New to Rowing...Want to lose 15-20lbs...suggestions?

[Bob S.]

Funny. Bob, I really thought this was actual data reflecting your workout. Oh well, in principle it made sense to me, so I did the warmup spm..12..15..18, then tried to go 20 for 30 minutes, but my heart rate got too high and I had to back down to 18 or so...then started the cooldown at 36 minutes. Felt pretty good. Did 7480m in 40', with the split in the 2:40 ballpark. Need to get back to reading the book, but is there a benefit of lowering the spm and still doing hard pulls or is it better to keep the spm up and lower the pull? Again, my primary goal is weight loss, but this much work has got to be doing something for my overall fitness.

Corkster,

It was the data from my actual workouts for the 3rd and 5th of this month. I got it directly off the logcard. The first one is a fairly typical recent workout. On the second, I went a little harder at it.

I am not sure how to answer your question about spm and pull effort. In my case, I usually get 2:40-3:00 at 12spm, 2:30-2:45 at 15spm, 2:20-2:35 at 18spm, and 2:15-2:25 at 20spm. For time trials, I use 20spm for the long ones (60', HM, and FM), 24spm for middle distances and around 30spm for 2k time trials and races. For 500m and 1k I get up to around 35-45spm. I have been using slides since the beginning of this season, except for the month of January when I was preparing to race and, of course, in the race. Before I started using my slides, 40spm was about my limit.

Bob S.

[Corkster52]

Bob, I must have misread something in your previous post. No doubt about it, I can barely see you league from where I am, but thanks for your insights. I feel like a 98 pound weakling just looking at times.

[Bob S.]

Bob, I must have misread something in your previous post. No doubt about it, I can barely see you league from where I am, but thanks for your insights. I feel like a 98 pound weakling just looking at times.

Well, I got started rowing quite some time ago - like about 1932.

Bob S.

[Bob S.]

I wanted to make the point that if someone else was doing a daily 10k, he or she would not necessarily be burning the 700-750 Calories every day. The times and paces I quoted were just arbitrary to make that point.

Bob S.

Using some pace/Calories per hour correlations, I came up with the following data for 10ks at various times:

Total time/pace/Calories per hour/total Calories

50:00/2:30/656/547
48:20/2:25/694/559
46:40/2:20/738/574

41:40/2:05/916/636
40:00/2:00/997/665

37:40/1:53/1134/712

The Calorie per hour value is that provided by the monitor and goes up rapidly with decreasing pace time, but total Calorie value has a lower increase because it is reduced by the shorter workout time.

Bob S.

Note: These figures are not based on any actual 10ks, but are calculated as examples.

[Corkster52]

Bob, I see what you mean about the calorie burn with a pace change. 1932?... I am a Korean War baby myself, but right now can only dream of a 2:15 at 20 spm. Those are some powerful strokes. Today's 7668m row in 40' felt good, and I cheated my cooldown a bit because I wanted to make sure I went farther than yesterday. I felt quite good at 140 bpm, but figured I had better back off. I don't want my seriously overweight body to give out on me too quickly.

[Corkster52]

Greg, after reading further in the book, pushing myself on my first week on a rower at the pace I was, all I was probably burning was carbs...or more than I wanted anyway. This evening, I dropped my heart rate to 120-122, spm to 17-20, and pase to right around 3.0 and stayed with it until I go my first 10K in 59:30! So, a week ago today was my first time on rower and did 2K. Please let me know your thoughts.

[gregsmith01748]

@corkster: Congrats on your first 10K. That's terrific. A couple of questions:
- Where does 120-122 fall in relation to your maxHR?
- How did you determine your maxHR?

It will interesting to see if you follow the book's advice what happens. The prediction is that you will be able to increase your pace on the 10K at the same HR baseline as your CV fitness improves.

[shorelinelaw]

Hi Guys!

A question on "resting". OK - so yesterday I made my first 6,000 in one shot at a pretty good clip. Halfway through, however, I noticed my hamstring was a little tight. Near the end my knee hurt.

Checking my log, I noticed that I took a day off the previous Thursday, but had been going full out ever since. I decided that today, a week later, might be a good day. (Thursdays are also particularly busy for me).

I have been reading a bunch of posts on these forums and I have a question. If your goal (as mine is) to drop some lbs. How often do you guys take a day off from the machine? Assuming I hope back on tomorrow - then that will mean that I'm rowing at a 6 day / week pace. I was very conscious of feeling pretty stiff these last few days - so I wanted to take off a day to recharge. Is that the right amount?

Best!

[Bob S.]

Greg, after reading further in the book, pushing myself on my first week on a rower at the pace I was, all I was probably burning was carbs...or more than I wanted anyway. This evening, I dropped my heart rate to 120-122, spm to 17-20, and pase to right around 3.0 and stayed with it until I go my first 10K in 59:30! So, a week ago today was my first time on rower and did 2K. Please let me know your thoughts.

