New Concept2 Owner (semi-new to rowing)

[thecrashton]

Hi All,

Name's Chris. I am 31 y/o, 6'6 (200cm) tall, 220lbs
Excited to be part of the forum! Also hoping I'm posting this in the right section!

I am an Olympic Weightlifter and do some crossfit workouts on my own occasionally.
Typically for aerobic training in the spring/summer I run anywhere from 15-30kms/week but once it gets cold I have no interest in running so in the past I've purchased gym memberships and done some rowing/kettlebell/burpee/sprint/etc circuit workouts for the winters.
Never paid much attention to the details like splits, stroke rate, etc. usually just raced a pace boat at the default 30:00 / 5kms or did 250m springs in circuits.

This year I decided to bite the bullet and purchased a Concept2 Model C w/ Pm2 used for a really good price. I have started to pay far closer to attention to things like my splits and SPM. Really excited to row my first 2k test in 2 weeks' time!

3 weeks ago I started a 12-week program I obtained from breakingmuslce.com (apparently programmed by an Olympic rowing athlete), which places alot of emphasis on maintaining powerful but slow strokes (anywhere from 20-28 spm) and increasing intensity while decreasing distances each week starting on Mondays. Power 10s, 500m sprints, 5k's, negative splitting, etc.

I love it so far. I feel that my splits are getting faster, my breathing has improved ten-fold in top-effort sprints, and I'm crushing longer and longer distances without dying. I'm not necessarily trying to max out my speed and splits when I do these longer distances just yet, just trying to build some aerobic capacity.
Monday I rowed 40 minutes/8240 meters, average 25spm with an average split of 2:25 and I felt pretty good.

That said, I have a few questions that have been nipping at me that I'm hoping some of you fine folks might help me answer...

1) I am sure some of you noticed my height. I have NO idea where my footholds should be. I've been rowing with 3 holes showing which has felt fine to me but I'm noticing the front of my shin is getting tight after long workouts and I'm needing to hit it with lax balls and pressure to relieve the feeling. I figure this must be in relation to the angle at which my lower and upper leg meet at the catch and from where I push off. Any thoughts?

2) Any stroke rate higher than 32-34spm feels virtually impossible to me. Is this because of my height? I can sprint a 1:40 split with a 32spm but I literally feel as if there is no way I can possibly get faster than that (have seen 1:35-1:38 flicker on screen a few times briefly). Or is this something that just comes with time, technique, and hard work?

3) The PM2... will this older monitor hold me back at all? It gives me watts, stroke rate, distance and split which at this time is all I need, in my opinion, but in the future how much could a PM5 benefit my training?

4) Is the 2k a sort of gold-standard benchmark for rowing ability/fitness? For a relatively new rower, what kind of finish-time is considered good? I'm not looking to row a sub 7-minute my first try!

I will look to post up some training data soon, and hope that folks will chime in with suggestions, comments, anything!


Cheers all, look forward to getting to know everyone better.
Chris

[Fish out of water]

Hi All,

Name's Chris. I am 31 y/o, 6'6 (200cm) tall, 220lbs
Excited to be part of the forum! Also hoping I'm posting this in the right section!

I am an Olympic Weightlifter and do some crossfit workouts on my own occasionally.
Typically for aerobic training in the spring/summer I run anywhere from 15-30kms/week but once it gets cold I have no interest in running so in the past I've purchased gym memberships and done some rowing/kettlebell/burpee/sprint/etc circuit workouts for the winters.
Never paid much attention to the details like splits, stroke rate, etc. usually just raced a pace boat at the default 30:00 / 5kms or did 250m springs in circuits.

This year I decided to bite the bullet and purchased a Concept2 Model C w/ Pm2 used for a really good price. I have started to pay far closer to attention to things like my splits and SPM. Really excited to row my first 2k test in 2 weeks' time!

3 weeks ago I started a 12-week program I obtained from breakingmuslce.com (apparently programmed by an Olympic rowing athlete), which places alot of emphasis on maintaining powerful but slow strokes (anywhere from 20-28 spm) and increasing intensity while decreasing distances each week starting on Mondays. Power 10s, 500m sprints, 5k's, negative splitting, etc.

I love it so far. I feel that my splits are getting faster, my breathing has improved ten-fold in top-effort sprints, and I'm crushing longer and longer distances without dying. I'm not necessarily trying to max out my speed and splits when I do these longer distances just yet, just trying to build some aerobic capacity.
Monday I rowed 40 minutes/8240 meters, average 25spm with an average split of 2:25 and I felt pretty good.

That said, I have a few questions that have been nipping at me that I'm hoping some of you fine folks might help me answer...

