Ranger's training thread

[PaulH]

I have been posting videos of my improved technique for years now.

One of the years you haven't, though, is 2011, which is the only year when your technique has been set (aside from all the other years when you've claimed it's been set). So how about it? Just a photo of the mileage from this morning's session would suffice, in fact.

[ranger]

If you get the countermotion against the back at catches and finishes without sacrificing a full use of the back as a lever in between, even as an old lightweight like me, you should pull a neat 13 SPI (e.g., 1:50 @ 20 spm), just naturally, with little effort at all, because you are rowing well.

Then, hey, is you do that 1:50 @ 20 spm, steady state, for 90min, it predicts that you can pull a 6:16 2K.

Nice!

ranger

[ranger]

Nice 10K OTErg just before dawn.

Sun is coming up.

Time to get out OTW.



ranger

[ranger]

Sorry to think so, but IMO, with his WP, Caviston has his training principles exactly inverted.

Instead of having us row well in order to go fast, he would have us refrain from rowing well until we can go fast.

But in rowing, you go fast by rowing well.

So, for most people, the WP is a disaster.

It encourages bad rowing and therefore, if you follow it, it just makes you slow, and if you are an older rower, whose fitness is declining with age, slower and slower.

IMO, you can only learn to row well by rowing well--a lot.

Then, if you learn to row well, you can go fast.

If not, not.

In rowing, technique is _very_ important.

The rower with the best stroke wins.

ranger

[ranger]

BTW, my injury is entirely healed.

No more pain, no more weakness.

ranger

[ranger]

I have been posting videos of my improved technique for years now.

One of the years you haven't, though, is 2011, which is the only year when your technique has been set (aside from all the other years when you've claimed it's been set). So how about it? Just a photo of the mileage from this morning's session would suffice, in fact.

As I have explained, it seems as though there are at least a couple dozen pretty separate things to consider in learning to do an effective and efficient rowing stroke.

For me, at least, it has taken quite a while to master all of them.

Sure, the advances I have made lately seem more significant than the advances I made in 2003, and then 2004, and then 2005, and then 2006, and then 2007, and then 2008, and then 2009, and then 2010, but this is probably not the right way to look at it.

The advances I have made lately, I think, just _seem_ more important, because they have completed the whole process of learning to row well.

The various parts of the rowing stroke are closely integrated.

In many cases, the significance of some/many of the advances that you have made can't be appreciated until you make other advances, etc.

ranger

[mikvan52]

* reader alert... This is not a training thread !
It is, rather, a stream of blog musings by an old man who is now bound to spend his summers in a house he inherited from his mother.
He could go down the road, car-topping his 1x racing single, and test his theories in a race against others. For (?)reasons he chooses not to...

~ No racing
~ All hypotheticals
~ No timed pieces (ever)
~ No value

What a mega-yawn!

[ranger]

If you want to row, rather than just get fit using rowing, I would suggest this regimen as a training plan.

(A) Never use rowing just to improve your fitness. If you do, you'll never reach your potential as a rower. Sure, you'll get fit, but end up rowing badly. Rowing badly vs. rowing well is worth 10 seconds per 500 across all of the distances, a _gigantic_ margin that is large enough to convert anyone from one of the worst rowers to one of the best. If you aren't fit (e.g., because you are old, or because you have been a couch potato for a decade or two, or because you are young and have never had any experience with doing something that taxes your skeletal-motor and physiological capacities, etc.), get fit in other ways. Run, skip, bike, step, swim--a lot--a couple hours a day. Work easily at first, but long, and then work up to exerting yourself to the limit of your endurance, aerobic capacity, skeletal-motor abilities, etc. in as many ways as possible using your entire body. The most efficient way to do this, probably, is just hard, totally exhausting physical labor--chopping down trees, digging holes, carrying rocks, hiking mountains with a 50-lb. pack, etc.

(B) Always use rowing to improve your rowing. Make a checklist of the major things you must do in the stroke cycle to row well for your weight (13 SPI for lightweights, 16 SPI for heavyweights). These might be included in your list.

(1) Get good length. Get all the way to shins vertical at the catch. The front of your seat should be only six inches from front stops when you fire off with your legs.

(2) Keep your hips/back forward at a good angle when you fire off with your legs. Hold that angle until your legs are done. At this point, the handle should be over your feet.

(3) Get your weight securely up on the balls of your feet at the catch, driving with your quads. Do _not_ take the catch with your heels and hams.

(4) Relax your shoulders at the catch.

(5) Relax your core at the catch.

(6) After about .1 seconds set your heels and stand up on the footplate, flattening your legs out with your hams. As in (2), at this point, the handle should be over your feet.

(7) Open your hips and swing your back with your core.

(8) While you are swinging your back, roll back up onto the balls of your feet and drive down on the footplate with the front of your foot using your calves.

(9) Keep your shoulders relaxed even though you have engaged your core, back, and calves.

(10) Pull through with your arms into your chest.

(11) Keep your elbows level as you pull the handle into your chest.

