General discussion on Training. How to get better on your erg, how to use your erg to get better at another sport, or anything else about improving your abilities.
NavigationHazard wrote:News flash: they give the medal to the rower who finishes first, not the one with the best watts/kilogram of body weight ratio.
Well 2k + 12.6 seconds for an hour is not impressive to me, as I could do that easily in my sleep.
If that's the best rower in the planet then the best rower on the planet sucks.
Another way of looking at this is that a 2k at 1 hour - 12.6 seconds is not very impressive. That would indicate that your 2k is very soft especially if you could row the hour in your sleep.
If that is the best someone can do then that sucks
hjs wrote:A resting pulse of 90 ? sorry John but I know you for some time and take it that you are simple lying. Just taking your word is not something I do
I know for a fact about my friend as I personally checked the heart rate many times.
And many people know about Ryun and others.
I posted a link and knew about that even when I was in high school.
It is nothing unusual, and just shows your ignorance that you think the occurance is a lie.
What level is your friend. Time and age please and result posted in a race not your word.
Our heart beats all day long whether we’re moving, eating, sleeping, or standing still. And with each stroke, our heart pumps blood through our system carrying vital oxygen and fuel, and carrying out waste products. A heart that’s in good condition can do more with one beat than a heart that’s not as conditioned. This is why conditioned athletes have resting heart rates between 40 - 50 beats per minute which is well below the average of 70 bpm (males) and 75 bpm (females).
Old guys pontificating about the competitive aspects of sports in which they've neither participated in nor ever attended.
I'll say it right here: I know nothing about competitive cycling... riding a bike does not qualify me to discuss the finer points of training for the Tour de France which I've watched numerous times... Get my drift?
I also would have been a poor choice to have coached the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan was there
By analogy:
Row-at-home erging alone has next to nothing to do with racing others on the water.
Rowing recruits may need a decent erg score to get to try out for a spot in an elite boat... But if they can't move the boat during a race against opponents: Sayonara Tiger-Lily. They get cut.
'Closet' athletes often choke in competition. How do you quantify desire?
Furthermore:
Just because ranger has seen Elskid Ebbensen erg doesn't make him understand the first thing about his rowing.
Look at the contests twixt Elskid and Henrik Stephanson... Henrik wins as the rising young star and is faster OTErg than Elskid ever was: Henrik is still learning the OTW game... Yet: Elskid prevails OTW (Beijing '08).
I'm going out on a limb here but somehow I do not think that, in term of outstanding sucess, the career of WR erg holder Stephansen will never approach that of Ebbensen's OTW... Go figure..
I know well enough to say that I'm "no John Kennedy"... I am also not a Lloyd Bentsen!
Yet: We all can recognize the Dan Quayles of the world
Last edited by mikvan52 on March 19th, 2010, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ranger wrote:Many big heavyweights pull much better erg scores than OTW scores, but that's just because they are big and heavy and erg times don't penalize them for this, as OTW does.
Depends on what you consider "much better."
The LW world best for 2k in a 1x is Zac Purchase's 6:47.82 (Dorney Lake, 2006). At the time his 2k erg best seems to have been 6:09.5. Expressed in watts, his otw result was 74% of his erg result. Okay, the HW world best for 2k in a 1x is Mahe Drysdale's 6:33.35 (Poznan, 2009). AFAIK Drysdale's erg best last year was about 5:40. Expressed in watts, his otw result was 64% of his erg result. But AFAIK Alan Campbell, who holds the alltime #2 best time otw, was about 70%. Xeno in his prime was around 67%. For FISA medallists a typical result seems to be 68-70%. IOW most of your putative difference between the weight classes evaporates if you express things in watts as opposed to time. The point is that a cubic relationship is involved in pace/speed. The faster you are, the harder it gets to go faster still. And the big boys (and girls) by and large (pun intended) are damn fast and objectively extremely skilled. Up close, in the next lane at a regatta, the worst sculler in the MHW 1x C final at the FISA world championships is the best technical rower you ever saw.
Moreover, comparisons involving OTW times really need to consider conditions. Who knows how fast Drysdale might have been at Poznan had wind and water conditions been the same as they were for Purchase at Dorney.
NavigationHazard wrote:
The LW world best for 2k in a 1x is Zac Purchase's 6:47.82 (Dorney Lake, 2006). At the time his 2k erg best seems to have been 6:09.5. Expressed in watts, his otw result was 74% of his erg result.
Could that be because he was aiming for the win in a race rather than the absolute best time. Racing is all about crossing the line first (using skill, tactics and some gamesmanship) not about who gets the best ergo score.
NavigationHazard wrote:Expressed in watts, his otw result was 64% of his erg result. But AFAIK Alan Campbell, who holds the alltime #2 best time otw, was about 70%. Xeno in his prime was around 67%. For FISA medallists a typical result seems to be 68-70%.
