Ranger's training thread

[lancs]

60min, 1:48 @ 24 spm (11.5 SPI), steady state, at 155 bpm, 75% HRR, should come along pretty easily now.

If it 'should come along pretty easily now', why can't you do even half this time at that pace?

[ranger]

If Varis can do the 2:26:40 for a FM when he is 60, as I am, it will indeed be impressive.

Why would you say something like this? I would expect a well done for an outstanding effort. You are nowhere near this time and to imply any different is insulting!

No insults intended at all.

I said it because Henry suggested that rating 34 spm rowing at max drag with your upper body might also be a good way for 60-year-olds to row a FM.

I wonder.

One of the things I am trying to demonstrate with my training is that veterans rowers will do much better over time if they concentrate on technique rather than fitness.

Accomplished veteran rowers _can't_ improve their fitness.

But many can improve their technique and/or skeletal-muscular capacities quite a bit.

Skeletal-muscularly and technically, I don't see why a 60s veteran can't row with _exactly_ the same stroke as an elite young rower.

There is no necessary decline in technical and skeletal-motor capacities/abilities with age, as there is with aerobic capacity, although you certainly have to work hard at maintaining these capacities/abilities if you don't want to lose them as the decades slide by.

ranger

[mikvan52]

skeletal-muscular capacities

yet another rangerism (w/o meaning) to add to the ranger bingo card...

Rich: You differentiate the SMC above from fitness...
For our entertainment pleasure, would you please attempt to describe the difference?
Is Skeltal capacity similar to tensile strength?
How can anyone at advanced age increase such physical parameters when muscle mass and bone density have long since peaked?
Does building new muscles and finding new levers (another weird-ism) have anything to do with it?


Did you go to night school to get an advanced degree in jargon or do you just dream up this stuff?

[ranger]

60min, 1:48 @ 24 spm (11.5 SPI), steady state, at 155 bpm, 75% HRR, should come along pretty easily now.

If it 'should come along pretty easily now', why can't you do even half this time at that pace?

I am working on technique at the moment.

When I have fully mastered the dynamics of low drag, I will have no problem rowing 1:48 @ 25 spm, steady state, at a 155 bpm HR.

In my training, I am just getting used to these dynamics, learning to relax completely with the larger ratios, quicker catches and finishes, longer recoveries, etc.

To do your best in a long row like a FM, it is not just your general effectiveness and efficiency that is the issue, what stroke you use at what level of effort.

The stroke you use must also be completely relaxed, consistent, unconscious, and habitual.

Nothing ruins physical performance more than over-thinking it.

ranger

[snowleopard]

Nothing ruins physical performance more than over-thinking it.

Amen brother. JFDI.

[mikvan52]

lancs:
Perhaps we aren't reading ranger prose closely enough...?

60min, 1:48 @ 24 spm (11.5 SPI), steady state, at 155 bpm, 75% HRR, should come along pretty easily now.

If it 'should come along pretty easily now', why can't you do even half this time at that pace?

When TSO says "should come along pretty easily", perhaps he means the contrary... as in "it should, but it doesn't".
In a way, this could be seen as a cry of despair from our hero.

"Here I've done al this work and bragged incessantly. I should be able to (fill in the usual crap)..."

Everyone knows he can't including the bard of BS himself, Baron Von MannBatt.

I feel that my interpretation of ranger's use of "should" solves the whole puzzle.... he's washed up.
(his) Playing with drag factor and claiming he's learning is the full extent of what we'll see from here on out.

[ranger]

You differentiate the SMC above from fitness

For good reason.

In rowing, what skeletal-motor capacities you have and use (use and therefore have) are closely tied to your technique and therefore are much more sport-specific than your general physiological fitness.

In rowing, you can be very strong, etc., but if you don't row well, you can waste that strength and/or misuse it, both of which can be damaging.

By and large, I think you get skeletal-muscularly fit for rowing by rowing well. There aren't very many other good substitutes, especially if you want to row to the limits of your potential.

ranger

[mikvan52]

[ I am just getting used to ... dynamics, ...to relax.. with ...ratios, ... catches and finishes, ...recoveries, ...over-thinking it.

ranger

edited for content..

ranger is going back into his "I need to learn how to row" cocoon...

