Fat Noob needs starting advice

[wphunter]

I was following this thread and haven't seen any posts for a while, so my turn I guess. I'm a 400 pounder, bought a model D and started rowing for the first time in the last week of January. Why, kind of a New Year resolution I suppose. My goal, to lose 165 pounds. After the initial soreness and tweaking technique I'm now comfortable with 5000 meters, and regularly do 10,000 also. The "workout of the day" is probably the biggest help in keeping motivated as doing different training just gives a different goal each time and helps alleviate boredom. I also set up my rowing space, white board with my past week's training recorded, I also write on it the session I am doing at the time so I can remember a goal time or 500 meter split target etc, music of course, various head gears to soak up the torrents, comfortable clothes and shoes of course. I did the Valentines challenge and enjoyed it so much I immediately decided on the March Madness challenge too (now Mudness challenge), and have completed 22 days in a row, just three to go. I live in Japan, and rowing machines just to not seem to exist in sports clubs etc, so I have not been able to find a local community of indoor rowers, which makes me all the more grateful for the Concept2 online logbook and online support, and the challenges, and this forum of course. If anyone is interested, I started an affiliation, Japan Indoor Rowers, no need to live in Japan or be Japanese, feel free to join and share rowed meters! Its just me at the moment, if anyone joins please email me, I'm keen to join Concept2 Team Challenges too but need two people to take part. Cheers (alcohol just once a week now), Wayne. PS: Lost about 15 pounds to date.

[Blaze]

Wayne, I enjoyed reading your post, and I love the white board idea. What a terrific way to keep the fitness effort on the front burner. Keep up the good work.

[kennyhassman]

I was following this thread and haven't seen any posts for a while, so my turn I guess. I'm a 400 pounder, bought a model D and started rowing for the first time in the last week of January. Why, kind of a New Year resolution I suppose. My goal, to lose 165 pounds. After the initial soreness and tweaking technique I'm now comfortable with 5000 meters, and regularly do 10,000 also. The "workout of the day" is probably the biggest help in keeping motivated as doing different training just gives a different goal each time and helps alleviate boredom. I also set up my rowing space, white board with my past week's training recorded, I also write on it the session I am doing at the time so I can remember a goal time or 500 meter split target etc, music of course, various head gears to soak up the torrents, comfortable clothes and shoes of course. I did the Valentines challenge and enjoyed it so much I immediately decided on the March Madness challenge too (now Mudness challenge), and have completed 22 days in a row, just three to go. I live in Japan, and rowing machines just to not seem to exist in sports clubs etc, so I have not been able to find a local community of indoor rowers, which makes me all the more grateful for the Concept2 online logbook and online support, and the challenges, and this forum of course. If anyone is interested, I started an affiliation, Japan Indoor Rowers, no need to live in Japan or be Japanese, feel free to join and share rowed meters! Its just me at the moment, if anyone joins please email me, I'm keen to join Concept2 Team Challenges too but need two people to take part. Cheers (alcohol just once a week now), Wayne. PS: Lost about 15 pounds to date.

Wayne what an inspiring post-thanks for sharing it!

Ken

[wphunter]

Thanks Ken & Blaze. I'm feeling pretty good today, I've completed the Mud Season Challenge, in 25 days, may even just continue through the end of the month.
Wayne

[TheGreatFatsby]

I was following this thread and haven't seen any posts for a while, so my turn I guess. I'm a 400 pounder, bought a model D and started rowing for the first time in the last week of January. Why, kind of a New Year resolution I suppose. My goal, to lose 165 pounds. After the initial soreness and tweaking technique I'm now comfortable with 5000 meters, and regularly do 10,000 also. The "workout of the day" is probably the biggest help in keeping motivated as doing different training just gives a different goal each time and helps alleviate boredom. I also set up my rowing space, white board with my past week's training recorded, I also write on it the session I am doing at the time so I can remember a goal time or 500 meter split target etc, music of course, various head gears to soak up the torrents, comfortable clothes and shoes of course. I did the Valentines challenge and enjoyed it so much I immediately decided on the March Madness challenge too (now Mudness challenge), and have completed 22 days in a row, just three to go. I live in Japan, and rowing machines just to not seem to exist in sports clubs etc, so I have not been able to find a local community of indoor rowers, which makes me all the more grateful for the Concept2 online logbook and online support, and the challenges, and this forum of course. If anyone is interested, I started an affiliation, Japan Indoor Rowers, no need to live in Japan or be Japanese, feel free to join and share rowed meters! Its just me at the moment, if anyone joins please email me, I'm keen to join Concept2 Team Challenges too but need two people to take part. Cheers (alcohol just once a week now), Wayne. PS: Lost about 15 pounds to date.

