Help with slt row in rowpro training plan

[Brown hound]

I am brand new to rowing and bought a model D concept 2 rower. I love it and feel like it is a good compliment to my running.

My question is about a SLT row. It says for the 2 minute active row, you should slow the rowing pace to 18-22 spm but heart rate should increase.

During recovery, spm is 22-26 and heart rate goes down.

This is counter intuitive to me. Doesn't higher spm = higher heart rate?

Thanks in advance.
The hound.

[jamesg]

The recovery (warm-down, and also warm-up) can be done with half-strokes, basically arms and swing only at rate 40 or more. As we get warm, we gradually increase length (using the slide and our legs after the swing) so that the Power (Watts) increases to say 200W at rate 20, according to size, age, sex. This is the real work that gets HR up.

Low rating because such strokes are very hard work but we want to go on for 30 minutes at least. If you do full strokes at rate 30 or more you won't go beyond a minute or two unless already fit.

You can see it all here:
http://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/t ... que-videos

[Bob S.]

This is counter intuitive to me. Doesn't higher spm = higher heart rate?

Thanks in advance.
The hound.

The heart rate depends on how much energy you are expending. That, in turn, does indeed depend on how high your stroke rate is, but also on how much work you put into each stroke. If you are doing a lot of work in each stroke at a low rate, the total effort can be higher than rowing at a high rate with just easy strokes. It is the combination of the two that counts. On the erg, the best measure of how hard you are working overall is the wattage. That's the core of the design of the erg. Heart rate is also a measure, but there is a lag in the response of the HR to the work done, and the HR tends to drift higher with time as you lose water. The HR is also dependent on a lot of other factors like your physical condition at the time, whether or not you have had enough sleep, whether or not there is still food digesting in your stomach, and on and on. For these various reasons, HRs is not a reliable measure of the work you are putting into the machine.

Bob S.