Concept2 Forum

I'm 63 years old and just got a C2 last week. I've never rowed so a total novice. I spent a few days studying the technique.. getting the feel for the motion etc. Yesterday I set the drag factor at 130 and slowly got into a steady effort got going above 21 strokes. I stopped at 40 minutes (very fresh but figured enough for the first day). The monitor said 2:18.3 average 500m pace.for the workout.
If you wanted to see how good that you could get in the shortest amount of time... what would you do?
I could put two hours a day of training into this if needed.
One tidbit of information. I have a 50 year base of aerobic and anaerobic activity. I was a European Professional Cyclist eons ago and never really stopped riding. I'm switching to rowing at this time because I am sick of being the potential target of motorists. I'm done... it's become too dangerous.
My thoughts as far as training goes for now is to alternate between days of hour tempo and various intervals... getting roughly an hour of rowing per day. I appreciate any advice that anyone could provide in this new endeavor.
Thanks

There are a few masters rowers on the forum who can offer more advice than me centred around training and recovery, I'm just checking in to say I love the username. Such a fascinating day of racing and Mark Cavendish solitary win there, which is often "forgotten" about behind his Tour wins and World Championship, will love long in the memory. As will Heinrich Haussler's face of agony and despair on the realisation he was pipped to the line.

On the rowing front, definitely a good start and you clearly have a big engine. But I'd be cautious of starting out high volume off the cuff, erg'ing isn't quite as forgiving as cycling in respect of overuse injuries.

Welcome to the forum.

That's a fantastic start for a newbie, and your fitness background is going to be extremely beneficial. I'd assume that the training plans will be broadly similar to your cycling, and as you're untested in terms of ability I'd use your (assumed) very good sense of intuition to know when to push and when to pull back.

The first two months or so is best to get your tendons and ligaments prepared for the different types of effort and strain to cycling. One issue that you may face is that cyclists, as you're fully aware, are generally leg dominant in strength, so the upper body part of rowing could be your weak point, and might be a source of injuries.

Do you have a strong core? I'm not sure how much cycling stresses the core compared to rowing. I'd highly recommend pilates as great way to strengthen your core if needs be.

Welcome to the forum. This has been a great source of training information for me. I have a similar background without the professional cred! After my daughters were born 29 years ago, I cycled for a little more than half the year (California weather) and rowed the rest. I started rowing with a little running on the days I don't lift weights. Too many close calls with cars on the road. I'm close to your age and I alternate days lifting and rowing. Usually one WOD a week (where I push my limits), one LSD, and one threshold type session. Another long slow distance on day 7 if I feel like it. As long as I get my sleep, recovery has not been an issue and I can still hit my target paces most days at a DF of 125-130. You'll see people doing what I consider crazy volume on this forum but I keep my rowing at about three hours a week and that works well for me.

Constantly concentrate on form during the long low intensity rows. Don't slouch, sit-up tall and don't over-reach are often useful coaching cues, but it depends. Back soreness can be a warning that something isn't quite right.

You may well be better off with a lower DF, but it depends on how muscular you are. I'm not very muscular and am most efficient with a DF of 115-118, although I'll sometimes go up to 125 for the training effect.

milansanremo wrote: ↑

January 11th, 2025, 9:24 pm

Yesterday I set the drag factor at 130 and slowly got into a steady effort got going above 21 strokes. I stopped at 40 minutes (very fresh but figured enough for the first day). The monitor said 2:18.3 average 500m pace.for the workout.
If you wanted to see how good that you could get in the shortest amount of time... what would you do?
I could put two hours a day of training into this if needed.
One tidbit of information. I have a 50 year base of aerobic and anaerobic activity. I was a European Professional Cyclist eons ago and never really stopped riding.

This is all very good!!

It would be dangerous to put in 2 hours a day right away, you might get back problems if your posture is not correct.
Correct posture is very important. One hint is to sit as much as possible on your ischium (lower and back end of the hip bones) tilt the hip bone forward and keep the back straight. Similar to doing deadlifts.

For a while I would just row relaxed with a towel over the monitor (I do most of my rows that way) and just concentrate on feeling the stroke
from the catch (front) to the end. You want to pick it up fairly quickly at the catch, but not so fast that you feel a jerk stopping you cold (resistance too high for acceleration). After that you want to pull as evenly as possible. This means that some sort of timing comes into play:
legs-back-arms (sequence of dominant contributor in overlapping fashion).

You can set the monitor on displaying the force curve, it should not rise too steeply at the beginning (this would mean that you hit it with everything legs, back, arms at full power at the catch, a mistake I used to make) and have no odd kinks or dips in the middle.

Once you got the posture correct you may want to look at the C2 training plan (available on the internet) especially the intensity levels and according training sets. Generally rowing is shorter and more intense than cycling (allthough marathons and even 24 hour rows are done by some). The king of distances though is 2K (7 mins), a pure VO2 max exercise, much shorter than the typical road race time trial.
This means that eventually you will have to incorporate more VO2 max training.

Here is something I wrote up for a crossfitter inlaw of mine regarding the training plan and intensity levels:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The rowing race is over 2K and 2K pace is exactly VO2 max pace.
So the 2K training program are all targeting mainly VO2 max.

Now we have the training plans designed by the UK olympic coaches
(attached, file C2_training_v2.pdf).

