What is steady state?

[jackarabit]

Clever question, Luke. Crank up the jam!

[turboskiff]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

Hmm. Do you regard training to blood lactate profiles as flawed also?

[valgozi]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

But all the companies selling us all the pretty watches tell us to train with heart rate

Now the watches have flashy green optical HR sensor lights how can anyone resist

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever, but don't try to use it to regulate L4 workouts

Hmm. Do you regard training to blood lactate profiles as flawed also?

I think the bigger point was don't train using HR zones when doing the L4 workouts.

[Bloodbuzz Corio]

(The Wolverine Plan PDF is not the definitive description of the plan, but a reference for a specific team at a specific time.)

To avoid any further confusion, is there an actual definitive plan out there?

Luke, there's a good collection of some of Mike's posts in a file on Greg's blog which you can find here https://quantifiedrowing.files.wordpres ... -notes.pdf, but I understand beyond that the best written source are Mike's posts in the archive which unfortunately seem to suffer from formatting issues as well as having to sort the wheat from the chaff - based on this post from Mike from last year: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=98395&p=307659#p307659

[Anth_F]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

Exactly!!! I see it as more of a distraction to really getting sh!t done. Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

[turboskiff]

Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

Do you use a stethoscope?

[Anth_F]

Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

Do you use a stethoscope?

No... i use my common sense

[bisqeet]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

Exactly!!! I see it as more of a distraction to really getting sh!t done. Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

I guess, I'm the odd one. not everyday is the same training wise for me - sometimes i feel great, sometimes a harder session the day before is still in my legs or maybe im just not motivated enough, dehydrated on my period or whatnot. I guess i tend to listen to my body (or HR), and use this as an indication.
For me a HM @ R18 ~2:05 is UT2 (HR about 132-138). if i see it going higher, then i would drop the pace accordingly, instead of keeping up the pace and maybe suffering later.
that said - im not "competition" level, but do it for fun/health reasons (and i enjoy the workouts) so there is no real pressure to make the grades...

[aussieluke]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

Exactly!!! I see it as more of a distraction to really getting sh!t done. Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

That's exactly how you end up going hard all the time - probably much harder than you think you are ...and then it can easily all come crashing down. Illness, injury etc etc. not saying it will. But it can.

[Anth_F]

-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever

Exactly!!! I see it as more of a distraction to really getting sh!t done. Hence i don't and won't ever bother with HR monitors. I know when i'm working harder, and when i'm working steadier, by my heart beats

That's exactly how you end up going hard all the time - probably much harder than you think you are ...and then it can easily all come crashing down. Illness, injury etc etc. not saying it will. But it can.

I know when i'm going harder than i should be by my breathing rates... and my paces, for what ever the session may entail for that particular day. Yet you see others in plan threads with HRM's coming down with illnesses so i don't really buy that either.

[Pie Man]

For anyone who doesn't mind using plugins you can sort some of the formating problems in the archived forum with Firefox and FoxReplace. For example here is the first post from viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4190 by Mike Caviston.

Since interest has been expressed regarding the Wolverine Plan, this thread is for occasional posts on that topic in an effort to clarify and expand some of my previous comments. For those who have followed the WP from the beginning, much of this information may be repetitive. For others, it will be more information than you want, so stop now. But hopefully for those interested it will help put things in better perspective. I’ll begin with some background about how and why I developed the plan and what its track record has been.

HISTORY OF THE WOLVERINE PLAN

I began rowing in 1979 and being somewhat of a perfectionist was interested from the beginning in maximizing my performance as a rower. In the earlier days quantification of rowing physiology was a little more dubious than it is today, since ergometers were rare instruments and were available only occasionally for testing, let alone training. We didn’t have anything at Michigan during the time I competed, but during various trips to different boathouses (e.g., Jacksonville, Wisconsin, and MIT) I had a few opportunities to take a crack at tests on either Gamut ergs or the new C2 Model As. When not on the water, the bulk of my training involved running (lots of hills and stairs), lifting, and cycling (during the summer). I shifted from competing to coaching in the early 80s, and became responsible for structuring the training of other athletes. Meanwhile, I continued to train and use myself as a guinea pig when developing team workouts. Three things to consider were availability of equipment (few if any ergs available till the late 80s/early 90s); time (club athletes couldn’t or wouldn’t devote that much of it to training); and effectiveness (given the first two realities, what would provide the greatest results?) The basic training template involved a variety of short sessions centered on intervals or moderately long continuous activities at higher intensity. This might translate as six-seven sessions per week ranging from 40-60 minutes each (including warm-up/cool-down).

