Training Musings and Training Philosophies Thread: Q&A

[ThatMoos3Guy]

I don't know of any studies, but I feel lifting might be more important when you're older. Yes, you won't be able to increase your strength as much, but the older you get the more easy it is to lose muscle. Lifting would seem to be of vital importance just for maintaining muscle mass.

[mikvan52]

I don't know of any studies, but I feel lifting might be more important when you're older. Yes, you won't be able to increase your strength as much, but the older you get the more easy it is to lose muscle. Lifting would seem to be of vital importance just for maintaining muscle mass.

Maybe if all of us who are older could maintain:
Strength, flexibility and endurance while guarding against the gains in one area diminishing the capacity for the other two.

That's a nice wish!

[ausrwr]

I guess this one comes under the philosophies side of it.

What are people's best practices for training whilst suffering from sinus/hayfever type ailments?
I tend to get rather a lot, and generally work by the maxim that if it's in the sinuses and not chesty/sore throat, it's fine to continue non-flat-out training.

But above and beyond that, what works for you?

[ThatMoos3Guy]

I generally take a cautious approach with any kind of illness. Normally I'll take a day off if I'm feeling really congested, mostly because it's just annoying to breath through a congested nose. Then I take a light day to work back into the swing of things. If that day goes well, then I go right back into training.

If I have a fever or anything in the chest I avoid working out until I feel a lot better. I ignored that this winter and ended up with bronchitis... I'd rather miss a day or two than a whole couple of weeks.

[ThatMoos3Guy]

So, as I'm trying to figure out what kind of intervals to focus on over the summer I thought I'd ask what people think of equal work/rest intervals. I was reading Pete Marston's blog and he seems to be a fan of what he calls "Danish" intervals, which have equal time and rest with total meters being 150% of the target distance. I thought about using this to train for 5k over the fall, with the intervals being 7x1.1k, 6x1.25k and 5x1.5k. Do them once a week and cycle through them, trying to maintain speed for each round and then drop a little bit for the next time through. Any thoughts on this idea?

[Godfried]

At the beginning of this season I started erging again after 4 years of doing almost nothing.

Season 2004/2005 I did 1,782k , 2005/2006 740k , and the last 4 seasons 62k , 28k, 65k, 36k.

I have to say a Concept2 Model D is a big thing in the middle of a room, but if you stack a lot of boxes on it you almost cannot see it.

Last year I reinstalled RowPro, and May 1 2010 I felt it was time to get active again, so the boxes had to go.

As a result of a discussion regarding “Paul’s Law” I entered a couple of 2k times with the calculated other distances in a spreadsheet, and now I focus on the distance or time the most behind the other.
I don’t believe “Paul’s Law” is “THE LAW”, but for me it does the trick. When I compare my results from 2004/2005 with it, it is close enough. When I was doing this kind of comparisons in 2004/2005/2006 -comparing to other people with all distances entered in the online log- the graphs looked the same.

I like to do all distances in the ranking, and use the spreadsheet to see where most attention is needed. The ranked times are May 19 1k, 23 5k, 24 2k, 28 500m, June 2 10k, 4 30mins, 6 6k.

I do a session Monday/Wednesday/Friday evening and Sunday morning to take some rest between sessions.
I have only been at it for 5 weeks this year, but have to admit I am trying too hard to get the paces down, although I took a day off when I thought I needed more rest.

I don’t like intervals, but because I try to do at least 10k each day I have to do some when the main event is a short distance.
I like to start the longer rows at the pace of the previous ‘season record’ (or a little slower) and go one or two seconds/500m faster the last few k, with a sprint the last minute. Heart rate goes up to 160 with the last k to go, and maxes out at 175 at the end. While the HR is above 170 I ease up a little, there is no need to fall of the rower at the end.

The plan for next week is to do 1k, 2k and 5k at “Paul’s 2k in 8 min” pace, and after that continue doing all distances just a little faster than before (I need to try to make progress a little slower), and I want/expect to be able to do 2k in 7:30 the end of November at O.B.I.C. in Belgium.

The goal for this year is to be able to do 15k in an hour again, although I remember from years ago that to be able to do that requires a lot of long distance rowing, and the weight loss that comes with that (my primary goal is to loose a lot) makes sitting that long even more difficult.

[Godfried]

..And just for this discussion is an image of my PB(SB) for season 2010:
...

I compared your times with mine and concluded your 1k time should be 3:41.4.
Checked that in the online rankings and page 14 of your blog.

[TomR]

So, as I'm trying to figure out what kind of intervals to focus on over the summer I thought I'd ask what people think of equal work/rest intervals. I was reading Pete Marston's blog and he seems to be a fan of what he calls "Danish" intervals, which have equal time and rest with total meters being 150% of the target distance. I thought about using this to train for 5k over the fall, with the intervals being 7x1.1k, 6x1.25k and 5x1.5k. Do them once a week and cycle through them, trying to maintain speed for each round and then drop a little bit for the next time through. Any thoughts on this idea?

Not sure what you goals are, but I'm always inclined to ask: What do the world's best do? You can poke around and find what Xemo Muller and Lisa Schlenker and the like recommend.

There is no single optimal ratio of work rep to recovery across all interval distances. You're just fiddling with the training effect by fiddling with recovery times. Typically, though, the shorter the interval the longer the recovery relatively speaking.

