The Two Types of Training

[ranger]

In a 500m, I'll do 1:24.3 @ 45 spm (13 SPI, 7.91 MPS)

Note the stroking power.

It's not 8 SPI.

If you want to be fast, you need to train effectiveness as well as efficiency.

And, really, you can only train yourself to be efficient once you have learned how to be effective.

ranger

[chgoss]

500m in 1:49? You think that proves.. .what?

That's what you call "lilly-dipping", right?

[detlefchef]

In a 500m, I'll do 1:24.3 @ 45 spm (13 SPI, 7.91 MPS)

Note the stroking power.

It's not 8 SPI.

If you want to be fast, you need to train effectiveness as well as efficiency.

And, really, you can only train yourself to be efficient once you have learned how to be effective.

ranger

Will[/i] you do 1:24.3? Or do you do 1:24.3? Kind of a big difference and sort of the crux of the biscuit here, I'm afraid. When does "will" happen? Ever?

[/i]

[ranger]

500m in 1:49? You think that proves.. .what?

That's what you call "lilly-dipping", right?

Indeed.

9.5 SPI is lily-dipping, too.

That's what Mike VB will pull tomorrow.

ranger

[ranger]

In a 500m, I'll do 1:24.3 @ 45 spm (13 SPI, 7.91 MPS)

Note the stroking power.

It's not 8 SPI.

If you want to be fast, you need to train effectiveness as well as efficiency.

And, really, you can only train yourself to be efficient once you have learned how to be effective.

ranger

Will[/i] you do 1:24.3? Or do you do 1:24.3? Kind of a big difference and sort of the crux of the biscuit here, I'm afraid. When does "will" happen? Ever?

[/i]

It happens in its proper training sequence.

I am now doing 28 spm at a 80% HRR, not 45 spm and a max HR.

I think distance trials will go well.

Then I will be sharpening hard (30-40 spm), almost exclusively.

The best time for a 500m trial is near the end of hard sharpening, when you have the rate up near 40 spm.

1:30 @ 40 spm (12 SPI) is a standard pace and rate combination for me now.

ranger

[snowleopard]

That's what Mike VB will pull tomorrow.

What are you pulling tomorrow ranger? Apart from your Percy that is.

[walterchaos]

But how else could you explain the slim differences between a LW and HW on the erg? A fair conclusion that one would have to go with is that as distance goes to infinity, relevance of mass to performance goes to zero. Too bad not a huge number of people have sat through 100km to see if there's some plausibility behind that.

AHA!

I have a possible explanation.

Muscle is hugely inefficient. Some 70% of energy put into it yields only heat. The more muscle that one is recruiting to do work, the more heat your body is producing. That amplifies the rate of fluid/salt loss, as well as bumps up HR slightly faster due to dehydration. The amplification would then possibly force a rower who is hugely effective to not recruit as much muscle - even though he could theoretically still use more to pull faster as distance increases. However by using more, he tires faster, probably enters glycolysis faster and dehydrates faster.

Or is the heat difference negligible? The 40 extra pounds that a HW rower would have on a LW would probably be 10 pounds fat, 10 pounds bone and 20 pounds muscle. That might be enough to make a difference with the amount of heat that would be produced. You'd have to look at the body compositions of elite LW and HW rowers to get a precise idea of it though.

There is another explanation. The recovery in a boat is physiologically very easy because you really just let the boat run under you but on the erg you must pull your own body weight back to the catch ( except with slides- herein lies there advantage). A heavier rower has more weight to pull back up the slide and a taller rower has to pull him/herself further up the slide. Over a short distance the energy required to do this is a small % of total energy because the drive is so powerful but over longer distances the drive power decreases and the energy required to get back to the catch becomes a greater % of total expenditure ( or at least it starts to take it's toll because it has been repeated more times). This means that a heavy or tall rower is penalized somewhat on the erg but that it only starts to matter over longer distances.

[ranger]

That's what Mike VB will pull tomorrow.

What are you pulling tomorrow ranger?

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things
To yield with a grace to reason
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

--Robert Frost

ranger

[walterchaos]

I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.

TS Eliot

[Byron Drachman]

30min 141 bpm
45min 140 bpm
60min 140 bpm
75min 144 bpm
90min 142 bpm
105min 141 bpm
112min 141 bpm

1116 calories/hr
2000 calories burned.
Average HR: 141 bpm
Weight: 75.4 kgs.

From the signature:

Rich Cureton M 59 lwt 5''11" 74 kgs. (and falling--in a month to 72 kgs.)

So weight is still a problem, with 75.4 kgs after all that stepping.

[johnlvs2run]

but on the erg you must pull your own body weight back to the catch

Now that's a novel idea, pulling one's own weight.

a taller rower has to pull him/herself further up the slide.

Not necessarily.
Michael Phelps is almost a foot taller than me, his wingspan is a foot wider than mine, but his inseam is less.
Most top rowers have similar builds to Phelps. Rich is 3 inches taller than me, but his inseam is almost 2 inches less.

This means that a heavy or tall rower is penalized somewhat on the erg but that it only starts to matter over longer distances.

If pulling one's own weight is a penalty, then it's a legitimate one.
Carrying one's own weight is required in almost all athletic activities, running, cross country skiing, mountain climbing, rowing on the water etc.