It’s hard to say precisely how effective the training was. Our program was moderately successful (we didn’t suck outright and we didn’t dominate), but so many other factors besides the training program were involved (such as lack of funds and the various things they buy, like equipment and truly professional coaches). My personal motivation for training at that point was simply to stay in shape and set a good example for the troops. I didn’t have any competitive aspirations. But in 1987 I ended up entering my first indoor race through a series of slightly improbable events. The U of M program was taking a number of athletes to the CRASH-B satellite race in Cincinnati, though originally I wasn’t able to go myself. But my plans changed and at the last minute I decided to go and to enter a race myself. Discovering there was a lightweight category and realizing I wasn’t too far over the limit, I starved for a couple days and ran off the last couple pounds the morning of the event and made the competitive weight. I had no knowledge of or interest in ergometer records at that time, and didn’t really know what I was capable of, but 8:00 flat [for 2500m on a Model B] seemed like a nice round number and at least possible based on some of the workouts I had been doing. I struggled a bit in the 4th 500m, but finished in 8:02. To my surprise, I was informed afterwards that that was the fastest any lightweight so far had ever rowed 2500m – in other words, a world record. I was also informed I won a free plane ticket to Boston and the CRASH-Bs the following week. So I went, but it wasn’t a great performance. I certainly didn’t have the technique of making weight down to a science, so that was stressful. And the event itself required heats as well as a final, so two 2500m races within three hours was a bit more of both a physical and mental challenge than I was prepared for. I got 8:06 in the final, good enough for 5th place, while the winning time was 7:57. So my first world record stood for a whole week. I was 27 years old at the time.

Over the next 5 years or so, (having purchased my own erg) I was able to train more consistently and with a view towards maximizing my 2500m performance. Since U of M’s spring break often coincides with the weekend of the CRASH-Bs in February, as a coach I was with the team in Tampa, FL on it’s annual training trip and so unable to return to Boston for another crack at a hammer. But on various attempts over that period I pulled 7:57-8 for 2500m, which if memory serves would have been good enough for either first or second place in the Open Lightweight category during that stretch (though meanwhile the world record had been lowered to about 7:51). But I wasn’t getting any faster and it didn’t seem like I would make any major jumps, so from about the age of 32 I stopped training specifically to get faster on the erg. I still used it frequently, and I still trained hard, but I got more involved in alternate activities and stopped doing test pieces on the erg.

But I’m the sort who doesn’t really enjoy training as much without some sort of goal or target to shoot for, and running or cycling generally aren’t as readily quantifiable as the erg. So by the time I was 35 or 36 years old, I was thinking about reorganizing my training towards a specific goal involving rowing. During this time I had continued to refine and tweak the training program I was using for the athletes I was coaching, and also making use of information I was getting since I entered the graduate program in Kinesiology at Michigan (I entered in ’89, got my degree in ’93 and began as a teaching assistant in ’94, eventually becoming a Lecturer in ‘96). I had followed results from the WIRC and was aware of what times were competitive in my age bracket, and also in the next (over 40). So I had some specific times to shoot for and just needed a specific plan of attack for achieving my goals. And so began what would eventually be called the Wolverine Plan.