1) I am sure some of you noticed my height. I have NO idea where my footholds should be. I've been rowing with 3 holes showing which has felt fine to me but I'm noticing the front of my shin is getting tight after long workouts and I'm needing to hit it with lax balls and pressure to relieve the feeling. I figure this must be in relation to the angle at which my lower and upper leg meet at the catch and from where I push off. Any thoughts?

2) Any stroke rate higher than 32-34spm feels virtually impossible to me. Is this because of my height? I can sprint a 1:40 split with a 32spm but I literally feel as if there is no way I can possibly get faster than that (have seen 1:35-1:38 flicker on screen a few times briefly). Or is this something that just comes with time, technique, and hard work?

3) The PM2... will this older monitor hold me back at all? It gives me watts, stroke rate, distance and split which at this time is all I need, in my opinion, but in the future how much could a PM5 benefit my training?

4) Is the 2k a sort of gold-standard benchmark for rowing ability/fitness? For a relatively new rower, what kind of finish-time is considered good? I'm not looking to row a sub 7-minute my first try!

I will look to post up some training data soon, and hope that folks will chime in with suggestions, comments, anything!


Cheers all, look forward to getting to know everyone better.
Chris

Hi Chris and welcome. I'm relatively new to this so you'll get some much better responses from others, but as an Olympic weightlifter and your height and weight, you are doing something significantly wrong with your form to be pulling with such low power. I would recommend watching the form videos on the concept2 website and probably it would be very helpful to post a video of you rowing so that the people on here can fix your stroke. I think you'll be pulling MUCH faster than that soon. I think you'll see rapid improvement quickly with help from everyone on this forum, they're all super helpful and generous with their time and you seem to have the perfect background to excel at erging. Good luck with your training, I'm finding it quite addictive and hope you get hooked too.

[Bob S.]

#1 The strap should go over the ball of the foot. For your height that is likely to be just one hole showing. The angle between shin and thigh is not the critical issue. Just don't let your shins go past vertical.

#2 For your height 32 spm is fine, even for a 2k time trial. For the shorter pieces, it would help to go higher. For long distance and endurance training, it can be a lot less.

#3 You also need the draft factor. There was another post on this forum just today than said that you can get the draft factor on the PM2 and it tells how. The one thing you can't do is use a log card (or USB stick) to conveniently transfer data to your computer. I don't know about heart rate measurement, which is available on the later model monitors.

#4 With your size and age, 6:30 or better is a reasonable, eventual goal.

As Fish out of water said, check out the C2 website and spend some time surfing it. The is a load of useful information on it about technique and use of drag factor. One especially useful page is one that covers common technique errors and how to correct them.

Bob S.

[jamesg]

Name's Chris. I am 31 y/o, 6'6 (200cm) tall, 220lbs

With that shape and size you need to be aboard a racing shell.

1) foot height is critical to posture. The lower the better, it lets us swing forward and so put more weight on the feet and take a faster and harder catch with the legs, while keeping the shin-thigh angle open to improve the muscle-bone geometry and so the leverage: the same muscle tension then gives far more thrust to the feet.
2) high ratings are used only in very short sprints; 90% or more of work is done at 20-22. At your size you'll never need or want to go over 30 on the erg, it would be impossible to pull a full length stroke, so going higher would slow you down by cutting off the work in the stroke. Afloat it's different, the Olympic course in eights these days is done at 38 all the way, because boats have different dynamics and gearing.
3) keep the drag low so that you can move fast during the stroke, slow during the recovery
4) a UK erger with your size got well below 6 minutes in a 2k, rating 28-30. Olympic HW oarsmen are your size and go even faster.

Monday I rowed 40 minutes/8240 meters, average 25spm with an average split of 2:25 and I felt pretty good.

So I should hope, that's just a stroll. Even I do more than that, and I'm 75y, 84 kg, 188 height. Learn to row, you'll know what hit you.

To learn to row, best way is always a coach and a boatclub. Failing these, lengthen the stroke and watch your Watt/Rating ratio. You can reach 15 easily (300W at 20 rating). At the moment (if 8k/40' at 25 is typical) you are at 115 W, 4.5 W' per stroke. There are light weight ladies who pull twice that much.

[hjs]

You could give some more data. For instance what number do have on the lifts.
And there is something not going well, for a guy you age and build you are more or less walking pacewise. So either your technique is very off or you are taking it very easy.

[thecrashton]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies so far. I Should have mentioned that the 8840m I posted was quite leisurely... just some distance rowing.
I just don't have any "testing" numbers to throw out there just yet, so thought that would suffice.

I played around with some strap settings this morning and paid more attention to my posture and lean back/forward being sure to not overexaggerate. I found that I felt much better with only one-hole showing on the foothold. I was able to hold a 1:35 split for my Power 10's which I was happy to see.

