I suppose this is the mystery for me:
If Mike VB is rowing so easily, with no strain or effort, when he holds his technique together, and therefore is rowing well, why can he only row for fifty strokes or so, a couple of minutes, at 30 spm, say, 1:52 @ 30 spm (8.3 SPI), before his HR goes to max and he has to stop, _very_ soon, because he is going blue in the face from oxygen debt?
30 spm is just not that high a rate.
Many people rate 30 spm for 5K, for example, at the Head of the Charles, which takes 20min to do and 500 strokes.
At 15 seconds per 500m over erg times, 1:52 @ 30 spm OTW is the equivalent of 1:37 @ 30 spm OTErg, and Mike can't do that for even 500m, either, not even 48 strokes, much less 1K, 96 strokes, before exactly the same thing happens.
He goes blue in the face from the strain and effort of the task and has to quit.
Something doesn't make sense here.
On the erg, many elite young rowers can row well and rate 30 spm for 60min, 1800 strokes, what amounts to a whole training session, with their HR, steady state, at top-end UT1, not even over their anaerobic threshold. They row for an hour without ever going blue in the face and having to stop because of the strain and effort.
That's something like what I am going to do when I race 60min OTErg.
Recently, rowing pretty well, Matthias rated 27 spm for a FM OTErg, 2.5 hours of rowing. In a FM, your HR can only be about 75% HRR. You have to be very comfortable indeed at your FM rate and pace, or given the length of the row, you won't get to the end.
It certainly is _not_ good rowing if your boat doesn't go anywhere when you take a stroke.
How you move the boat relative to your physical capacity and level of effort is the only possible criterion of what is good rowing and what is not.
Mike seems to be invoking some other standard in order to judge who is rowing well and who not, something like "looking good for the camera," or whatnot.
Sure, it is always best not to interfere with the movement of the boat as it is going along, but in the end, it doesn't matter much how you are interfering with the movement of a boat if it isn't going anywhere in the first place.
I suppose you can put it this way:
MIke seems to think that rowing is more about smoothness, "fine muscle coordination," and the like, rather than stremgth, power, endurance, quickness, aerobic capacity, etc.
Hmm.
Not sure about that one at all.
Have you seen elite young rowers?
They are pretty strong, powerful guys, who train a whole hell of lot, pulling their guts out for three or four hours a day, day after day.
They look like this guy:
Why?
Because rowing is one of the most physically demanding sports imaginable, drawing on the llimits of both your full-body skeletal-muscular capacities and your aerobic and anaerobic physiological capacities.
Sure, there are certain skills that you need to develop in order to be fast in rowing, but I am not sure that the primary ones are "fine."
Rowing and crocheting are pretty different pastimes, pursued by pretty different sorts of people with pretty different capacities.
Concept2 and other makers of rowing machines have now sold zillions of useful devices that can keep you tuned up over the winter for the spring rowing season, but these machines are pretty different from a machine, for instance, that keeps you practicing feathering your oars all winter, so that you don't lose the fine muscle coordination you need to row well.
Interestingly, and perhaps predictably, Byron altered his erg so that he could indeed feather his stroke.
Sure.
If your boat isn't going anywhere when you take a stroke, it is a little embarrassing if you don't have something else to do that you can get good at while you row.
ranger
Rich Cureton M 72 5'11" 165 lbs. 2K pbs: 6:27.5 (hwt), 6:28 (lwt)