Much of the new plan simply incorporated workouts I had been doing for years. I invented 8 x 500m (and its Level 1 variations like 4 x 1K and the 250/500/750/1000/750/500/250 pyramid). We were doing them at Michigan the first week the Model B (and the metric PM1) was released. [If anybody else independently invented those workouts, they are Alfred Russel Wallace while I am Charles Darwin.] I hadn’t done much 4 x 2K (or a similar workout, 5 x 5’), but both were popular with other coaches at Michigan and I had some experience with them so I decided to create the workout category that would eventually be called Level 2. Long, continuous (Level 3) rows had been a staple of my erging workouts and were easy to incorporate. The one workout category that was considerably different from anything I’d done before was the category that would be called Level 4. I’ll talk about that more in a future post. Some aspects that distinguish the WP from other training programs designed for rowing include limiting cross- training, and no real periodization (all types of workouts in similar proportions year-round; no “endurance” phase followed by a “sharpening” phase.) Another characteristic of the WP, which I will discuss more later, is a strong emphasis on mental discipline. My rationale being that I couldn’t realistically train with much more volume, or intensityr, so I had to be even smarter and more productive with the time I had. I created a system, started recording and analyzing scores, experimented with different formats of similar workouts, tried to find the optimum order of different types of workouts, determined how hard I could work and how long I’d need to recover from various workouts, noted how much improvement for various workouts was realistic during a training season, etc., etc. This began in the fall-winter of 1997-1998. I was 36 years old, and in that first training season of the WP my fastest 2K was 6:26. The next year saw 6:24, then 6:21, then 6:20, and finally, in February 2002, during my 40th year on Earth, I set a lifetime PR (and WR in my age group) of 6:18.

Any discussion about whether the Wolverine Plan is an effective training program would begin with my own results. Obviously, I’ve been pretty successful (3 hammers and a 2nd at CRASH-B, as well as gold medals at 2 European IRCs and 1 BIRC.) Besides a record and championships won, what impresses me most about my accomplishments (if I can be excused for such an immodest comment) is the fact that I was the fastest I’ve ever been in my life at 40 years old. Bear in mind that I wasn’t some inactive couch potato that finally saw the light, or even some successful athlete coming to rowing from a different sport. I had been training specifically, relentlessly, and successfully for rowing since I was 18 years old. But the WP was effective enough so that even with my background, I was able to keep improving up to the start of my fourth decade. For reference, other senior/master athletes are faster than me relative to the Open standards; Eskild Ebbesen comes to mind as does Lisa Schlenker. Last year at 40 Lisa won the Open Lightweight category at WIRC (my record-setting time in 2002 would have placed 11th in the Open) – but well off her record pace of a few years ago.

So the WP has been (and continues to be) successful for me. But so what, I’m just one person, what does that prove? One person might win a championship in spite of their training, not because of it (though in my case you’d have to ignore my careful records of training for the pre- and post-WP years). Has anyone else benefited from the WP? I’ve certainly heard from a number of relative beginners, via e-mail or in person at various indoor events, who have told me they’ve benefited from the Wolverine Plan. But, beginners are pretty easy to help. What about experienced and competitive athletes? You could start by talking to some of my former USIRT teammates such as Joan Van Blom, Luanne Mills, and Mary Perrot (all multiple hammer winners). Also Nancii Bernard, who placed 2nd in 2004 and first in 2005 in the women’s senior category. Michigan alum and former Olympian Steve Warner was coached by me when he got his first CRASH-B medal as a UM freshman (second as a J18LW); Steve went on to win a couple hammers and many more medals in Boston.

