New Wolverine Plan Thread

[wjschmidt2]

Nosmo,

You have a valid point. Rule of elevens is not a true L1 workout although I wish it was. I think Mike VB has suggested upping the rates which may make it into a true hard core L1.

Greg,

The 1000 meter rest was a paddle about 2:25 pace with stoppage time to drink water.

Bill

[gregsmith01748]

@Nosmo: I guess you're right. I was looking at the peak paces in the hardest intervals (44.6, 43.4,42.2, 41.1,40.0), not the slower ones, which are much closer to L2 or L3 pacing for me. And the recovery did not get my heart down. I guess that it most like an interval based L3 workout. I guess I'll plug it into that rotation.

[Nosmo]

@Nosmo: I guess you're right. I was looking at the peak paces in the hardest intervals (44.6, 43.4,42.2, 41.1,40.0), not the slower ones, which are much closer to L2 or L3 pacing for me. And the recovery did not get my heart down. I guess that it most like an interval based L3 workout. I guess I'll plug it into that rotation.

Why not just follow the WP plan? I'm not really sure why you are messing with the plan. There is plenty of variety you can put into the L1's and L2's. Example L1's: 8x500; 6x667; 5x800; 1000, 900,800,700,600; 1000, 500,1000,500, 1000; 650,500,650,500,650,500, 650; 900,800,700,600,500,500; There are more you can make up. Best to stick to one or two that you always rotate through, and experiment with a different format once through each rotation.

Also I think you are probably pushing too hard on the L3's and L4's. The WP plan is really designed to give you steady progress at all levels. Ideally there is minimal fluctuation in work load from week to week and for a given workout. Each L3 should only be slightly longer or slightly faster the previous weeks. Going hard then taking it easy when you feel tired is not consistent with the philosophy of the plan. It will be necessary at times, but that is not the intention. Tracking progress is also a very important part of the plan. By rotating through consistent workouts you will recognize when you are no longer improving. Constantly changing things makes this more difficult.

The WP plan is made for long term improvement. I think your big improvements doing mostly easier distance is not surprising. You are becoming more of a rower and less of a runner. But in the long term if you want to excel at the 2K distance you are better off sticking to the plan. The real intensity should be on the L1's. The other workouts are in support of the L1's.

If getting as fast as possible at the 2k is secondary to staying in shape and having fun then what you are doing is fine, and may be better then the WP plan. But you should be clear about how you are deviating from it.

All the best. You are very very fast.

[wjschmidt2]

L3 today 18k 1:54.9 r26 df 123

Felt good to get a long workout in after eating so much turkey.

Bill

[wjschmidt2]

Had to get another long row in 60' 1:57.4 ave sr 26 df 123 due to all the left over turkey.

Bill

[gregsmith01748]

Taking stock of progress after 6 months on WP

I have pretty accurate records back through August, and the online log book data back through June. I wanted to figure out what progress I am making, and post it here for general feedback and suggestions.

Overall, since june:
I have logged 121 sessions on the erg, for an average of 4.8 per week. This is a bit misleading because most of the off days have been in strings during business travel. During this period I have had 9 business trips (most to asia) that have caused at least a 2 day break from rowing. Generally, during these periods I would run or workout on a cross trainer instead. If you exclude business trips, I have been averaging 6.4 training sessions per week.

2K Progress: Pre-WP: 1:52.5 (5/16), most recent: 1:42.9 (9/10)

Progress by workout type:
L1 - The first 8x500m I attempted was in July at an average split of 1:45, which was way too easy. Next workout I had pulled that down to 1:42. I've not made as much progress as I would have hoped, over 2 months, I shaved my avg for 8x500 by 0.5 sec from 1:39.7 to 1:39.2. I also noticed that I am avoiding doing 4x1Ks lately (I wonder why?)

L2 - This is a happier story. In June, I did my first 4x2K at 1:53 splits and have progressed steadily down to my most recent 4x2K @ 1:47.2.

L3 - From June to September I made rapid improvements decreasing my splits from around 2:01 to 1:57. During October and November, I did no HM's and then when I went back to try again at the end of November, I was unable to break 2:00. I'm not sure why, but it is somewhat bothersome, even though I know the focus of the training is to get faster at the 2K. One big change is that since I got my knee fixed, I have stopped going for weekly long runs (6 to 10 miles). I'm wondering if that was helping my CV fitness more than I had thought. Another is that I have been doing more interval work and have reduced the intensity of my L4 workouts based on feedback from WP users on the forum.

