Concept2 Forum

I'd never rowed before in my life prior to about thirty days ago....then, because I was fed up with the local pools and gyms closing or cutting back on hours, I bought an Erg and set it up in my den. I launched into some youtube videos for a couple of weeks, and then got serious and have been downloading, rowing and synching the WOD's on Erg Data since the sixth of August (this month). My first 10K was yesterday (WOD) with an eye-openingly fair-to-poor result based on what others in my age group posted. Due to some injuries earlier in life and some joint degeneration later, I've had two knees and recently one hip totally replaced...because of this, for many years I'd been swimming rather than doing anything else involving gravity. The knees and hip are fully recovered, but I started to notice that I was losing/had lost a lot of muscle mass because of being confined due to pool closures during COVID and having had to wait for my turn for a hip surgery slot to become available. Anyway, within this past month of rowing I've noticed that it's become demonstrably easier to walk and ascend/descend stairs without pain, which is undoubtedly due to muscle strength improvement. Therefore, I'd like to maximize the Concept2 sitting in my tv room to its full potential, using it to rebuild overall muscle strength now, and adding the occasional swim workout when the pool fully reopens in the coming months.

Based on the above, my question is whether or not continuing to do solely the C2 WOD's every day will be sufficient to accomplish my goal to combat/slow down muscle loss, or should I specifically incorporate longer-duration rowing sessions in addition to the WOD's (or, as the C2 site says, just double the WOD)? If I should be adding on, how often of each, etc.? Because rowing is a little bit foreign to me I don't want to screw up making progress.

Full disclosure: I'm turning 69 in a couple of weeks, am 179cms and weigh 90 kilos (5 feet, 10 and 1/2 inches at 198 pounds), neither really fat nor really skinny).

Thanks in advance for any advice.....

Hi, and welcome to the forum.
If you are rowing every day then I don’t think the WOD is a good way to go. I must admit I don’t look every day but whenever I look they are pretty intense workouts - if done properly - and so you are at risk of over training.
What training regime you should follow depends on your long term goals. If it’s general health and fitness then base most of your seasons on long, slow steady state sessions, with a WOD thrown in once a week for interest and a bit of sharpness. If you want to start moving up the leader boards in certain distances then you need to work specifically on those, but again, you still wouldn’t need more than 2 or three hard sessions a week.

First of all, huge respect that you didn't just sit on a sofa and feel sorry for yourself.

I don't ever do the WODs, but as a general rule longer slower sessions will develop your fitness and help you lose weight. Muscular development will probably only happen to a fairly limited extent, but it's definitely beneficial.

Imo, I'd say that you use your gut feeling as to what to do. Recovery is essential for longevity as you probably know, so when you're feeling energetic double the distance if you feel like it's possible, and reduce / avoid it when you're feeling tired.

There's no exact science, but as you're essentially just forcing your body to adapt to the effort, and then recovering in a stronger position to be better prepared to handle it, you just need to be mindful of what you're feeling like and how you're reacting.

Possibly a bigger consideration is to get your technique perfected so you're, being more efficient and less susceptible to injury. There are lots of C2 videos to watch on YouTube.