A full 10k straight through. That's great at any pace. The main thing is that you have learned that you can go that long. Now you can work on trying to cut down the pace a bit at a time, You could continue to do 10ks and try each time to do it in a slightly shorter time. I am sort of hooked on doing set times myself, so my approach would be to do one hour pieces and to try to increase the distance each time. But it appears that most forum members prefer set distances. It probably gives some incentive at the end to push a little harder to get it over with sooner. With a set time, you just have to stay at it until that clock gets down to zero, but I am used to that. Another argument in favor of set distances over set times is that 8 of the 10 ranking (rankable??) events are set distances; the only set time events are 30' and 60'. There is also an 11th piece that is set time, the 4', but that is special for kids, so I don't count that in.

Bob S.

[Corkster52]

Greg, my mhr is 162. 122 is the top end of my aerobic threshold. Bob, I like the idea of rowing to a set time as well, but I can also see focusing on a set distance and targeting reducing the time. I guess my real question to you veterans is, now that I am trying to stay in my aerobic range, as a beginner, am I pushing too far too fast? I don't feel no ill effects other than a little stiffness those first few steps out of bed each morning.

[gregsmith01748]

@shorelinelaw: Everything that I have read says that you should take at least one day off per week. The other thing to remember is that it is perfectly fine to break up a long row with a break to stretch and get a drink of water. So, instead of rowing for sixty minutes straight, you could row 30', take a 2' break for a drink and a quick stretch and then hop back on the machine. The key is time in the training zone, and a short break like that probably only cuts a couple minutes off of that.

[Citroen]

Greg, my mhr is 162.

How do you know that? Have you done a step test to failure or are you still using that stupid 220-age myth?

[Bob S.]

Greg, my mhr is 162. 122 is the top end of my aerobic threshold. Bob, I like the idea of rowing to a set time as well, but I can also see focusing on a set distance and targeting reducing the time. I guess my real question to you veterans is, now that I am trying to stay in my aerobic range, as a beginner, am I pushing too far too fast? I don't feel no ill effects other than a little stiffness those first few steps out of bed each morning.

Just take the increments slowly - a bit at a time. You did a 10k at about 3:00. Try the next one at 2:55. If it gives you problems, back off to 2:57 on the next. If it goes easily, try 2:50 on the next.

Note that a 5" pace change in this region is not very much. At double that speed a 5" pace change is enormous.

3:00/500m is 60 watts
2:55/500m is 65 watts
A little over an 8% increase in the effort expended

1:30/500m is 480 watts
1:25/500m is 570 watts
Almost 19% increase in effort.

If you like to work with numbers, you might want to base any work load increase on watts, since that is the direct measure of how hard you are working.

At this point in my life, there is nowhere to go but down hill. I exercise to keep the process of age deterioration down to a slow gallop. However, 8 years ago, after open heart surgery, I was about as wasted as one could get - I remember thinking the phrase, "weak as a kitten." There was no post-op cardio rehab problem available in this remote area of eastern California, so I was sort of on my own. My resources were my own old model B Concept 2 erg, a fitness center in the town of Bishop (treadmill and weight work), and all the hiking one could wish, ranging from practically flat walks along the canal on the valley floor at 4,000' elevation, to rugged mountain trails at elevations up to 12,000' passes. I made use of all of these, starting in very cautiously and increasing the work load in baby steps. After 18 months to the day, I got back into erg competition and qualified for the free round trip flight to the Crash-Bs in Boston and, in the following year, I was back to setting WRs. My suggestions for anyone starting a program of trying to increase fitness is based on my experiences of that period of my life. I can't really give advice on achieving major weight loss. I don't have any experience there that would apply. I have only had the problem of losing at most 8 pounds to get into the lightweight category and, once there, I don't have a problem staying there.

Bob S.

[Corkster52]

Wow Bob, what an amazing success story! I lived in Ridgcrest and worked in Trona CA a number of years ago and have visited Bishop a number of times. As far as where I got my max heart rate from, there are a number of sites that have a formula and mine, and no matter which equation they use, mine comes back to being around 138 for the high end of my working heart rate. Greg, thanks for the suggestion. I am a bit weary from just a week of it, but I hate to stop for even a day when things seem to be going well. Hopefully if I watch what I eat, and if I can ever get my portions down to less than a side of beef at a setting...lol.... I will see some pounds dropping off.

[Corkster52]

Did thinks slightly differntly today. Started out hard to get my HR to 125+as quickly as possible then held it. Maintained an average pace of 2:45.9. Did one minute sprints every 10 minutes over the hour and managed 10857m. Stopped once for 30 seconds to hydrate. HR during the steady parts was 128 and jumped to 142 during the sprints. It appears as if I have lost 3 pounds, but will see if it still says so tomorrow. Thanks Bob and Greg for all of the sound advice!