L4 - Most commonly, I have been doing 2x40min L4 sessions with about 5 minutes of rest between sets. My reference pace started at 1:45, and I reset to 1:42 after a 2K time trial in September. I have had a couple of forum exchanges with hjs and others on the forum about the intended intensity of L4 workouts. Some folks have maintained that L4 workouts should be paced as a recovery session (basically at a UT1 heart rate), while I have maintained that they should be a bit more intense (say AT range). At any rate, I have not added significantly to the stroke rate of the L4 workouts I have done over the past few months around 18SPM avg, and the avg splits have been stable around 2:03.

Conclusions:
I started using the WP in June after 6 months of farting around, IP and Pete Plan (in that order). And now that I've been working on it for 6 months, I have mixed emotions. During the first 6 months that I was erging, I lost a boatload of weight and my PBs just kept dropping. Sometimes it felt like everytime I sat down, I could do better, often way better, than before. The same was true for the first 3 months of WP. I dropped my 2K split almost 10 seconds (1:52.5 to 1:42.9), but since September, I've been still putting up 70K to 100K meters per week but the progress is more sporadic and, as my half marathon numbers have shown, not always in the right direction.

I am going to maintain the same workout pattern through the CRASH-Bs and then decide if I keep going with the WP, make some adjustments in it, or perhaps adopt another approach. It may be that I have reached limit of my ability to diagnose and coach myself and would benefit from a meaningful help from people who know way more than I do. I also think that I may be doing as well as is possible with the travel schedule I am maintaining.

This past year has been a wild trip. I've learned a lot about exercise physiology, human psychology, and discovered that exercising to lose weight is nowhere as fun as the challenge of trying to get faster on a cruelly objective exercise machine.

Details of workouts by type follows:

L1 Workouts
6/15/2010 - 8x500m
6/21/2010 - 4x1K
7/5/2010 - 8x500@1:45
7/21/2010 - 6x500m
7/28/2010 - 8x500
8/3/2010 - 4x1K
8/10/2010 - 4x1K - 1:42.6
8/23/2010 - 4x1K - 1:47.0
9/8/2010 - 4x1K - 1:42.9, 30 SPM
9/28/2010 - 4x1K - 1:42.5, 32 SPM
10/8/2010 - 8x500 - 1:39.7, 32 SPM
--- knee repair
10/30/2010 - 8x500 - 1:40.4, 30SPM
11/6/2010 - 4x1K - 1:44.4, 31SPM
11/9/2010 - rule of 11s - tough to evaluate, hit workout targets, discovered new max HR
11/15/2010 - 250/500/750/1K/750/500/250 - 1:42.1, 31SPM
11/22/2010 - 8x500 - 1:39.4, 32SPM
11/30/2010 - 7x500 - 1:39.4, 33 SPM (bonked in 8th rep)
12/6/2010 - 8x500 - 1:39.2, 33 SPM

L2 workouts
8/3/2010 - 3/2.5/2/1.5 - 1:51.2
8/5/2010 - 3x2K - 1:50.2
8/25/2010 - 3/2.5/2/1.5 - 1:50.2
9/1/2010 - 4x2K - 1:49.3
9/10/2010 - 3x2K - 1:47.4 (first rep was 2K PB 6:51.8)
9/28/2010 - 4x2K - 1:49.3, 28 SPM
10/3/2010 - 3/2.5/2/1.5 - 1:49.4, 28.5SPM
10/21/2010 - 5x1500 - 1:48.7, 28 SPM
--- knee repair
11/3/2010 - 4x2K - 1:48.1, 27.5 SPM
11/13/2010 - 4x2K - 1:47.2, 28.8 SPM
11/19/2010 - 3/2.5/2/1.5 - 1:48.8, 28 SPM
12/2/2010 - 3x2500 - 1:48.5, 28.7 SPM

L3 workouts
Date__________|__Meters_|__Split
06/19/2010____|__15162__|__01:58.7
06/24/2010____|__15067__|__01:59.5
06/26/2010____|__21097__|__02:01.1
07/03/2010____|__21097__|__02:00.8
07/06/2010____|__15092__|__01:59.3
07/09/2010____|__15490__|__01:56.2
07/18/2010____|__21097__|__02:00.8
07/19/2010____|__14266__|__02:06.2
07/27/2010____|__15147__|__01:58.8
08/02/2010____|__21097__|__01:59.2
08/08/2010____|__21097__|__01:59.9
08/21/2010____|__21097__|__01:59.2
08/27/2010____|__21097__|__01:58.7
09/03/2010____|__21097__|__01:56.6
09/21/2010____|__21097__|__01:58.8
10/01/2010____|__21097__|__01:56.4
10/05/2010____|__17115__|__02:00.9
10/10/2010____|__15204__|__01:58.4
10/19/2010____|__15107__|__01:59.2
--- Knee repair
11/01/2010____|__16000__|__01:57.6
11/10/2010____|__15268__|__01:57.9
11/17/2010____|__18226__|__01:55.8
11/25/2010____|__17000__|__01:56.1
11/27/2010____|__21097__|__02:00.5
11/28/2010____|__21097__|__02:02.6
12/04/2010____|__21097__|__02:00.6