[ranger]

A couple of points:

(1) I think my session on the stepper yesterday is the kind of thing an elite rower must have as a fitness base to neutralize the role of just general fatigue in training and therefore the need for rest days, alternating hard and easy days, etc., which are so wasteful to progress over the long run. I stepped at 1116 cal/hr with an absolutely flat HR, below top-end UT2, no drift at all, for 112 minutes. I could have gone on for three hours (at least), with the same result. I did this as a _supplement_ to my normal erging, in conjunction with it, as a recovery session. 1116 cal/hr is comparable to 1:54 on the erg. That means that now, I can probably do 1150 cal/hr at my UT2 HR, steady state, for three hours, or right around 1:52 pace on the erg. Ideal for me, I think, would be 1250 cal/hr, or 1:48 pace, for this kind of work, and I am not at all sure that I am not at that right now on the erg. I was stepping at 280 watts, which is exactly 1:48 on the erg. Because rowing is a full-body exercise, it burns more calories with less effort than almost any other exercise. If it really turns out that I can now go for long, 2-3 hour, FM-length, UT2 rows, with an absolutely flat HR, it will pretty astonishing. That means that I can equal the 50s hwt WR in the FM, routinely, every time I take a rest day and just do some long UT2 rowing. Rob Slocum's long-standing 50s hwt WR for the FM is 2:32/1:48 pace.

(2) Given my stroking power, I think that 1:40 @ 30 spm (10 MPS, 11.7 SPI) is now my natural rung on the 10 MPS ladder. Watch out if it turns out that I can do it, steady state, _under_ my anaerobic threshold! If this turns out to be the case, I will meet all of my rowing goals; and training for rowing, even at the highest level, will become a piece of cake. My training will have been perfect indeed. It will mean that I can comfortably repeat 6:40 2Ks, ad nauseum, e.g., 10 x 2K (paddle a 2K in between), a "Zatopek 2K" workout, with no distress whatsoever, and that I could then work on putting those 2Ks together into 4Ks, 8Ks, 16K, etc. 1:40 would become my "base" pace. This would be ideal for my OTW rowing. At the Head of the Charles, if and when I get there, I want to rate 30 spm. Then, there is this: If it really turns out that, on the erg, I can pull 1:40 @ 30 spm, steady state, below my anaerobic threshold, because I can row for an hour at my anaerobic threshold, eventually, I will row 18K for 60min, which would predict a 6:00 2K. Back in 2002-2003, I could only do Zatopek 1Ks at 1:44 and only one 2K at 1:40, if I was just doing a 2K in practice at a sub-maximal level. As a performance, the difference between Zatopek 1Ks @ 1:44 and Zatopek 2Ks at 1:40, I would say, is about seven seconds per 500m. (There's that seven seconds per 500m again!). Back in 2002-2003, fully trained, I did a 2K @ 1:37/6:28.

(3) If it indeed turns out that I have gained seven seconds per 500m over seven years of training, my training will have been very good indeed. Since this training didn't really have anything to do with increasing my fitness, it would also give an indication of the role of technique in rowing, given that back in 2003, I rowed like shit, but I now row well. Over seven years, the normal decline in a late 50s rower is about three seconds per 500m over 2K, 1.7 seconds a year, or 12 seconds in all. If this is added to my seven seconds per 500m gain, the role of technique in rowing, even for the best ergers, comes out to a full 10 seconds per 500m. 10 seconds per 500m is a _gigantic_ amount, 40 seconds over 2K, exactly the difference between the 55s lwt WR (6:38) and the Open lwt WR (5:58)._That_, my friends, would be quite a demonstration.

ranger

[ranger]

So weight is still a problem, with 75.4 kgs after all that stepping.

Keeping my weight at 165 lbs. is a problem while I am training maximally, trying to be the best I can be as a rower?



You mean, in sorta the same way that rowing a lwt 6:00 2K at 60 is a problem?

Sure, they are both "problems."

Putting them together is even more of a problem!

Then again, if doing significant things were entirely "unproblematical," I am not sure why we would consider them significant.

Or do you think we should all be able to do significant things by just falling off a log, doing what we want, whenever we want?

Absurd as it is, that seems to be the prevalent attitude these days.

Only 1% of 60-year-olds have 8% body fat, and of that 1%, I assume there is almost no one who can row anywhere very fast. Most of these folks are just beanpoles and/or wimps, with no muscle mass. They are ectomorphs entirely unsuited for rowing well. They don't have any full-body power.

If you carry a lot of muscle-mass, when you are 60 years old, it always wants to lapse back into fat. It is pretty hard to keep it as lean as a 20-year-old's muscle mass of a similar magnitude.

No?

Honestly, Byron, I don't think you know, because you have no experience with it. You are exactly one of those old wimps, who, with no significant muscle mass, and therefore no full-body power, is entirely unsuited for rowing well.

Get on the erg, pull maximally hard and fast for 500m, e.g., at about 45 spm, see what you get for an average wattage/pace and rate, divide your watts by your rate, and see what you have for a natural stroking power.

Is it about 8 SPI?

13 SPI is effective rowing for a lightweight of any age.

Well.

There you have it.

ranger

[ranger]

When Mike VB and Rocket Roy do the 500m-thing, their natural stroking power comes out to be 9.5 SPI.

Rowing well for a lightweight of any age is 13 SPI.

Well.

There you have it.

ranger

[ranger]

As _Rowing Faster_ reports, most older rowers experience a 40-60% loss of their youtthful full-body power.

Well.

There you have it.

If so, they are no longer suited--at all--for rowing well.

They are just old beanpoles/wimps.

They no longer have any significant full-body power.

Near the end of this winter racing season, I think I'll do 500m right at 13 SPI.

Rowing well.

For whatever reason, even though I will be 60 years old in a few days, I have retained _all_ of my youthful full-body power.

ranger

P.S. BTW, I _never_ lift weights. I never have.