Concept2 Forum

Good afternoon every one.

I have recently coming into rowing as a personal pursuit after after competing in various sports at various levels from boxing to powerlifting. I never lifted weights whilst I was boxing through my teens and early 20s focussing more on aerobic fitness. Some guys did, but I was happy with body weight movements etc. After achieving my goals as an 81kg boxer I went the complete opposite end of the spectrum and stopped running. Ate everything in sight till I weighed 100kg and squatted and deadlifted as many as 4x per week. I wasnt world class as a 105kg class lifter but I did enough to qualify for nationals in Australia and competed interstate in my first year of lifting weights. I massively enjoyed powerlifting however due to work demands I needed to rebuild my aerobic engine. The extra weight had to go but I didnt want to loose too much strength so eventually found a happy medium at 85-87kg at 6ft 1. Running was hard and I discovered what shin spints were so after messing around with crossfit I found I enjoyed rowing. Right now I lift weights 3x week when time permits. This consists with 1 session focussing on snatches, cleans, back squats, front squats and some kind of single leg exercise. And another session being snatches, cleans, deadlifts, and front squats. The last day, and the one session I drop if I have too is power snatches, power cleans, some overhead press and weighted dips. Every session I do 1-2 heavy row movements for my back and some kind of weighted abdominal movement. I typically lift weights on days where the erg session is not too intense. Ie state state etc or I erg in an early session, eat up and lift weights a few hours later. Is this the right way to go? I would like to row a sub 6:30 2k and a sub 17:30 5k pretty soon. I have been at it for a couple months rowing 500s and 1000m with the odd 5k or 10k thrown in but only decided to follow a rowing plan since last week. I know im not the tallest guy to go hard in rowing (not the shortest either) but like all things I do I like to get involved I was hoping my background in strength sports might actually work in my favour and maybe one day I could crack at least close to a 6 minute 2k and sub 17 min 5k

Any opinions or advice is always appreciated.

Cheers
Cj

You can row a pretty ok 2k and up on just a good general fitness, but you can,t be really fast without making anough meters. You simply need to very aerobicly fit and the only way to get there is making enough time and meters.
2k and up strenght plays less and less a role.
For the 500 being very strong helps, you simply need a lot of power. On 2k and above much less so.
You could try a programme build around 6k rows. Do these straight, and in intervals. Stuff like 4x1500 rest 5. 3x2k. But also some 4x1k. You don,t need don,t need sprintwork, you weights are enough for that.

Re 6.30 and 17.30, those are very doable if you ad more rowing to your training.
6 and 17.00, here you go wrong. For a 6 min 2k you need to be a lot faster than 17.00, more 16.45. A rough guide for paces is.
500 versus 1k 7 seconds below the 1k av.
1 k versus 2. 5/6 seconds below.
2 versus 5, 6/7 seconds difference.
5 versus 10 4.

For you prober are best of yo first improve your 5/10 k work, your background of weights gives you enough speed.

Thats some good info thank you! I rowed a 3x2k the other day with 5 minutes rest. I kept each 2k under 7 min (high 6s) getting slightly slower each set. Definitely had more in the tank but it was pretty spicy. My best 500 is 1:22 and that was when I jumped on the rower for the first time back when I started crossfit. That was part of a 4x500 max effort with as much rest as needed. The first was 1:22 the last set was closer to 1:28 and if I remember correctly I literally peeled myself off the rower and dont plan on blowing myself up like that until I time trial my 2k especially now I know how much it can hurt.

I have started the beginner training from petes plan that has me rowing more steady distance stuff increasing each week with less emphasis on the speed stuff. Hopefully that will give me the metres to build a bigger aerobic base. Hopefully maintaining my strength with a couple of squatting sessions a week will be enough to not need to do much speed stuff until later on.

Thanks again!

Cjfrancis wrote:Thats some good info thank you! I rowed a 3x2k the other day with 5 minutes rest. I kept each 2k under 7 min (high 6s) getting slightly slower each set. Definitely had more in the tank but it was pretty spicy. My best 500 is 1:22 and that was when I jumped on the rower for the first time back when I started crossfit. That was part of a 4x500 max effort with as much rest as needed. The first was 1:22 the last set was closer to 1:28 and if I remember correctly I literally peeled myself off the rower and dont plan on blowing myself up like that until I time trial my 2k especially now I know how much it can hurt.

I have started the beginner training from petes plan that has me rowing more steady distance stuff increasing each week with less emphasis on the speed stuff. Hopefully that will give me the metres to build a bigger aerobic base. Hopefully maintaining my strength with a couple of squatting sessions a week will be enough to not need to do much speed stuff until later on.

Thanks again!