L4 workouts
7/30/2010 - 50 min, 12282m, 956
8/11/2010 - 80 min, 19661, 1488
8/22/2010 - 80 min, 19661, 1514
8/24/2010 - 80 min, 19826, 1528
8/26/2010 - 60 min, 14869, 1144
8/28/2010 - 80 min, 18826, 1528
9/2/2010 - 80 min, 19619, 1528
9/9/2010 - 70 min, 17028, 1322
9/20/2010 - 80 min, 19645, 1464
9/22/2010 - 80 min, 19530, 1436
9/27/2010 - 80 min, 19076, 1416
9/29/2010 - 60 min, 14767, 1110
10/2/2010 - 80 min, 19528, 1456
10/4/2010 - 60 min, 14465, 1060
10/7/2010 - 60 min, 14571, 1060
10/9/2010 - 80 min, 19706, 1472
10/11/2010 - 80 min, 19532, 1462
10/18/2010 - 60 min, 14452, 1090
10/20/2010 - 60 min, 14599, 1050
--- knee repair
10/29/2010 - 80 min, 18933, 1372
10/31/2010 - 80 min, 19510, 1398
11/2/2010 - 60 min, 14809, 1106
11/5/2010 - 80 min, 18936, 1393
11/7/2010 - 80 min, 19498, 1404
11/12/2010 - 80 min, 19641, 1415
11/14/2010 - 40 min, 9900, 720
11/16/2010 - 80 min, 19614, 1410
11/18/2010 - 50 min, 11972, 880
11/21/2010 - 80 min, 20013, 1510
11/23/2010 - 80 min, 19802, 1490
11/29/2010 - 80 min, 19503, 1420
12/1/2010 - 80 min, 19435, 1410
12/3/2010 - 80 min, 19448, 1392
12/5/2010 - 60 min, 14759, 1138
12/7/2010 - 40 min, 10121, 782

[Nosmo]

Greg,
Bear in mind that MC says for every day he misses due to travel or illness(and he does exercise just not on the erg and not doing the WP) that it takes 3 times as long as the break to get back to where he was. If one is not in as good shape or not doing it as intensely then it may be quicker. It is really tough when you take a breaks.
Also looking at your 18K on Nov 17 which was under 1:56, I wouldn't worry too much about the slower HMs. Don't worry about it now, they are likely to drop very quickly again.

[gregsmith01748]

Thanks Nosmo.

By the way, the Nov 17th was that miserable 15x3' with 1' rest interval workout that Bloomp suggested, so it was not a real indication of speed at distance.

[bloomp]

Thanks Nosmo.

By the way, the Nov 17th was that miserable 15x3' with 1' rest interval workout that Bloomp suggested, so it was not a real indication of speed at distance.

Glad to see you enjoyed it. Very good introspective analysis of your experience with the WP - when I used it I felt the same way. That I could get faster and faster with every piece. I feel the same way with my current training plan but if I ever end up without a coach/team I will definitely revert to the WP. But for now I know I am on the right path to being one of the fastest on my team - and with my coach's plan my team as a whole will be very fast.

[wjschmidt2]

First 4x2k of the season 1:46.7 ave df 120 sr 31 1000 meter paddle rest

The heart was pounding after each set!

Bill

[gregsmith01748]

Nice set of 2ks, Bill.

My heart rate went up just looking at your avg time.

I'm off the plan for a little while. It turns out I have 2 cracked ribs. I can do slow steady stuff with not much discomfort, but low rate l4s and intervals really aggravate it. Trying to do fast starts really hurts.

I hope it clears up soon, or else I'll really suck at the crash-bs.

[Nosmo]

Discussion of Periodization over at Rowing Illustrated, with some good comments by MC:

http://www.rowingillustrated.com/boards ... =45&t=3538

Nothing really new there for those who are familiar with the WP, but it is nice to see another clear thoughtful post by MC.

(It is also a good excuse to bump this thread up again, especially for the newcomers).

[pmacaula]

After a winter and spring of living in hotels and airplanes, I finally got back to rowing and erging regularly a few weeks ago. To date, not a lot of planning, just showing up on RowPro and doing some fartlek type stuff (e.g. 12K at 1:56/1:52, alternating between paces each 500m) with an online erging friend and just long steady state (60 - 80 min) stuff on the water to get back the feel of the 1x.

Anyhow, am just in the process of getting more structured about both the OTW and OTE workouts, with the objective of improving on last year's fall head race results (not doing summer sprints - just too much weekend family stuff going on).

