Concept2 Forum

I am new to rowing but not to fitness. I have began incorporating high intensity interval training (HIIT) on the row machine as part of my cardio activity. Two days a week I perform the following routine:

2 minute warm up, followed by rowing as fast as I can for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second slowdown and repeated for 8 minutes, then a 2 minute cooldown.

Are there other HIIT routines that others perform that you can share? Thank you very much

That's pretty good. The only thing I would suggest is a longer warmup and cooldown. It is very unlikely that your muscles have gotten warm, blood vessels have expanded, airways have expanded, etc. in prep for the intervals with just two minutes of warm-up. Not knowing anything else about you, I would think you'd want your HR stable in the 120-130 range for about 5 minutes before starting the intervals.

dareigo wrote:I am new to rowing but not to fitness. I have began incorporating high intensity interval training (HIIT) on the row machine as part of my cardio activity. Two days a week I perform the following routine:

2 minute warm up, followed by rowing as fast as I can for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second slowdown and repeated for 8 minutes, then a 2 minute cooldown.

Are there other HIIT routines that others perform that you can share? Thank you very much

I am going to stick my nose in here, even though, believe me I am as far from being an expert as one can get.

I believe that is the Tabata method of training......I don't believe a steady diet of it is a good thing. If you just want to improve your over all strength it will help, provided you don't injure yourself. If you want to improve in rowing, you first gotta get good form.

If it is improving your over all rowing here is an excellent link:

http://www.concept2.co.uk/guide/ look at everything on this page, especially the top left hand column, 'online guide' and 'downloads'. There is a ton of info on this one page. And it's free.

Hope this has been helpful.

Thanks for the replies. I have incorporated a longer warm up (5 minutes) and cool down (5 minutes) and noticed that I perform better during and feel better after the workout.

I have not seen any data/research that suggests that this type of activity is harmful. If you have any that you can share, please feel free to do so. Thanks for the link though.

The feedback is appreciated.

Did you continue to train rowing using tabata (30hard/10easy)?
What is your conclusion?

Anybody else who has done this kind of training?

Jfo

I've used the Tabata protocol on the rower with good results for several years. I use it 1-2 times a week when getting up for competitions and high effort work. I am not able to use it per Dr. Tabata's original study, find daily too rigorous for me. Later studies showed that daily HIIT will give great improvement in aerobic and anaerobic capacity, but not much gain in muscle strength. Inadequate recovery time prevents some of the muscle gain. Better strength gains with more recovery time. Any more than 1-2 times per week and I feel over-trained and become prone to illness.

Clarance Bass is a body builder who has written some nice summaries of this kind of work. I enjoy of his fitness ideas. His rowing ideas are, well, more for body builders than rowers. web site: cbass.com.

I always make sure that I have a good aerobic base before incorporating Tabata, and frequently add it at about 20min into a 30min row. Other interval training regimens are also nice to use. The short duration recovery time (10s) is part of why Tabata is so successful. Longer recovery times (30s) diminish gains in aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

Pam

I have used different interval training methods, Tabata is difficult to maintain for myself. I have incorporated a 3 minute, 1 minute rest program, which i find very effective, excellent workout, and have trimmed up quite a bit.

From a study I read the best interval for weight loss is 8 secs on then 12 off and repeat. See:
http://hillfit.blogspot.com/2007/08/8-s ... rvals.html
(they have links to the full study and the news paper version)

The problem is the rower doesn't support intervals that short

See page 109 in http://www.library.unsw.edu.au/~thesis/ ... 2whole.pdf

This implies the best interval the PM3 supports would be 20 on and 30 off (it has a min interval of 20 secs)

I just skimmed the thesis that all this is based on. They did two studies. The first involved one group doing 8 seconds on 12 off, and another group doing 24 seconds on 36 seconds off.

The second study compared steady state to 8 seconds on 12 seconds off.

If I read things correctly, the differences are minimal between the two interval durations. However the subjects did prefer the shorter intervals.
The trained subjects, did have significantly higher power output using the longer intervals but the untrained subjects did not.

Given that, I don't see anything special about the specific choice of 8/12 second intervals. 20/30 seconds intervals should be just fine, as would a variety of other choices.

They also did this 3x per week for 20 minutes. That is not a lot of work.

Alright I didn't read all of it by the time I posted. And then just reading this seems to sugest the longer sprints are better:
http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.co ... ation.html

And I'm guessing since most here are not untrained we can ignore that part of the study.

Is there a way to program the workout (including warm up & cool down) into the PM5,
or is it a case of doing the warm up, then program the HIIT and do it, then a seperate cool down?

BobGear wrote:Is there a way to program the workout (including warm up & cool down) into the PM5,
or is it a case of doing the warm up, then program the HIIT and do it, then a seperate cool down?

RTFM http://www.concept2.com/service/monitors/pm5/manuals or select workout/new workout/time intervals or variable intervals and set 20sec with 10 sec rest.

Tabata and modified versions:

20 work 10 slow repeated 8x's
20 work 40 slow on new things or days I feel like crap repeated 8x's
30 work 30 rest <---mostly for jump rope to medical reasons
etc.

speedy wrote:Tabata and modified versions:

20 work 10 slow repeated 8x's
20 work 40 slow on new things or days I feel like crap repeated 8x's
30 work 30 rest <---mostly for jump rope to medical reasons
etc.

I must try those.

I use hard one minute intervals followed by easy 30 second ones. I lower the damper setting to 120 instead my usual 130. The hard intervals are not extremely intense because I don't get close to rowing as hard as possible--but they're still a big step up from my usual pace. I use the same amount exertion as I do normally but I increase the strokes per minute by around 20%, from around 26 or 27 to 32 or 33. I never stop during the easy segments, but instead go at a much slower but steady pace.

Some people may not consider this as much of a high intensity training routine, but what it may lack in quality, I try to make up for in quantity. I repeat each one and a half minute hard, easy segment 40 times which takes a total of one hour.

The words, "High Intensity Interval Training" can mean different things to different people. For me, it means working out at levels considerably higher than usual but keeping that effort well below my maximum. I alternate them with shorter rest periods and I repeat this procedure over a fairly long period of time. I call it "Watered Down Tabata Training". Could this routine be of help to someone else? I have doubts about that, but it does seem to work for me.