Wayne, great job. Being able to row 5000 meters and more is still mind blowing to me at this point, but seeing how far you've come since January helps me believe that I will reach that someday soon.

I don't know if it's necessary to be on a Concept 2 machine to be on teams here but if not i'd be glad to join a rowing team if you'll have me. I've got quite a bit of weight to lose so I may be the slowest on the team but I will definitely do my part.

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For anyone else following the thread, i'm still at it! Still dieting and rowing and very motivated to keep going to get fit. I'm also happy to say that I have rowed every morning Monday thru Friday since I got the rower with the exception of this past Friday when I had a death in the family. With no activity in the thread i figured I would save my updates for any kind of milestones that I reached since I didn't want to keep bumping a thread if no one is interested. Since Wayne has come along and stirred up some activity I thought I would check in for anyone else following the thread.

Heres what my logbook looks like for the last week or so:


Very excited to say that I just finished my first 12 min row! I've been doing 10 min rows for the last 2 weeks and about every other time I would break the 2k mark and I decided that today would be the day to step it up. So i'll be doing 12 min row for the next two weeks with 1k time trials on some evenings and then i'll make the jump up to 15min sessions starting April 8th.

For now, my goal will be to regularly get past 2500m in 12min. As you can see I missed it by 15m today, and while my spm was high for me, my heart rate makes me feel like I can try a little harder tomorrow. I was doing 1k time trials in the evenings on M-W-F but I found that it really wiped me out rowing so much and my morning sessions suffered heavily. I think I was maybe trying to do too much too fast for someone my size. Rowing had got my really excited about getting fit and I just wanted to do it all right out of the gate. I'm going to try doing the trials twice a week this week and see if I can handle that, and if not maybe I will do those on weekends and row 7 days a week instead of 5 days.

Also happy to say that as of moments ago I weighed in at 570lbs, down from 615lbs on new years, a 45lb loss. Feeling very good about rowing and dieting with no signs of waning. Thinking back on that first day rowing, when I literally fell off the machine after only a few minutes seems like ages ago even though it has been only 1 month. Feeling really good about all of this overall, and I look forward to the day when i can row 5000m like our friend Wayne.

One of the things I'm most proud of happened last week when I sat down on the rower and fired up my heart rate monitor:


I don't know if I mentioned it before, but when I first got my heart rate monitor, my resting heart rate hovered around 95-105bpm, which is just insanely high. Now, as you can see, my resting heart rate has improved tremendously, and now hovers around 60-70 when seated, 70-80 when just doing menial tasks around the house. This really gives me hope that I can get in shape and stay that way.

Also if anyone here trying to lose weight is using MyFitnessPal you can add me as a friend if you'd like, find me as TheGreatFatsby2013

Thanks everyone!

[Bob S.]

Keep the reports coming, TGF. It is great to see your enthusiasm and to know that you are making progress. Whether you get feedback on the thread or not, I am sure that there are folks out there who are inspired by your example to go at it on their own. As I said before, I hope that the OP of this thread has not given up on reading it and has continuing with rowing.

Bob S.

[Howard N]

That resting heart rate is great. So is the weight loss. Congrats!

[wphunter]

I don't know if it's necessary to be on a Concept 2 machine to be on teams here but if not i'd be glad to join a rowing team if you'll have me. I've got quite a bit of weight to lose so I may be the slowest on the team but I will definitely do my part.

PLEASE JOIN! You have a logbook so it should be ok I believe. I have created the team on the Teams Page, you should be able to add yourself. Or message me with your Ranking ID (on your profile page) and I will add you. Any more takers for the same boat (pun intended). Wayne

[wphunter]

OK, so The Great Fatsby and I have joined up and are together making a considerable bow-wave in the World Erg Challenge! I have changed the Affiliation and Team names both to Japan & Friends Indoor Rowers, hopefully this will help entice a few more to add their meters to our Team and Affiliation. To take part in the World Erg Challenge, you need to be signed up to a team and registered as taking part in the challenge prior to April 1, any more takers? Currently we are in 99th place out of 135 teams for total meters, 104th place for average member meters. We aren't even at the bottom of the list! Cheers, Wayne

[TheGreatFatsby]

Keep the reports coming, TGF. It is great to see your enthusiasm and to know that you are making progress. Whether you get feedback on the thread or not, I am sure that there are folks out there who are inspired by your example to go at it on their own. As I said before, I hope that the OP of this thread has not given up on reading it and has continuing with rowing.

