Concept2 Forum

Hi I’m new here and somewhat new to the indoor rowing thing. I’m 54, 77kg and returning to rowing after a long absence. (1983). I’ve joined a rowing club and am looking to race on the water again. And to go hard at the Concept2 firstly as a training tool but also for indoor competition as a lightweight. My 1000 pb is 3:30.3, and as a newbie I’m hoping I can cut a good whack off that and my 500m time.) The masters rowing distance is 1000m but it seems to me that a lot of the focus here is on the 2000m. I was speaking to a club member (an age group national champion) and she put a lot of emphasis on the fact she trained specifically for 1000m whereas a lot of her competitors were doing 2000m programs.
I’ve had a look at The Pete Plan and it looks good, but I was wondering if there was an equivalent focussed on 1000m.
Or should I just do it for a few months to build a base then get more intense for two months prior to racing. (All going well I might have a crack at the NSW masters in May)
Also, I haven’t seen anyone here talk about weights. I imagine I should be working on my squats. Are squat jumps still a thing? I hear Shawn Baker talk about the ability to deliver force rapidly and it seems like they’d be a good way to do it.
We also used to run a lot of 400s. Is that still a thing? Or does the risk of injury make such things not worth it.
Cheers
Mark Whittaker
Berry NSW

Imo the 2k Pete Plan will have a lot of transferable benefits as the 1k is getting into the aerobic fitness zone. If you add in some 1250 intervals too you'll be fine.

For the 1250s I'd also sometimes do these as broken down into 700m 2 mins rest; 300m 2 mins rest and then 250m or 800m then 450m on 2 mins rest, but do these at slightly faster than target pace.

As for squats etc, they will help but it's anyone's guess how much they will help and I'm not sure at your age that you will get much better results than if you just focus on rowing and generally getting fitter.

This is an interesting looking 1K plan I’m about to try:
https://assets.omidoo.com/sites/default ... r1krow.pdf

The weights subject is very interesting and pops up every now and again. There doesn't seem to be a great consensus on whether it's really necessary, other than for the super-short distances. Apparently Eric Murray didn't do much lifting, and he did okay although he may naturally have been already very strong

Injury prevention through Pilates or other core work and anterior chain work to balance out the rowing is a different beast, and I think most people would be in favour of that.

Lots of the regular posters lift to some extent. Paul (Gammmmo), JMac and Martin lift or have lifted quite seriously (apologies to anyone I've left out) and are all very strong.

StrengthCoachWill has talked about strength reducing perceived exertion for every stroke (so favours getting stronger through conventional strength training to support the rowing), while others use high reps to work on endurance.

Others have suggested that limit strength is almost an irrelevance and that strength endurance is what's needed. Provided you can LP something like 2k-x (I can't remember the value of x suggested - perhaps 10 to 15), then you're strong enough for your current level of fitness.

G-dub wrote: ↑

December 27th, 2019, 12:54 pm

This is an interesting looking 1K plan I’m about to try:
https://assets.omidoo.com/sites/default ... r1krow.pdf

It would be really interesting if you could post your training and progress on this programme, as Jim did with his 2k training.

Thanks for those responses. Perhaps I will do Pete’s Plan for 8 weeks and then G-Dub’s one for 8. I note that it includes one lifting exercise per training day. Would that be performed immediately after the row?

It would seem to me that if I was doing a modified version of PP for 1K, I would shorten the speed intervals in half. So 250s and 500s instead of 500s and 1Ks.

Also in the original post, it talks about using PP to build a base. It’s not really a base building program as I understand it. Rather it’s an intense program to get ready for 2K. Some have used it for multiple cycles, but it’s pretty challenging.

Mark, 1000m may be the usual Masters distance in Australia (and Scotland) but in most of the world, including the World Championships, us oldies (I'm 68) are expected to row 2000m on the ergs along with the youngsters. As an alternative 500m is also often offered. So we train for that.

Where I live in the South West fo England local on the water regatta races are mostly determined by the available length of water, so in Exeter their summer regatta is 500m, at Wimbleball it is 1000m and at Totnes there are both 1k and 2k courses, all irrespective of the age of the participants. Head races and coastal scull races are longer, locally varying between 3.5km and 16 km.

I'd expect that most training plans such as the Pete Plan to be similarly effective for a range of distances: I certainly find that my own performance envelope is pretty consistent from 1000m up to 10,000m with pace vs the logarithm of distance being linear, however I train. Shorter stuff (100m - 500m) is faster than you might expect as it allows you to use more muscle groups and is more anaerobic.

Amazing Amazon wrote: ↑

December 28th, 2019, 4:41 pm

Mark, 1000m may be the usual Masters distance in Australia (and Scotland) but in most of the world, including the World Championships, us oldies (I'm 68) are expected to row 2000m on the ergs along with the youngsters. As an alternative 500m is also often offered. So we train for that.

Marjorie I think mark is referring to Masters OTW not OTE (here in Oz is the same as everywhere else on the erg - 2k is the standard). Masters Games and other race days OTE will have 2k/1k/500 and from what I understand the Masters OTW is 1k all over the world.