Are these estimates or are they actually measured? Any idea what the uncertainty is in these measurements? I would think they would be at least several percent but that is just a guess.
I would also assume all the great OTW rowers peak for OTW races and don't do 2K erg trials anywhere near the big race date so the erg scores are lower then they could be.
NavigationHazard wrote:One more time. Graham Benton has rowed farther for 1 hour on an erg than anyone else on planet Earth. Maybe on planet Rupp, which appears to be near Uranus, that sucks. On the third rock from the sun he is the definition of what is possible for the piece.
Next time I chat him I'll be sure to tell him you think he sucks. I imagine he's more concerned about Andy Triggs-Hodge and Karsten Brodowski and Pavel Shurmei, though. Also Rocky-Rambo cat, whose opinions seem to carry much weight in the Tideway boathouse.
I asked Rocky and Rambo, and they both asked, 'Who the f@#$ is John Rupp and what has he done?'.
John Rupp wrote:Well 2k + 12.6 seconds for an hour is not impressive to me, as I could do that easily in my sleep.
If that's the best rower in the planet then the best rower on the planet sucks.
John, perhaps you can examine why there is such a drop-off amongst athletes like Benton, which makes the best athletes in the world "suck" in your own words. For them, the priority is not long distance. It's 2k racing, and going fast there. That's why they suck so badly at 1 hour pieces. Because they don't particularly care about them. Because they are not a priority. Their training is not directed at, oh, bugger it!
Your training is directed at longer stuff because you don't go fast at the short stuff - your priority, and fair enough, but I can't see how you presume to tell great athletes that they suck. You're not a great athlete. Neither am I. But having trained with people of that ilk, I've got a certain amount of respect for what they do. It's abundantly clear that you have no respect for their performances, and no idea of what goes into them!
When you're around these people, you can tell Benton, or Drysdale, or Campbell, that they suck because you have less of a drop-off than they do. And prepare to be laughed at, if they would even listen to your casuistic reasoning.
Rich Cureton. 7:02 at BIRC. But "much better than that now". Yeah, right.
ausrwr wrote:When you're around these people, you can tell Benton, or Drysdale, or Campbell, that they suck because you have less of a drop-off than they do. And prepare to be laughed at, if they would even listen to your casuistic reasoning.
I get the feeling that Rupp isn't the kinda guy that would put himself in a position where he's going to be laughed at by people bigger than he. Anyway, be nice, it's not easy being small and slow
hjs wrote:Have you ever heard of a very well trained endurance athlete with a resting puls of 60/65 ?
While I count myself among the Freed doubters (no independent witnesses to any of these fabulous rows?) this particular fact isn't one of the reasons why. Good old Joop Zoetemelk (TdF winner 1980, 6 time TdF 2nd place, 16 completed TdF rides (the record), 1985 World RR champion (at age 38!)) had a resting HR in that range.
My take on this:
1) High resting heart rates among top athletes are not unknown. It is not common but it happens.
2) I've met a number of athletes who do no interval or speed training and a very high volume. They are very good at
3) long distance and bad at short distances. They have small differences in speed as the distances increase.
4) Those same athletes psychologically dislike the short races and rarely do them. One would not expect them to do them well. It is not surprising that they would do a poor 2K and that it would be relatively much worse then longer distances, or that they do them so rarely they wouldn'
5) Top OTW and 2K ergs have to train for speed and they will have a much bigger pace difference between their 2K time and their distance times then those who only do long distances.
6) The ERG in the upper age groups is not nearly as competitive as many other sports. It is not surprising that someone may come along who can erg seeming very fast.
7) People cheat. They cheat with HGH, EPO, steroids and other drugs. They lie about their weight. They lie about their times. People cheat at lower levels not just the elite level. High School football players take steroids. Amateur master and veteran cyclists take EPO. Any one who thinks rowing is "pure" is naive.
Rod Freed's times seem a bit extreme and suspicious but still plausible to me. It is also plausible that he is a fraud or that some of his times are a fraud.
Without more information we just don't know. Whether any of us chooses to believe he is a fruad or his times are legitimate says something about each of us, but not nothing about him.
But you'll have to show me a hell of a lot better rowing for it to be even vaguely reasonable for me to take your advice, however friendly.
Ranger forget Craftsbury. Most if not all of the coaches will be slower then you. What could you possibly learn from someone like Norm Graff who last time I saw him had a hard time even getting into a coaching launch let alone a single shell. Or Ric Ricky who is about your age and overweight. Or even some of the younger coaches (who had well over a minute head start on me at the Head of the Hosmer, yet I passed them half way through--and then I got beaten by MVB a few days later by about a half minute). Obviously none of these people could possibly have anything to teach you. So don't waste your money, you obviously will do so much better coaching your self.
I guess the reason I'm so slow on the erg is because absolutely all of the people who have really helped me learn to scull were slower then me. Yeah that must be the reason. Glad you helped me figure it out.
Last edited by Nosmo on March 19th, 2010, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