The greatest opportunity to evaluate the Wolverine Plan would be the 4 seasons I spent as conditioning coach for the U of M women’s team. Women’s rowing became a varsity sport at Michigan in 1996. The test of success of a women’s program is how well it does at the NCAA championship. In its first four years of existence, the women placed 5th as a team at the NCAA championship three straight years (failing to be selected for the regatta in its first year). That is certainly not a record to be ashamed of. But the Michigan head coach, looking to shake things up and get an edge, brought me aboard before the 2000-2001 season to design the overall training plan for the team, to oversee indoor training, and to help the coaches coordinate outdoor training more effectively. Prior to my involvement, the team had trained as many college programs do, with a variety of demanding and grueling workouts but without any particular structure or plan for systematic improvement. Some of the features that I would eventually discourage or eliminate included lots of cross training (track sprinting or Indian-file runs were popular); training paces based on heart rates; and competitive workouts (athletes seated next to one another with the simple goal of beating the other, rather than following a personal season-long progression). Initially, the new program was simply called The Training Plan; it wasn’t till I eventually began posting on this forum and referred to the program that I had to give it a specific name. But whatever it was called, evidence that it worked came pretty quickly and decisively. (A rowing team is the closest thing there is to an actual laboratory for testing training. I’ve worked with hundreds of athletes over the years, with opportunities to try new things, subtle variations, and compare with previous results.) In collegiate rowing each athlete is tested periodically during the season for 6K and 2K performance, and over a four year period lots of data becomes available for individuals as well as team averages and trends. In my first year with the team, every single athlete in the program (with one exception) set PRs at both 6K and 2K. Some did so by quite large amounts, and interestingly some of the biggest gainers had already been the fastest athletes on the team. Two examples were particularly striking. That year Kate Johnson was a senior. Kate was a three-time All-American (and won silver in last year’s Olympic 8) and had entered UM as the most-recruited high school rower in the country. She was extremely talented and among the most dedicated athletes I’ve ever met. But despite all her desire and hard work she hadn’t really improved her 2K time in her three years at Michigan. But by the end of her senior year she had dropped 8 seconds, down to 6:49. Another senior, Bernadette Marten (eventual national team member and gold medal winner in the 8 at the 2002 World Championships, along with Johnson and Michigan alum Kate MacKenzie) also made a big jump. Bernadette had transferred to Michigan from another program and her best 2K to date had been 6:59. By year’s end she had a school-record 6:40. A 19-second drop by a woman who is already sub-7 is pretty dramatic. What benefited these two hard-working athletes most was the structure and organization of the new training plan.

Overall, many athletes set new standards for erging at Michigan following the introduction of the Wolverine Plan. As you enter the team’s erg room, practically the first thing you see is a large board that records the names and times of the fastest twenty 2K erg scores in the history of the program. After the program’s eighth year, 17 of the top score had been recorded in the 4-year period since the introduction of the WP. Still, for a college rowing program of Michigan’s stature, the only real measure of success is at the national championship. Did the fast erg scores translate into races won? Many factors contribute to the success of a crew on the water, and it’s hard to say that any one factor was dominant. But Michigan had the same equipment, the same coaches, and probably a tougher schedule (more women’s programs are getting faster every year) – and still managed to finish better than ever before (2nd as a team in 2001). We slipped to 8th in 2002, but that is deceiving, as all teams were separated by small margins and Michigan was actually closer to first on points than in the years when they finished 5th. In 2003 we finished 4th and in 2004 3rd. During those four years, the only teams to score more points than Michigan at the NCAA championship were Brown and Washington.

Maybe it was just a coincidence that the team took it up a notch the year I started working with them. Maybe they just had good athletes who worked hard and the training program wasn’t much of a factor. Last year I was let go by the UM women’s program midway through the year. I won’t go into specifics, except to say that the head coach wanted to get back to being more hands-on with the team (it had been an unprecedented move for a head coach to let someone else have so much input in those areas where I was involved), and the athletes had become increasingly dissatisfied with the structure and inflexibility of the WP (they had forgotten what the WP says about negotiating the price of success). They changed the focus of their training more towards variety and what they thought of as stimulation, and away from pre-determined paces or set goals. I doubt if they were satisfied with the ultimate results (lowest finishes ever at the Big 10, Central Regional, and NCAA regattas). Last year’s team probably never had enough depth to be a serious championship contender, but there were high hopes for the first varsity 8. Michigan’s 1V had finished 2nd in the country in 2003 and 3rd in 2004, and five athletes in the 2005 1V had rowed in both those boats, while a sixth had rowed for part of 1 year. So it was a very successful and experienced crew, and beat a number of ranked crews early in the year, but struggled at the end and finished 9th at NCAAs. The major problems I saw with Michigan’s fitness at the end of last season was that they peaked too early, and several experienced athletes failed to improve their erg scores or in some cases finished slower than the year before (many younger athletes did improve, but as I’ve said that’s less impressive when evaluating a training program). Time will tell whether last year was just an aberration, and I wish this year’s team all the success in the world. But I’d be lying if I said I thought their current training was as effective as it can be.