Bob S.

Hey thank you Bob, I always love hearing your feedback. And you're right, I'll do my best to at least update weekly from here on out.

That resting heart rate is great. So is the weight loss. Congrats!

Thanks! Feels good, man.

OK, so The Great Fatsby and I have joined up and are together making a considerable bow-wave in the World Erg Challenge! I have changed the Affiliation and Team names both to Japan & Friends Indoor Rowers, hopefully this will help entice a few more to add their meters to our Team and Affiliation. To take part in the World Erg Challenge, you need to be signed up to a team and registered as taking part in the challenge prior to April 1, any more takers? Currently we are in 99th place out of 135 teams for total meters, 104th place for average member meters. We aren't even at the bottom of the list! Cheers, Wayne

Haha.. You know, I am actually proud to be in top 100. For it being just being the two of us and considering our size I am feeling great about that. Just logged my row for this morning, hopefully we can pull further ahead of those 36 other slowpokes.

[wphunter]

TGF, damn right. I think we'd be sunk, in more ways than one, if they moved the event on water though!

[wphunter]

Feeling pretty good today, just back from a check-up and I've lost 15kg (33lb) since New Year.
Wayne

[TheGreatFatsby]

Feeling pretty good today, just back from a check-up and I've lost 15kg (33lb) since New Year.
Wayne

Congrats! Aside from the number on the scale can you feel a difference physically? I'm at 45 down and I can really feel a difference in the way my clothes fit and just the room I have around me in general, especially in my truck and around the office.

Also, I just logged my meters from Good Friday and checked our rankings. We are currently ranked 88 out of 140! We're ahead of some fitness clubs with 20+ team members! With two weeks to go I think we might be able to break the top 50 if we keep this pace.

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On a personal note I had a non-scale/non-rower victory today that I am pretty proud of. I was off for Good Friday so I didn't wake up early as I normally do to row. In fact, I slept so late that I had to hit the shower and get out the door and decided to row at night after I got back home. Well about 40 minutes or so ago i'm laying in bed and realized that I didn't row today. It took every ounce of willpower I had but I got my butt out of bed and did my row, which makes 5 weeks straight of M-F rowing for me. Hooray!

That being said.. boy it was rough doing a row at the end of the day, seemed like a lot more effort for me to get my meters. In fact, my avg heart rate was the highest it's been all week but my distance was the lowest. Definitely sticking to morning rows!

So here is how my first week of 12 minute sessions looked:



I was never able to hit that 2500 meter mark, unfortunately. Historically, however, every time I increase the length of my workout, it slows as the week goes on, then when I get back to it on Monday I always best my previous week. As you can see, I came close on monday then slowly declined all week, just as before. So here's hoping that monday is the day I can make my first ever 2500m row. Also, I've decided that If i can't hit 2500m at least 3 times next week, i'm going to extend my time spent at 12 minutes for another week so I can get better at it before moving up to 15 min sessions.

[wphunter]

Big difference, I'm lighter on my feet and have had to get some new clothes for work. There are three of us in the team now too, so that will help. Are you always doing the same training, 12 minutes at same rate? If so, why not mix it up? I'm doing all sorts, but most often I plan my training to have a number of sets with rest periods of light rowing in between. For example, if you're aiming for 2,500 in 12 minutes, try doing something like 500m fast pace and 200m slow pace, 4 sets, total 2,800 meters. Mix it up, so to speak, for a week or more and then go back and try for 2500 in 12 minutes again. I'm really keen on the "work out of the day" suggestions on Concept2 website. That way I don't get in a rut doing easy sessions all of the time. I know what you mean about doing sessions at a different time, I start early so do mine after work, but on occasion through the March Madness Challenge I had some days with very early mornings, or late nights, so some days stayed up until after midnight to do that day's row before going to bed.
Wayne

[wphunter]

82 out of 140, for now.