I guess I'm still a little bit lost with respect to how hard I should be training for distance work. Power 10s and sprints are easy, I just go hard and fast. The distance stuff I always get into a bit of a comfort zone I suppose and am worried if I push too hard I'll get gassed for the rest of the row.
Thank you for the tip about the watts... any statistic beside split and SPM is pretty alien to me still at this point... so having a baseline reference for wattage helps out immensely.

I'm thinking I need to pull a lot harder, that's what it sounds like to me anyways. I didn't realize that such a low (20-22) stroke rate was the norm for distance rowing. I am definitely putting too many strokes in and not pulling hard enough (demonstrated by my watts).

Is wattage a good baseline indicator of how HARD I'm working, versus how fast I'm moving or how many strokes I'm putting in per minute?

Thanks again all! Will post some more rows soon for some feedback

[Bob S.]

The key to a strong stroke is making sure that you get the most out of your legs. The sequence is important here. The drive starts with a good, hard push with the legs and finishes with the arms which are far weaker than the legs. For that reason there should be very little overlap; you don't want to have the arms trying to compete with the much stronger legs. Your elbows should not start to bend until your knees are almost straight - and the reverse on the recovery; your hands should clear your knees before they start to come up on the recovery. The backswing bridges the other 2 movements. One way to check on proper sequencing is to row with the straps unfastened - only at very low rates on the first try. If you feel that you might fall over backwards, it means that you are starting the arm pull too early.

[maestroak]

Is wattage a good baseline indicator of how HARD I'm working, versus how fast I'm moving or how many strokes I'm putting in per minute?

Thanks again all! Will post some more rows soon for some feedback

People use wattage and it's important to note that it varies cubically with pace, so while pace can tell you one workout is harder than the other, it's wattage that tells you how much harder. That's why people are reacting to the time you posted, a fairly leisurely pace for me is 2min/500m even at 40min, which is almost 90% more wattage than what you posted. It's reflective of either poor form or undershooting your effort, probably a combination of both. You may want to start trying to hit 10w per stroke, which is considered a reasonable powerful stroke. That would require rowing 2min/500m at 20 strokes per minute. It is 1:52min/500 at 25 strokes per minute. You may not be able to maintain that type of stroke for a long period of time but there is no question you should be able to generate that type of power with a reasonable stroke. So if you can't, it's most likely a technique issue. Once you get your technique down you should be able to start knocking out longer distances with similar power or slightly less power with a bit higher stroke rate.

-Steve

[jadomatis]

On your distance rows (anything 30mins or longer), I highly recommend busting out a heart rate monitor and trying to maintain constant level of effort so that HR stays 70 - 75% of your maximum heart rate. When HR is in zone, focus on maintaining same stroke rate and level of effort on each stroke. Once you can maintain those constants, you can begin tweaking your stroke for more power at the same level of effort so that your HR remains the same.

That's the way I've been approaching it anyway....

[jamesg]

8840 m/40 min is a bit better than 8240 - 140W, fine for now.

Distance is done by using a long strong fast stroke, but at low rating (so slow recovery). The idea is to use the same stroke (as to length and force) in training and in racing, just a lot more of them per minute.

Watts is the direct measurement of the power we deliver to the machine and so also of the workout "Intensity".

Most of us also use heart rate to control intensity, especially when fitness is changing fast. The erg has added Watts to our control system, so we can see both exactly what we are doing in Watts and also our CV systems' reaction, at least as to HR. I'd guess you can train well at HR 150.


All this won't help your weight lifting much, so you may need to choose priorities.

[thecrashton]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the help so far.

Good news - I fixed a few issues. First, I printed the manual for my PM2 and realized that just because it's an older monitor, it can still do a lot of great stuff and I hadn't been using it to it's full potential.
So with manual in hand the first thing I did was check my drag factor. I had been rowing with the damper set in between 4 and 5, which turns out was only a drag factor of 100. I bumped up the damper to between 6 and 7 which gave me a DF of 135 ... that felt much, MUCH better and in just testing that setting, I was able to quite effortlessly reach 1:50~ split time which previously I was going balls to the wall to hit.

Secondly I rowed strapless, which made me realize I was leaning back a BIT too far - wasn't falling backward but feeling unbalanced and had trouble recovering. I rowed like this for a while paying close attention to folding at the hips first on the recovery and making sure my hamstrings weren't pulling me back.

Third I learned how to set up non-default split intervals, etc. and learned how to use the recall functions to go back and view each individual split time, along with the wattage per interval. This is HUGE, I guess I had discounted the PM2 because it doesn't have everything preset at the touch of a button or two. But I learned the button-press combinations and already can see what a huge benefit some of these tools will be.