Many people who read the forums have heard of the Wolverine Plan but proportionally few really understand it. I have read accounts from or have corresponded with several people who thought they were following the WP but were not (based on faulty second-hand accounts, or by not reading the available information carefully enough). Some people have taken a perverse pleasure in deliberately misrepresenting the WP or my subsequent comments, no matter how many times I correct them. I’ll provide some generic examples in the future. Still other people are happy to rip off the WP and promote its workouts and principles as their own. Well, I don’t have a copyright, so I guess I can’t complain, and the important thing is that people who want it get help with their training. The WP clearly isn’t for everybody, and maybe not for many at all. It takes a lot of physical and mental toughness, and more dedication and discipline than even many so-called serious athletes are willing to invest. Some people think it is very complicated, but it’s actually very simple once you learn the terminology and a few basic rules. It boils down to gradual, systematic progression over time. You don’t have to be fast to start using it, but if you stick with it long enough, you’ll be fast before you’re finished with it.

Mike Caviston

[turboskiff]

https://quantifiedrowing.files.wordpres ... -notes.pdf

viewtopic.php?t=8295

[gregsmith01748]

Since my name and training program have been mentioned a few times, I'm going to respond. I love to talk training and I'm pleased if anyone finds my work helpful. So while some will call me a dick, I have to complain about the incredible number of inaccuracies in this thread about my background and training and the Wolverine Plan. I'm not going to address them individually. You don't have to rely on poor memories or second- or third-hand accounts. I've written extensively on this forum about the WP and all aspects of performance related to rowing, including the nature of steady state and it's role in training. (The Wolverine Plan PDF is not the definitive description of the plan, but a reference for a specific team at a specific time.)

Just throwing a few things at the wall in case any of them stick:
-The WP is appropriate for all genders, ages, and weight classes.
-You don't have to be elite, but you do need to have a legitimate 2K first and you would ideally do at least 6 sessions a week (4 can work if you know what you are doing). "Legitimate" doesn't mean world class, it means representative of your current fitness - even if your fitness is poor.
-Level 4 is not supposed to be "easy", but it is doable and definitely sustainable for a whole season if you follow the prescribed formats. I've never tried to equate it to any other training band from any other training program.
-I have provided simple instructions for creating personalized L4 paces using Watts.
-I don't know why anyone would base training on heart rate ever, but don't try to use it to regulate L4 workouts.

I used to spend a lot of time and energy providing the science behind the training, but now I say take it or leave it. I know the answers to all the training questions I see asked repeatedly. I've been making it work for years. I reach my potential, I meet my goals, I perform well when it counts, I avoid injury, I adapt to a challenging and unpredictable schedule and training environment. I am still able to improve on past performances (except rowing). I race as often as I want, and I'm almost always competitive, not only with my peers but also those much younger than me. I've focused on rowing in the past, but for the last several years I've branched out into several other endurance sports as well (road racing, trail running, stair racing, obstacle racing, snowshoeing and kayaking are some). You can call me a dick or an arrogant a-hole, but I know what I'm talking about when it comes to training. For those interested in achieving their best performance, I encourage you to search out my work.

[BTW, I absolutely am not targeting any individual here, just making general observations. Apologies in advance if anyone feels personally offended.]

Mike,

I am really pleased that you took the time to look through this thread and respond. I used the WP for about a year before the first time I went to the Crash-Bs and I thought it was a fantastic structure for rowing training. I apologize if I misrepresented any of it. I tried my best to go through the copious stuff that you shared. The only stuff that stumped me was the older threads on this site with all the busted formatting. I bet there are gems in there too.

I have a couple of thoughts on what you posted.
- I totally agree with your comment about "legitimate 2K". I think that this is the biggest problem that I got myself into with the plan was going back to the paces I used at the end of a prior season versus retesting and being honest with myself. If I had done that, I think that I would have been able to incrementally push up the stroke totals a lot more effectively.

