job from getting the ax.

[ranger]

Luckily, tenure protects both education and my actions as an educator from naive students, crass administrators, jealous colleagues, and, I suppose, uninformed citizens acting on the basis of low motives, such as yourself, who undermine the interests and values of education, such as it is, and such as it always will be.
ranger

Ha, love it. I struck a nerve. Substitute "unions" for the word tenure, except tenure does nothing to protect education. All it does is protect those who aren't intrinsically motivated enough to do a good job from getting the ax.

Tenure keeps someone like me from getting the ax?

Indeed it does.

But then again, if we didn't have tenure in higher education, it would become _Lord of the Flies_, as we now already have in secondary education, due to leftist schools of education, which believe that students should get what they want, and if they do, the teaching is good.

Stupid stuff.

ranger

[ranger]

SPI (watts/rating) is impossible to maintain as rate goes up in part because of the non-linear relationship involved in calculating watts.

Balderdash.

Everyone who rows well does it.

It is built right into the pace and rate schedule for the IP plan.

ranger

[PaulH]

SPI (watts/rating) is impossible to maintain as rate goes up in part because of the non-linear relationship involved in calculating watts.

The basic C2 formula for watts is 2.8*( 1/((elapsed time in seconds/distance in meters)^3)). Let's say you row 1000m in 3:30 and take 70 strokes to do it. Plugging those values into the watts formula you get 2.8* (1/(210/1000)^3)) = 2.8*(1/(.21^3)) = 2.8*(1/.009261) = 2.8*107.9797 = 302.3 watts. Your rating is 60/(elapsed time in seconds/strokes) = 60/(210/70) = 60/3 = 20.0. SPI therefore is 302.3/20.0 = 15.1.

Now consider trying to row another 1000m at spi 15.1 and rate 30 spm. You're going to need not 302.3 watts but 453 watts (15.1 * 30). That's equivalent to a pace of 1:31.75, or a 1k time of 3:03.5. You'll be rowing about 9% faster in terms of pace. And you'll have to produce roughly 50% more wattage to do so.

If the non-linear increase in watts as pace gets faster weren't enough to discredit the idea of holding spi constant and simply raising the rate, consider also what happens to your stroke cycle. Assume for the purposes of argument a drive of duration 0.7 seconds. At 20 spm a stroke cycle takes 3 seconds, so if your drive takes 0.7 you get 2.3 for recovery and your ratio is roughly 1:3.3. At 30 spm a stroke cycle takes only 2 seconds. If you take that same 0.7 second drive, you now have just 1.3 seconds for recovery (some 43% less time) and your ratio has slipped to about 1:1.9.

Not only are you asking your muscles to work harder at the faster paces implied by constant spi/higher rating (remember the non-linear increase in watts as pace rises). You're also going to be asking them to contract more times on shorter recoveries. For these reasons it is physiologically impossible to hope to hold spi constant and go faster simply by raising the rating. Something has to give, and that's distance/duration. As a general principle, you can't row as far/long at a given spi and a high rating as you can at the same spi and a lower rating. I admit it's possible to construct counterexamples. But any and all of those will involve the manipulation of the starting spi to create the illusion of holding power output per stroke constant. If you're anywhere close to as hard as you can, it simply cannot be done.

Or to summarize in a way that even ranger might grasp, constant SPI doesn't just get harder as the rate goes up, it gets more harder

[NavigationHazard]

As a general principle, you can't row as far/long at a given spi and a high rating as you can at the same spi and a lower rating. I admit it's possible to construct counterexamples. But any and all of those will involve the manipulation of the starting spi to create the illusion of holding power output per stroke constant. If you're anywhere close to as hard as you can, it simply cannot be done.

Not balderdash. Truth. Incontrovertable physiological truth. A subset of a larger set of truths you obstinately refuse to acknowledge. But then when you're a muppet, and your head is packed full of shredded clippings, it's not surprising that new ideas like tying your shoes and days of the week and potty training and maths are difficult.

Go ahead. prove me wrong. Row a 500m piece flat out r20. Compute your spi. Now try to row that spi for 500m at r50. It cannot be done.