[slwiser]

..And just for this discussion is an image of my PB(SB) for season 2010:
...

I compared your times with mine and concluded your 1k time should be 3:41.4.
Checked that in the online rankings and page 14 of your blog.

I don't have to check that since I know for sure you are right. Correction coming. I had a crash and had to enter my numbers and apparently failed on that number. Thanks

Edit: The original post has been EDITED as noted.

[ausrwr]

Well, time for another one, seeing as Ranger is busy attempting to get himself thrown off the board. There's only so much of a car-wreck one can watch.

So..........

My next area for conjecture is ergogenic substances. Nothing illegal, mind. If it's illegal or on the banned list, I won't do it. I'm no longer subject to drug testing, but there's still something that would overshadow any performance made if I was illegal. Which does burn me when it comes to pseudoephedrine. They took it off the banned list, then put the bugger back on. It wasn't that ergogenic, but by God it cleared my sinuses well!

OK, my thoughts today are on bicarb loading and caffeine loading. Normal protocol applies: share experiences, document where possible, and ask lots of questions.

Caffeine: I think it works. Documentary evidence is there, at about 3 mg per kilo of bodyweight. As much as I recall, that'd be about 3 espressos, done an hour to 45 minutes before racing. Alternatives are to use No-Doz for the simple fact that it makes one's stomach much less acidic.
Caveats: May cause palpitations in some users. Doesn't seem to work so well for people who are normally well-organised and fired up - seems to send them over the edge (see Selye's General Adaptation theory and the 'inverted-U' hypothesis).

What are others' experiences and thoughts on this?

Bicarb: Studies say it works. The one time I used it for a 2k I pulled a PB. I did, however, throw up pre-ergo. Whether this was due to intestinal distress or simply through nerves, I don't know. I did use it mixed into a drink, and it felt bloody terrible on the throat going down. This might have some negative effects when one breathes maximally in a 2k, but I don't know. Has anyone used it using capsules? Or suffered intestinal distress from it?

Beyond this, what are people's philosophical thoughts on legal ergogenics? I can understand a school of though which says it's legalised cheating, but I disagree. It's a legal, inexpensive (and realistically not adverse to long-term health, any more than a flat out 2k might be) way of improving performance.

Thoughts?

[NavigationHazard]

Re caffeine: there's a mountain of evidence that it works, sort of. IIRC the ergogenic effect is considerably greater on non-habitual users than on coffee addicts. This makes sense: you build up a tolerance over time....

Re bicarbonate loading: even if it works, I suspect that for most people the potential gastric distress isn't worth any tiny edge you might get from it.

As for the general notion of seeking a performance edge through diet or other non-training means, I personally am inclined to draw the line at anything I wouldn't normally eat, drink or otherwise ingest. So pancakes for carb-loading are fine, and if baking soda is used as the leavening agent maybe there's a wee bit of bicarbonate loading, but bicarb tablets are out. Coffee frappes are in; caffeine pills out. Gatorade or Lucozade is fine as an isotonic recovery drink; I'm not a big fan of quasi-legal nitric-oxide-promoting formulas or energy drinks laced with vitamins and substances like taurine.* Etc.

Maybe I'm old school. But I'd like to think that I was beaten by a better rower-athlete, not by better chemistry.

* I should add that there's very little quality control over OTC athletic supplements sold in the US, and that any number of professional sports figures have failed drug tests because stuff they bought at the GNC has been contanimated or mislabeled.....

[jliddil]

You can register for free 30 day access the the British Journal of Sports Medicine and get the 8 part review the have. Search on ergogenic.

Pubmed has an number of articles many of them free.

I'm no big fan of taking all kinds of stuff as nav points out in the US (and most other areas) there is no real regulation around what can go into supplements. That includes things like lead in chinese herbal stuff.

And what about those who are on drugs for medical reasons that are banned. Or you take medications for mental health and they make you feel better and thus perform better? Fortunately for me I am not fast enough in running or erging for it to really matter but I'd flunk a drug test to be honest.

For the average person are drugs going to help you overcome what are genetic hardwired issues? It depends on if we are talking speed vs endurance. And it has been shown that all this has a large placebo effect.

[ThatMoos3Guy]

The ergogenic aid that intrigues me the most is beet root juice. It hasn't been examined that much, but there's a study that shows athletes consuming beetroot juice can perform endurance exercises longer. It's hypothesized that the nitrate rich quality of the beetroot juice allows for greater oxygen uptake in muscles. In the study cyclists were able to decrease the time for an endurance activity by 2%, causing adaptations that can't be achieved even through training. That's around 8 seconds over 7 minutes. Sadly, I've only been able to read the abstract and articles about it, so there could be some design issues with the study. It just doesn't seem feasible. Anyone know anything else about this?

http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nu ... ance-Study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19661447

[jliddil]

I'll pass on the nitrates as they are known to be correlated with increases in stomach cancer due to nitrosamine formation. You can offset this by drinking orange juice with your bacon or hot dog,

[bloomp]

So if we're doing all this training, and we're doing it right I have a question. What is the fastest 2k there will ever be? It has to plateau at some point, our bodies and even the most elite cannot handle a certain amount of power over that distance.

Will anyone break 5:00? Or even 5:20? Is 5:36 about the fastest any rower will ever pull?