They have training plans for when you row 3,4,5 or 6 times a week.
We have 5 different intensity levels.
From slowest to fastest:

UT2 (Utilization 2)
UT1 (Utilization 1)
AT (Anaerobic threshold)
TR (Oxygen transport)
AN (anaerobic)

The paces for each unit are calibrated off of your 2K PB pace.
Those are in the rowing guide, section 5, table 5.8 on page 75.

The pace is given as the 500m split.
For each unit there is an interval of recommended paces.
The split in the guide is the fast end of the interval.

To find your pace you first find your 2K time in the table.
In my case 7:12.
Then I go to the row with the 7:12 2K and I find

UT2 UT1 AT TR
2:04.5 2:00 1:54 1:48

This means:
UT2: go slower than 2:04.5 (just get in a flow and row easily)
UT1: between 2:04.5 and 2:00
AT: between 2:00 and 1:54
TR: between 1:48 and 1:54

1:48 is exactly the 2K split and this is the high end of the TR intensity band.

You only train VO2 max directly doing TR workouts.
AT, UT1 and UT2 are supporting workouts.

TRAINING PLANS:
these you find on the following pages, the one with three sessions a week
is on page 79, the grayed out column is the fourth session.

Typical sessions:

AT (rest time = 1/2 work time):
4 x 2K,
4 x 8 mins,
3 x 10 mins.

TR (rest time = work time)
6 x 2mins,
3 x 4min,
2 x 1500,
1 x 2K

For AT you warm up at least 2K.
For TR I warm up 2K, then do a 2K at medium AT pace, then rest at least 10 mins.
If I don't do a slightly intense unit before the TR interval, the first interval is
unpleasant and mostly the slowest and it gets a little easier thereafter.
-------------------------------------------------

If you are really as devoted as indicated, you will beat most of us sooner than we would like!

milansanremo wrote: ↑

January 11th, 2025, 9:24 pm

My thoughts as far as training goes for now is to alternate between days of hour tempo and various intervals... getting roughly an hour of rowing per day. I appreciate any advice that anyone could provide in this new endeavor.
Thanks

Welcome and good to see the impressive start. The good news is you have a clear advantage over 99% of newbies in that you're already incredibly fit. The bad news is that you won't get quite the same run of newbie gains as others - improved technique and upper body strength will only add so much.
As others have said the most important thing is ingraining a good enough form. Its a bit like a golf swing - there's the classic ideal that we all aspire to, and then there's what we actually do which is a bit more personal to our experience of trying to improve our scores - getting as close to ideal to start with is deffo a long term advantage. At the moment your legs will probably overpower your core - so take your time to build... but at least there will be no performance incentive for you to over use your arms which many beginners do.

Your planned pattern of longer steady state sessions with (more intense) shorter interval sessions is present in every training plan I've ever seen, so go for it. Every other day may be too much of the intensity - I find twice a week is all the hard I can manage. And although you need to be smart, the truism of the more you train the better you get is mostly right. I erg every day but that's still only around 50k/week so I'm not doing the steady state distances that many on here do. As a rough rule of thumb I do 2 hard, 2 "grey" and 3 steady sessions per week - 6k to 10k daily totals. The steady are around 24s/500 slower than the hard. The grey around 18-20 slower.

Keep us posted on how you get on.

Welcome, MSR.

As a pseudo-rower who rows for general fitness, not PBs, and as a totally average cyclist about your age, I have little to offer other than encouragement and some standard advice.

Core strength - as mentioned above, it's something which may be lacking. I notice it on the hip swing part of the erg/rowing stroke. There are a lot of simple exercises you can do to strengthen this - various planks, V-ups, Russian twists, and other movements which go by many, many names. I like to do one core exercise facing the floor and one exercise facing the ceiling. Based on my limited knowledge doing so exercises the core in different ways. I'm not a physical therapist, athletic trainer, or the like, but it works for me.

Time - as mentioned above (again), two hours isn't much on a bike, but it is on an erg. Be careful as you begin. 40 minutes is good.

Drag factor - 130 may be a bit high, but I'll defer to others more knowledgeable than myself.

Technique - pick (technique) drills are good, especially for newbies and semi-newbies like you and I. Something like this, isolating, then incorporating, the various movements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LperycNwlFw

Cycling - as a long time roadie of completely average ability, I empathize with your fear on the road. I'm not inclined to MTB or gravel, but they're a bit safer. I do plan on some gravel-ish rides as bikepacking adventures, combining my love for cycling with my love of hiking/backpacking.

Now that MSR is here, how long will it be before LBL, de Ronde, or others appear?

Good luck. I'm looking forward to hear of your progress.

NO expert and not much to add to the above that I agree with. One point I would say is that some ex-cyclists don't realise the significance of all the power being applied in a minority of the time. THis means that while the average power (as shown by the PM) is likely to be lower than for cycling, the peak power will be significantly higher. Essentially rowing is a burst of work followed by a long period of recovery rather than the continuous effort employed on the bike. As a result we need to use a greater level of exertion than could be maintained on the bike. Slower training tends to be done at relatively high peak power but with a slow passive slide up the slide to the next power stroke, perhaps doing 18 to 22 strokes per minute as opposed to the typical 30 to 34 on an all out 2k effort.

Welcome to the forum and the bizarre world of erging!