Maybe he's not human after all is really a 17-year locust...



According to this theory, ranger brood will emerge again at Crash-B in 2020 (17 years after 2003)

[ranger]

Perhaps we aren't reading ranger prose closely enough...?

Rowing is all about relaxing while doing something pretty fast and complex over and over.

It takes some time to get used to new ratios, timing, speed of leverage, sequecing, etc.

To be fully competent with a technique, it must be automatic, unconscious, habitual, etc.

It takes some time to build up muscle-memory, so you don't have to monitor what you are doing in some external way, mental or mechanical.

Your body does the rowing.

ranger

[mikvan52]

You differentiate the SMC above from fitness

For good reason.

In rowing, what skeletal-motor capacities you have and use (use and therefore have) are closely tied to your technique and therefore are much more sport-specific than your general physiological fitness.

In rowing, you can be very strong, etc., but if you don't row well, you can waste that strength and/or misuse it, both of which can be damaging.

By and large, I think you get skeletal-muscularly fit for rowing by rowing well. There aren't very many other good substitutes, especially if you want to row to the limits of your potential.

ranger

What are the magnitudes by which you measure skeletal motor capacities?
How do they increase with age?
I'm standing by the phone, at the ready. I have Roto-Rooter's number on speed-dial...

[ranger]

ranger is going back into his "I need to learn how to row" cocoon...

Nope.

Learning to row well is something else entirely.

I am just rowing at a lower drag.

To do a different drag with full competence, though, especially for a long row like a FM, you need to get used to it.

I am lovin' the low drag.

The huge ratios, especially when they are still there at high rates, is amazing.

Of course, the chain is also much lighter, too, so rowing at low drag, if you can do it well, is much easier on you, both skeletal-muscularly and physiologically.

Sure, over the years I have tried to row at low drag several times, but I couldn't handle it.

To take advantage of low drag, I had to learn to get better at doing a dozen other things that I was doing poorly.

No problem now.

In fact, from day to day, rowing at low drag is now bringing out more and more of the _strengths_ of my technique--balanced leverage, good footwork, quickness, good sequencing and timing, better slide control, relaxed shoulders and abs at the catch, relaxed shoulders when I engaged my abs and swing my back, etc.

As I have said, I think I'll be fully habituated to this rowing at low drag in about am month or so.

ranger

[mikvan52]

It takes some time to build up muscle-memory...

"some" time...
For you, that time has passed.
You so proud of the result that you're hiding it.

[mikvan52]

I am just rowing at a lower drag.

Lame excuses are no excuses at all.

Look at what you did on the erg today. It was slower than anything you would have dreamed of in 2003.

[ranger]

What are the magnitudes by which you measure skeletal motor capacities?
How do they increase with age?

If you have just learned to row well, as I have, your muscles adapt in a sport-specific way to the task.

Given my past as a marathon runner, rowing well has made me quite a bit stronger and quicker in the quads, gluts, hams, and lats.

I was fine with my calves, abs, delts, and elsewhere, before I started rowing, and I did a lot of pull ups, sit ups, and jumping rope to keep these things up, but it took me a while of rowing well at high drag to shore up other skeletal-muscular things.

ranger

[peterhowd]

60min, 1:48 @ 24 spm (11.5 SPI), steady state, at 155 bpm, 75% HRR, should come along pretty easily now.

If it 'should come along pretty easily now', why can't you do even half this time at that pace?

I am working on technique at the moment.

When I have fully mastered the dynamics of low drag, I will have no problem rowing 1:48 @ 25 spm, steady state, at a 155 bpm HR.

In my training, I am just getting used to these dynamics, learning to relax completely with the larger ratios, quicker catches and finishes, longer recoveries, etc.

[SNIP]

ranger

I think you mean kinematics, not dynamics, though some may disagree. Kinematics suggests you actually get on the erg and move back and forth.