Just did my first L4 OTE this afternoon online w/ the same erging friends - 40' @ 18.0spm (Ref Pace 1:37) - 176/180/184/180. Felt solid throughout, though was a bit unsteady locking on to the rate and pace targets.
Tomorrow will be L2 (5x1500). Friday will be L4 again (46' @ 18.0spm), the first step in a build to 60' before starting to increase average spm.

Have plotted out the basics of an 11 workout/week program - 6 mornings/wk in the 1x and 5 evenings/wk on the erg (consistent with the # of sessions I did last week). I don't expect to be able to do this much every week, but when things are quiet at work & on the home front, I want to have workouts ready to go.

Sun am Off
pm Off
Mon am L4 OTW
pm L4 OTE
Tue am L3 OTW - 16K
pm L4 OTE
Wed am L4 OTW
pm L2 OTE
Thu am L3 OTW - 16K
pm L4 OTE
Fri am L4 OTW
pm L3 OTE
Sat am L1 OTW - Intervals w/ club
Sat pm Off

Any thoughts on this plan ? Anyone tried doing something like this & have any advice ?

Cheers. Patrick.

[52cardtrick]

Good evening all!
As you can see, I am new to the forum, though not completely new to erging. I have about 8M metres under my belt. Despite that, up until a couple of days ago I had never read a single paragraph about WP. Now I have done so and I find myself newly remotivated and very keen to give it a try. Looking back, I see that all my metres have never had any structure or plan behind them.

So of course I have some questions......tho not necessarily about how to perform the workouts. In the reading that I have done over the last 48 hours (inc a big chunk of this thread) I have come to the conclusion that some people seem to want to make the Wolverine Plan more complicated than it needs to be. I still have a lot to read (thanks for the links at the start of this thread) and take in and process, however, so may revise that.

A few details about me so you get a picture. M44, 230 pounds (about 40 pound of fat) , 180cm
Some recent rows: 2k - 7:07.8 1:46.9, 5k - 18:38.4 1:51.4, 30m - 7908 1:53.8, HM - 1:25:50.2 2:02:00
All performed this month.

Firstly, is this plan for me? What I mean is, is it for a fat, middle-aged, balding male having a midlife crisis, or is only for superior athletes? Will I too get good gains?

My rota at work is not set up to easily fit this plan in. For instance, this week I will work: Mon 6am - 6pm, Tues 7am - 7pm, Wed night 6pm - 6am, Thurs night 6pm - 6am. Throw in travelling and I am out of the house for 13 hrs minimum (in addition to this, I get regular over-runs). Every week is a similar variation of this, tho there are at times nice breaks in the rota eg. after those 4 shifts I will have about 6 days off. Swopping days to nights is very disturbing and I am regularly short of sleep.
Does anyone have any experience of trying to follow or adapt this plan to unsocial working patterns? Can I realistically manage it?

I have done a few workouts while getting to grips with the details. I took my Ref Pace as 1:47. I started with a L1 of 8x500
1:46.4 28spm df138
1:46.5 28
1:45.7 27
1:45.6 26
1:45.2 27
1:45.4 28
1:44.6 29
1:43.9 29

AV 1:45.4 Tough, but never done intervals before, ever. @2:30 - 3:00 recov

Next day L4
176 180 176 180
Target 9258 Act 9304
Struggled of course to follow rate, but expect this to improve.

Next day L3
12k continuous
1:57.8 26spm 7:51.1
1:57.6 25 7:50.5
1:57.7 25 7:50.6
1:57.8 25 7:51.0
1:57.5 25 7:49.8
1:56.6 25 7:46.5

AV 1:57.5
Tough, but realised after I had miscalculated my intensity levels. I was working to an incorrect 90% at 1:57.4 when in fact it should have been 1:58.6 with 85% being 2:05.6. Idiot!

I believe L3 should be in the region of 24-28 spm. I set out to perform these at about 26 but after completing the first 2k this seemed too high for me, so settled for 25. What does this tell me? Is it on the whole good, in that there is more room for improvement, or does it just show how unfit I actually am? Even a HW like me should be able to rate faster than that?

Please feel free to comment on any of my questions if you can enlighten me. This thread seems to blow hot and cold, anyone care to put their name forward as still following this Plan? Thats just encouragement for me, so I can see that I`m not in this alone.

Paul

[Citroen]

Firstly, is this plan for me? What I mean is, is it for a fat, middle-aged, balding male having a midlife crisis, or is only for superior athletes? Will I too get good gains?

First thing you need to do is learn good technique, second thing is more good technique. Then you'd need to start with something like

• http://thepeteplan.wordpress.com/beginner-training/
• http://concept2.co.uk/weightloss/interactive

or

• http://concept2.co.uk/weightloss/interactive

before you think of heading into a hard core plan like this.