(11) Get a substantial lean with your back at the finish.

(12) Keep in good contact with the footplate at the finish. Point your toes and push the footplate away from you by digging in with your toes.

(13) Recover your arms as quickly as they finish.

(14) When you recover your arms, sit up tall and push the handle down toward your knees.

(15) Keep your knees flat on the rail until the handle sweeps past them.

(16) Recover your back as quick and fully as you did when you engaged it in the drive, returning to shins vertical (Prep Position). As in (2) and (6), at this point the handle should be over your feet, legs flat on the rail.

(17) The movements from (1) to (16) should be _very_ fast, 3/8 of the stroke cycle, at the most. If you count "And-ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-and-FOUR" as you do the stroke cycle as a whole, execute the movements from (1) to (16) in the first three pulses of this counting/beating: "And-ONE-and."

(18) Set you heels firmly when as you get into prep position.

(19) Break your knees and move the seat slowly toward the catch.

(20) As you do this, roll your weight slowly from your heels to the balls of your feet.

If technique in rowing is worth about 10 seconds per 500m, then as an approximation, each of these 20 technical points, I think, miight be worth a couple of seconds over 2K (.5 seconds per 500m).

All twenty of these technical points, taken together and mastered completely, are worth forty seconds over 2K (10 seconds per 500m).

When you get on the erg, your task in training is to master these things.

Each time you row, work on one of these twenty things, or some subset of these twenty things, that you know you do poorly, until you have mastered them all.

Put in 20K a session.

If you are fit, master all of these technical aspects of rowing, and are a big lightweight (e.g., 6', 165 lbs., right at the weight limit), you should pull a nice 1:43 @ 25 spm (13 SPI), just naturally.

If you are fit, master all of these technical aspects of rowing, and are a big heavyweight (e.g., 6'5", 220 lbs.), you should pull a nice 1:36 @ 25 spm (16 SPI), just naturally.

You are now one of the best rowers in the world.

[mikvan52]

ranger:
Your advice is largely wrong (as has been pointed out) and has made you slower vs your peers as the record has shown.

Get a coach.

[ranger]

If you get the countermotion against the back at catches and finishes without sacrificing a full use of the back as a lever in between, even as an old lightweight like me, you should pull a neat 13 SPI (e.g., 1:50 @ 20 spm), just naturally, with little effort at all, because you are rowing well.

Then, hey, is you do that 1:50 @ 20 spm, steady state, for 90min, it predicts that you can pull a 6:16 2K.

Nice!

ranger

If you are a big heavyweight and you get these things, you should pull an easy 1:43 @ 20 spm, and then, hey, if you do that 1:43 @ 20 spm, steady state, for 90min, it predicts a 5:52 2K.

Nice!

ranger

[ranger]

Your advice is largely wrong

Really?

Then I am happy to see a 55-year-old my size pull sub-6:30 for 2K @ 12 SPI--without even preparing for it.

And the story continues.

Talk to you again after the winter erg races this year.

Rowing well (13 SPI) at low drag (120 df.), fully prepared, I think I'll now pull a lwt 6:16 when I am 61.

A row of that quality would be (gobsmackingly) unprecedented.

It would break the 60s lwt 2K WR OTErg by 26 seconds.

And it would break the 55s, 50s, and 40s lwt WRs along the way.

Mike, when you are 60, you'll have a hard time breaking 7:00 for 2K OTErg.

So will Mike Caviston.

Why?

ranger

[PaulH]

I have been posting videos of my improved technique for years now.

One of the years you haven't, though, is 2011, which is the only year when your technique has been set (aside from all the other years when you've claimed it's been set). So how about it? Just a photo of the mileage from this morning's session would suffice, in fact.

As I have explained, it seems as though there are at least a couple dozen pretty separate things to consider in learning to do an effective and efficient rowing stroke.

For me, at least, it has taken quite a while to master all of them.

Sure, the advances I have made lately seem more significant than the advances I made in 2003, and then 2004, and then 2005, and then 2006, and then 2007, and then 2008, and then 2009, and then 2010, but this is probably not the right way to look at it.

The advances I have made lately, I think, just _seem_ more important, because they have completed the whole process of learning to row well.

The various parts of the rowing stroke are closely integrated.

In many cases, the significance of some/many of the advances that you have made can't be appreciated until you make other advances, etc.

ranger

And this stops you from taking a picture of your monitor this morning how?

[snowleopard]

Your advice is largely wrong

Really?

Yes.

[ranger]

Get a coach.

No need.

I already have a coach, the best coach in the world.



ranger

[mikvan52]

Get a coach.

No need.

I already have a coach, the best coach in the world.



ranger

the only part you get right is the

" "

If anyone were to think we're being a little too hard on you, they should realize that a man who has posted so much about so little for so many years deserves only derision at this late date...

Get a coach; your "coach" is just a self-promoter...
But I know you'll only hesitate "0.1 seconds" before another wise-ass reply...

Rich: Wake up, there is no further substance to anything you put up here... It's all just repetition and troll-banter.