I agree with Glenn - doing the Pete Plan as a fitness plan in my observation is really hard to sustain beyond 3 cycles of 3 weeks and is definitely better as a specific 2k preparation. Core fitness is really important to the 1k though and long steady cardio pieces with harder AN intervals is a good plan. 250/300/500/750s would all be pretty good maybe twice a week approaching the race season.

G-dub wrote: ↑

December 27th, 2019, 12:54 pm

This is an interesting looking 1K plan I’m about to try:
https://assets.omidoo.com/sites/default ... r1krow.pdf

Hi, do you know the source of this plan? It looks really interesting. Quite well thought out. I caught one typo on the final week. The workout calls out 4x250, but gives stroke rates for 6 reps. I think you want to do 4.

Edit: A little googling to the rescue! I found the description of the plan. It was written by Ellen Tomek (2 time olympian), pretty good source. She says that the weights are designed to be done 15-50 minutes after the rowing workout.

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/8-we ... ter-1k-row

Greg and others, there a few good plans on that site. It’s name at first seems to be a barrier (Breaking Muscle) but to your point the plans are made by an Olympian rower and seem to cover the bases well. I find them to be good for me, not too over the top in terms of the volume of intensity. I’m finding less and less desire to do 4 x 1K 5’R at 2K+1/2 these days !

I think SC Will said if you can do it, weight training split apart from aerobic work is best. Like do one in morning and one in afternoon. I have that luxury and will probably do it that way.

I’m thinking about the plan for the 8 weeks from may to the end of June when I’m on the water.
I’d row and then drive to work and lift in the gym. About an hour between maybe.

I think I’d need to go heavy on the volume until then the have an aerobic base that lasts through the decrease in steady state minutes in the plan though. I lose aerobic fitness really fast.

Maybe I just have not looked at the plan closely enough, but my first impression is that it is a bit much and misses the mark somewhat for 1K. It seems like a lot of meters to me. And I really do not much like the interval layout, etc. The eye rejects it. The only plan that I've liked even a little is the Interactive Plan which is, I believe, no longer available. I do sets of a few shorter intervals with sufficient recovery [<500m], time trials less than race distance, brisk rows > race distance, and a few longer, slower rows. Keep it simple.

if you guys don't like these plans, don't be afraid to come up with your own

this post is from an exercise physiologist who's more focused on cross-fit but it's actually pretty instructive for what we're going for here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B6a0O0SHhyj ... _copy_link

In terms of energy systems, the 1,000 (let's assume around 3 minutes) is going to be in between an 800 meter run and a 1600 meter run. In other words, it's going to use a mix of anaerobic glycolysis and aerobic glycolysis. Interestingly, so does the 2K for most athletes. The difference is the anaerobic contribution is going to be more important, but even so will still not provide the majority of the energy you're using.

So, you can see hear the energy systems you need, and you can probably figure out how to train them. Aerobic glycolysis is your standard "intensive aerobic." People will do intervals they call "threshold," or "tempo" or "Vo2max", but really, anything that gets your heart rate up to a fairly high percentage of your max will do the trick. And i'm not even sure that the actual distance / duration matters all that much, as long as the combination of duration and intensity is high enough to induce the central cardiovascular adaptations that you're after. But if the intervals are short, rest probably also has to be short.

And, as you can see, it'll be helpful to improve the output of your anaerobic energy system. Remember the anaerobic system is not rate-limited (like the aerobic) but it is finite. So this means intervals 30s to 2 mins, with plenty of rest between them (with less rest, they gradually shift to more working lactate clearance and your aerobic fitness).

then, because you can't work out hard all the time, everything else is easy aerobic. Even though aerobic lypolisis is not really much of a contributor here, going low and slow promotes peripheral adaptations (mitochondrial density) that improve slowly but can keep improving basically forever, and which will help you out at every duration. And, being active and getting the blood flowing aids recovery.

So then to design a trainign plan. remember that your training plan should first and foremost be about where you are right now, and only secondarily be about where you want to go. In other words, if you're working out twice a week and both rows are easy, jumping straight into 6x per week with 3 hard days will not lead you to success. People use a rule of thumb of 10% increase in volume / "training strain" per week, but it's only a starting point. you can figure out what works for you.

so, based on where you are right now, how many hard trainigns can you tolerate per week? that number of hard trainings is your "budget." how you spend that budget depends on where you are in your pre-competition cycle and your own individual priorities. Like, if the race is 6 months away, i'd put aside the anaerobic stuff for now and focus on workouts that build your aerobic capacity. Some of these should be the hard aerobic discussed above, the rest should be easy. Throw in some sprints (https://www.outsideonline.com/2405167/s ... g-research); you can do these without really taxing your CV system, just like weight lifting.

And then start building it up, adding about 10% per week. And experiment with rest weeks, where you, say, cut the volume in half. I like to do three weeks on, one week off, but i've also tried 4 on and 2 on. During base building i don't really take rest weeks, during pre-competition, i take them a lot.

Later on, closer to the competition, swap out a hard aerobic for some anaerobic intervals. record what you do so that you can see what seems to work and what doesn't, and then watch the GAINZ pile up