You have a good starting point. Re 500, the relation between 500 and 2k s often not that big. The energy demands are very different. Strong rowers hardly train for the 500. Its mostly aerobic training, with specific speed work closer to competition.
Another pointnis your rating, nomatter what, you need to rate up a bit. For a 2k rate 30/31 is more or less the minimum.
For a 500 40. If you don,t you use to much force per stroke.

I will work on getting that stroke rate up. A lack of fitness or at least confidence in my fitness probably leads me to rely on pulling hard but less. So much to work on!

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.

sub 6:30 2k and a sub 17:30 5k

6½'/2k is 380 W and 17½'/5k is 300 W.

Having such clear targets is a great help in planning training. Those two levels suggest 11 W' strokes, at 35 and 28.

Lots of strokes at same Work level and lower rating will get you there: e.g 20/220W, 23/250W. Some Wolverine L4 style work might help too, for example at 18-20-22-20-18 (two minutes at each) x 4, constant Work level per stroke. This type of work is said to increase Lactate clearance and so allow faster aerobic race-cruise so that the 12k test is not so painful. It certainly helps technique, if needed.

From the "Rowing Faster" book by Volker Nolte, a National level rower is strong enough when they can:

Squat 1.7 x's body weight for one rep
Deadlift 1.7 x's body weight for one rep
Bench Pull 1.2 x's body weight for one rep

I am guessing you can achieve all of those now so getting "stronger" will probably not make you faster.

I did look at wolverine however I struggled to understand it correctly. Coincidentally in the beginners plan I have chosen to follow there are 2x steady state rows split up by some interval stuff and a row for time rather than distance. My plan was to use one of the stead state rows to do something like you mentioned however for metres rather than time. For eg on the first week the second 5k row, each 1000m I would split into continuous segments. Spend 250m at 20, 22, 24, 26 and do this five times through. This would give me exposure at different spm through the row without stopping. Is that similar to what you mentioned or did I miss something?

ChrisPBacon wrote:From the "Rowing Faster" book by Volker Nolte, a National level rower is strong enough when they can:

Squat 1.7 x's body weight for one rep
Deadlift 1.7 x's body weight for one rep
Bench Pull 1.2 x's body weight for one rep

I am guessing you can achieve all of those now so getting "stronger" will probably not make you faster.

I squat about 2x body weight, deadlift well over 2x body weight though not near my previous best. I can power clean about 1.25 my body weight. My snatch is only at body weight as I havent had much to do with the olympic lifts until more recently. Havent done bench pulls before just normal bent barbell rows from the floor and loads of weighted pull ups. My body weight +55kg is my best weighted pull up.

Is the book you mentioned available online anywhere I would love to get some good reading material?

Spend 250m at 20, 22, 24, 26 and do this five times through. This would give me exposure at different spm through the row without stopping. Is that similar to what you mentioned or did I miss something?

Looks similar, but the point is to relate Pace (or Watts) to Rating. This trains both the stroke and endurance: the work can be long, even at high boat-speed if we use the lower ratings (18-20-22).

Your 1:22 500 (over 600W) says all you need is endurance; a 400W 2k (6:20) should be possible with enough work.

A 6:30 2k is 380 W; if you can handle a 12W stroke for the duration, you wouldn't need to rate more than 31; but training has to be very long and at say 20/240W -22/260W. Going any faster in training will burn you out and not give you the endurance you need.

The L4 tables show this in terms of Pace.

Cjfrancis wrote:I did look at wolverine however I struggled to understand it correctly. Coincidentally in the beginners plan I have chosen to follow there are 2x steady state rows split up by some interval stuff and a row for time rather than distance. My plan was to use one of the stead state rows to do something like you mentioned however for metres rather than time. For eg on the first week the second 5k row, each 1000m I would split into continuous segments. Spend 250m at 20, 22, 24, 26 and do this five times through. This would give me exposure at different spm through the row without stopping. Is that similar to what you mentioned or did I miss something?

Forget about the wolverine plan. For that you need much more meters. And L4 stuff would be 70% and those are below rate on average and 40 min minimum in lenght.
The rates you mention have little to do with the plan. There you should use fixed paces based on a real 2k. Given you short rowing history you pretty much don,t have a 2k.
I think you should mostly focus on pace right now. You simply needs to build your aerobic base.

Most rowers use different safer postures and body positioning in weight rooms.
Thus less benefit to the erg and otw than there might be.

One could lift more unsafely to mimic OTW, or try to figure out if you can row more safely according to weightlifting and good body mechanics.

My coach, way back when, tried the safer, stronger rowing. Less fun for most HWs, but very fast in a boat as LWs who listened, applied what they heard.
Using weights had good correlation to increase in 500m times. That was cool.