Concept2 Forum

Hi guys,

fairly new to this forum and hope I can get some insights here into proper training which I seem to struggle with.

Body data:
94 KG
188cm tall
37 years
HFmax 203 (recent running test)
From Germany

I restarted my rowing efforts for two reasons:

1) weight loss
2) training of aerobic base

The second point is crucial to me as in running and HIIT training I almost immediately jump zone 2 and go straight to zone 5s in a HIIT training (and I mean after 5 mins or so). So zone 2 training for running was not enjoyable for me, so I had to choose between bike or rower.

And based on my stats I am wondering if this is correct, please have look at my rowing of this morning.
This is basicially my zone 2 max after 6 weeks of rowing for half an hour, trying to stay in my zone 2 (hf capped at 140).

That is 93 watts for 30 minutes with this body weight is 0,99 W/kg. Isn't that way tooo low for my age group even if under trained? (Which you can argue after 4 weeks of training 3 days). I have no disease or anything up until now.

Or is this supposed to be normal? I can go up to lets say 105 Watts maybe with further training still stay in that 140s HF range but thats it.
I have read that untrained is more like 1.5KGs/W and trained starts at 2.5kg/W?

Do I miss something here? Would love to hear your opinion.

File was not attached see below what I mean

https://log.concept2.com/profile/1293819/log/76379823
https://log.concept2.com/profile/1293819/log/76412971

I am not a fan of UT2 training and have always started in UT1 until HR drops on the assumption that shorter sessions at the slightly higher intensity will be as useful (IIRC <45min UT2 does not have much impact and initially 45min rowing at any intensity will be beyond "recovery").

That said, you are rowing with a very light stroke of 4WMin. Someone of your size should be aiming for double that. I suggest you look at the rowing videos as you may be leaking a lot of power and so may be able to row significantly faster at no extra effort. In any event, far from scientific, but at that rating and pace I suspect around 30% of your effort is moving your body not the fan. Slow the rating to 18 by driving harder but slowing the slide and you would be exerting a similar amount of energy at 2:25 pace as the movement of your weight would be using half the energy which can then be used to move the fan. That would still be producing less work per stroke than I as a weak 72kg middle aged rower produce or exceed on most of my rows (7.2Wattmin).

Finally, not sure what you are using for UT2 (there are multiple definitions). HRmax may well be a little lower for rowing than running, but I think most people take proportions of HR reserve rather than of HR. So 70% HRR if your HRmax on rower were 199 and resting HR was 60 would be 60 + 70% x (199-60) = 157.

Consider using the treadmill (or bike) for zone 2. Easier to maintain the correct HR range through the 2 variables of speed and elevation than on the erg. Also, if you are doing anaerobic work in the same session make sure you do your zone 2 first.

Welcome to the forum. I strongly suspect that as Iain mentions you're leaking power, so your technique is the issue. For a seemingly simple exercise it is surprisingly technical.

I do note that you've got quite a high max HR, so I'd expect your HR to be high for everything else too. FWIW, I'd happily cap my steady rows at 140, but my max is 176, so imo you can increase this cap to 160-165.

Don't think that 70% is a magical figure that has to be adhered to, as I've seen lots of people thrive at 80% for their steady rows. We're all different, and 70% is only really useful if you push the harder sessions really hard.

Maybe you need to ditch the HRM and just use RPE? I do use a HRM for every session so don't think I'm saying that because I don't like them, but sometimes they can be counter productive when you're learning as you don't learn what is intuitively hard or slow enough.

Hi and welcome.

When I first started I was trying to cap my HR to the same sort of range, and found the only way to achieve it was to have a very weak stroke.

As I don't need to worry about over training 2-3 sessions a week only, I started to ignore my HR and push harder - just building up the meters completed and not really caring at how "good" my stroke was.
I completed a HM at 4.96Wmin (124W/25spm) & My 2k pb was set at 186/29 (6.4Wmin) as the two ends of my PB distances.
In W/kg that's be roughly 124/90 = 1.38W/kg & 2.07; neither were zone 2 efforts

After a year (750,000m completed), I've decided to change tack a little and really work on my stroke-power & essentially rebuild/restart but now with the improved technique and the muscle memory to (hopefully) avoid injury. Sessions now are very very short as my CV base is not used to/adapted to this increased effort though.

So in TLDR version I guess I could say - no there's nothing wrong with the numbers you're generating as a new person to rowing; but there's a lot of improvements to be had if you don't cap your rows to UT2.

Hi and welcome!

Don't want to write the same stuff, as already mentioned, but give an advice how I did it when I started.
I rowed what felt good and maintainable, as long as I could recover from it (with my additional 3 gym sessions power week).
After I increased the distance, I felt I needed to focus more on recovery and had to structure more. So I used HR monitoring to evaluate how far I can go and recovery is well enough to go hard for sessions meant to be hard.
Now my steady states are typically 75-82% HR max and this works well for me.

That is 93 watts for 30 minutes with this body weight is 0,99 W/kg.

You need to learn to row, putting a lot more work into each stroke.

Use the style seen here:
https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/ ... que-videos
or (D)
https://www.concept2.de/indoor-rowers/t ... hnikvideos

All the written information must be followed to the letter.

Aim for 150-200W at rate 20.

Keep the pieces short (1 or 2 minutes), with 1 or 2 minutes rest, and at low rates (20-22).