SO, that said... I did my workout this morning - felt like a lot more work than I was previously doing, and I was WAY more gassed after my splits than I was for previous workouts. I was definitely undershooting my effort big time.

I've posted up some of the data below which I feel much better about. My workout was 10' wu / 6 x 500m @ Race Pace, 2' rest in between, 10' cd
It's tricky for me to maintain a precise stroke rate while trying to maintain an equally precise split time, but I'm trying. This was my first workout with the new damper setting, and you'll see immediately that I absolutely blew myself up on my first split and suffered horribly for the remaining 5. It's SUPPOSED to be negative splits, but I obviously failed hard at that. I will continue working on timing and pacing with the new damper setting - I will get the hang of it, but for now, I am pleased with these results and was just excited to feel like I'm on the right track and getting the machine and my technique figured out! Any and all input about the below is welcome.

My average wattage was 256 for the session as a whole, but obviously that 326 watts first skewed the results quite a bit.

10' warmup
1:42.3 (326 watts)
1:52.9
1:54.8
1:53.4
1:52.3
1:52.1
10' cooldown

[Carl Watts]

Keep working on 30 to 40 minute sessions, with your age, height and weight you should be smashing your current pace.

I suspect your cardio system needs a lot of work for distance related rows, its going to take you into a zone you just don't go with weights.

Essentially you sound a bit like me, 34 spm was my limit for the 500m, just cannot rate higher. These days its even worse, everything is getting done at 20 spm.

Good luck and keep us posted with your times.

[bisqeet]

Great wingspan....
I'm a cm shorter and a few years older and have been rowing regularly now for 6 months min 5x week. Now approaching my season 2 mill.
My splits are down from 2:00 @ 26 spm to 1:56 @ 26 spm for distances upto Hm.

Watch some of the training videos, and get some time on the seat.
Meters markets the ergo-er

Justify some reference I also increased the drag from 100 to 130 and found it better. But I would first work on the technique before doing this. Try getting rid of any bad habits before working on the power.
I try to keep the power of the stroke constant and adjust the pace via Spm

2:05 is 20 spm
1:55 = 26 spm
1:45 = 30 spm

I have a lot of trouble exceeding 34 spm for any differences and possibly could only achieve it by shortening the drive and losing distance on the stroke.

[thecrashton]

Thanks for the replies fellas.
Dean - do you find that 26spm is a good sustainable stroke rate for those distances?

I ask because I'm finding it tricky to get my stroke rate below 22-24 for any amount of time without taking a very noticeable pause at the finish before my recovery. That's not for a lack of effort, I am paying close attention to, and focussing very hard on, slowing down my recovery, but I still can't really get anything sustained below 22 or so.

I read in another thread that a pause at the finish was a bad habit to get into, so I've tried to stop doing that as I was using a pause to help me slow down my SPM.
That said, I'm capable of pulling fairly hard at those lower speeds.

This morning I pulled 5000m in 20:30 which I was attempting to do at a low-rate and steady pace. I was trying to keep as close to a 2:00 split as I could and ended up with 2:03. I need to work more on my tempo for sure, which is where I need to figure out my stroke rate and recovery. My SPM for that 5k was 24.

I think that perhaps the volume of leg training I do (heavy squats 3x / week) in addition to complex movements like cleans and snatches on other days, lots of chins and pullups, etc. and the fact that I do all my rowing fasted early AM is holding me back somewhat, but that's something that's not going to change so I just need to keep working on my aerobic capacity and muscular endurance.

I definitely feel like my technique is getting better as I'm pulling faster and more consistent splits at lower rates but I still have a long way to go in piecing together how to form a quicker split time with an ever-decreasing rate for distance work.

[Galeere]

Welcome to erging and the Forum. To answer your latest question maybe look at the following vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ82RYIFLN8
The lady is utilizing a low stroke rate by recovering slowly. It takes a while to get used to that kind of movement because it feels weird/unnatural; so I had the same difficulties but after a while was able to master those. It might have something to do with the auxiliary muscles needed for balance.
Regarding sustainable stroke rate on long distances my Rating is very simliar with Deans. So my natural rate on an hour or longer is 26 SPM; it was 27 when I ran for time and averaged around 1:58.6. But this is somewhat individual; the longer your stroke (depending on length/wingspan of the rower) the lower the average rate is. Also it is much higher on short distances. There are ergers going above 50 on a 500m, but they are probably smaller than you and are also probably not doing a full stroke at this kind of rating. All in all you have to test for your own what gives you the best results, always making sure to use a proper technique.
Cheers Hardy