- I've never seen your instructions for creating L4 paces with watts, could you point me in the right direction to find it?

- I think you and I have a fundamental difference in opinion when it comes to HR monitors. I think I tried to state that earlier in the thread. You were really clear in the WP notes that the WP is not a HR based plan, and I hope I stated it accurately. At the same time, I know that I struggled a lot when I was starting as I tried to figure out what "tough but doable" really meant. I found that I could push quite hard in L4 sessions and hit my stroke counts, but I would not be adequately recovered by my next session. When I started to use a HR monitor, it gave me another way to measure how I was responding to training. It helped me learn a bit more about exercise physiology. At this point, I almost always wear a HR monitor, but generally just to collect data to figure out my long term balance of high intensity and lower intensity sessions.

- I found myself getting a little frustrated by your comments about your achievements. I admire your talents both as an athlete and also as a trainer, but what works you you may or may not work for other people with the same effect that it does for you. I think there is value in trying to understand the principles behind a training philosophy and making small changes to see if it impacts results.

I got to this game long after the threads discussing this stuff had died and the flame wars had subsided. I totally understand why you don't want to get back into discussing and defending things that work for you and you spent a ton of time discussing years ago. And I can respect that you have much better things to do with your time. Like I said, I'm sorry if I misunderstood or misrepresented things you said.

[jackarabit]

PIers, thanks for extractiing the format embedding from the old forum material. I will add that to my inch-thick folder of WP hardcopy.

Greg thanks for reminding me why I have had more than a brief infatuation with Terry O'Neil!

[sander]

This has become a very interesting thread. What is steady state? The original question sounds simple but it is hard to answer.

I am writing this post just to bring one point forward:
None of the plans that are available online are much more than a starting point. If you are after optimum performance, get a coach who spends the time with you, finds your strengths and weaknesses, and designs a plan for you that gives you the maximum performance on race day, given the work/life constraints. He or she will also help you when you struggle with the obstacles that life throws at you.

Or you spend the time reading all the forum posts, books about trainings, ask professional trainers as much as you can, absorb all the information and become your own coach. If you are like me, that can be a very rewarding experience, but it will take a few years to learn what seems to work and what not.

That is also the very reason why I am very hesitant to design training programs for anybody else, or try to sell my own approach to other people. I consider myself to be a dilettantish coach, but one who happens to know his own body well and is not afraid to spend time reading and thinking about things. Real coaches have experiences with a wider spectrum of athletes and age groups than me with my sample of N=1.

So I write and talk a lot about what I do (on my blog blog.rowsandall.com, for example, apologies for the shameless plug) and what the result is, but I would find it very hard to give advice to others who would try to follow "my" plan.

My history of training plans, since I came back to rowing in 2009 (having been on running training plans for half and full marathons in the decennium before that):

- Concept2 Workout of the Day - I didn't have any background and this is the first thing I found
- Pete Plan - I liked the format. Didn't do real slow steady state
- Subscription to Rojabo (brought me back under 7 minutes in 3 months). I followed it until the subscription ended.
- Made my own rojabo style plan (for one season) - kept the testing and tried to adjust intensity the way rojabo does it. In the end I concluded my plan was way worse than the original rojabo and didn't work.
- Read up on the Wolverine plan and followed it for 2 seasons - My erg scores steadily improved
- Read up on training and started to design my own plan which uses block periodization and shamelessly steals L1 and L2 workouts from Wolverine, as well as L4 style rate variations in the endurance training zones (going into my second season now, the 2016 season having been my fastest since I started in 2009)

On all the plans I have been steadily improving, despite getting older. At a high level, I have steadily increased the number of hours I put into training (money in the bank as it is written in the Wolverine plan) as well as increased the percentage of time spend in the endurance training zones.

And I think sometimes you just need to change something to try it out and keep things excited.

I guess I didn't answer the question "what is steady state". For me it is currently rowing at 180W, based on lactate testing. Stroke rates 18-22 spm. And I guess for me it is any session that has as the primary goal to improve Aerobic Capacity.