Light And Heavy / Hard And Easy

[old] GeorgeD · Post by **[old] GeorgeD** » June 20th, 2004, 8:11 pm

Do you plan for light and heavy and maybe even medium weeks and is this based around intensity and or distance or both? As a consquence do you also break your weeks down into hard and easy days? Maybe what you do is intuitive and maybe its structured but I would appreciate opinions, as I feel I am in danger of going from hard to harder and my body is saying enough. (I confess that a part of the problem is trying to row a lot of sessions harder than last time or chase PB's)

[old] Bill · Post by **[old] Bill** » June 20th, 2004, 11:02 pm

George, I do light day then hard day. Got that idea from Paul Smith on this forum. Currently recovering after bad Flu so 5 easy days a week I will build up to 6 days a week light day then hard day. Occassionally I miss a day if I feel tired. Bill

[old] Ash · Post by **[old] Ash** » June 21st, 2004, 5:27 am

3 hard 1 easy repeat indefinatley, take a rest day if really needed. Hard day today, HM @ 20 spm max effort.....

LindaM · Post by **LindaM** » June 21st, 2004, 9:14 am

My goals are weight control and overall fitness. I've been erging for 18 years, started counting meters about 10 years ago, and am close to 11 million meters. There've been times I burned myself out with too many hard workouts - illness and mental exhaustion, and other times I've taken it too easy and haven't been creative enough - so got bored and rowed less. In recent years, I've found it best to do most of my workouts at UT1 and UT2 pace, 65% - 80% of MHR. But if I'm feeling like that is too much I'll back off a little further and concentrate on form and feeling the muscles in each stroke. And at least once a week, I push harder - either in intervals or when I'm feeling best, a long hard row. I also keep track of illness and injuries - last time I was sick was October 2002.

[old] ranger · Post by **[old] ranger** » June 29th, 2004, 1:00 pm

George-- I never row easy. Every day is hard. And I don't take rest days (if I can help it). Then again, I also don't chase pbs, as I used to. I don't test; I train. I also only do high stroke rate aerobic and anaerobic training for eight weeks or so before a competition. The rest of the time I row strapless, at low drag and low stroke rates. ranger

[old] Jim Barry · Post by **[old] Jim Barry** » June 29th, 2004, 2:35 pm

I'll only train easy when I really row hard (anaerobic efforts). In a formal regime each week I'll put in a couple of nearly all out 10ks (one may be a 5k) and follow with an easy hour row the next day. Most literature on endurance sport point out the value of the Hard/Easy approach . Former University of Oregon track coach and Nike founder Bill Bowerman is often cited as the early proponent. Runners love it, but they also have more to deal with the stress of running. I still consider it valid for rowing and much like intervals, you can do more overloading this way. I do like the idea of an easy week to clear out any undue fatigue in the athlete. What you gain in energy can offset the loss in fitness. Some very successful rowers will claim the "no easy day" approach and this intrigues me, but at the same time I've convinced top-notch athletes to come out of a "no easy day" approach and watched them soar (5:55 for a 34 year old heavywgt and 6:24 for a 38 yr old lightweight). It may be that some athletes simply do not need them and others do. The "individual differences principle" is real.

[old] ranger · Post by **[old] ranger** » June 30th, 2004, 5:13 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Some very successful rowers will claim the "no easy day" approach and this intrigues me, but at the same time I've convinced top-notch athletes to come out of a "no easy day" approach and watched them soar (5:55 for a 34 year old heavywgt and 6:24 for a 38 yr old lightweight). It may be that some athletes simply do not need them and others do. The "individual differences principle" is real.  </td></tr></table> Yes, there are individual differences on this matter. But I wonder: What is the source of individual differences? Four things come to mind: (1) life experience, (2) training base, (3) type of work done from day to day, (4) general fitness. What an athlete can tolerate from day to day, I think, is dependent in many ways on their lifetime experience with long, hard bouts of physical work. My personal habit over the last 30 years has been to do 1-2 hours of physical work a day, sometimes more when I am on vacation from work. For 20 years or so I was a marathon runner. Before that (when I was under 20), I participated in competitive sports on school teams, with most of these sports being individual and endurance oriented: skating, running, swimming, canoeing. I do many other sorts of sports for recreation: tennis, biking, skiing (both water and snow), hiking, etc. I think that this life experience greatly aids my ability to work hard from day to day. I am just used to it. What an athlete can tolerate from day to day also depends on their training base. If you only do an hour of exercise a day at the maximum, it can be enormously stressful to do a hard hour row (much less a hard marathon row). But if you do three hours of exercise a day, a hard hour row is much easier. For me, hard intervals are also much easier if they are done in and around a couple of hours or so of easy exercise, both before and after. Your ability to buffer the hard exercise with easy exercise, however, depends on your training base. There are many ways to work hard. Some are destructive and can only be done occasionally. Some are constructive and can be done from day to day. Yes, if you do destructive things (tests, hard anaerobic intervals, etc.) from day to day, then you need to rest in order to recover. If you work hard in constructive ways, however, you can do this work every day. What an athlete can tolerate from day to day, I think, also depends on their general fitness and their work on that general fitness. It is clear that many athletes strongly prefer to do training that is just specific to their sport. Rowers like to just row, etc. This is fine, if this is your preference, but IMHO, these athletes cannot tolerate as much work from day to day because their general fitness might not be as high as those who do other sorts of work, too (e.g., cross-training, calasthenics, weights, etc.). ranger

[old] Jim Barry · Post by **[old] Jim Barry** » June 30th, 2004, 12:33 pm

I think I'm satisfied with the idea that the big base is what supports a more regular dose of "hard work". I agree with your position that the drive to either maintain or obtain that big base/ hard work combination is rooted in your 4 points. I might suggest that genetics is in there too. Some lab rats are genetically bred to "exercise" and do so without any instruction or obvious reward. They just like that wheel and can not get enough of it.

[old] ranger · Post by **[old] ranger** » June 30th, 2004, 1:48 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>I might suggest that genetics is in there too. Some lab rats are genetically bred to "exercise" and do so without any instruction or obvious reward. They just like that wheel and can not get enough of it. </td></tr></table> Sure, as in all things, genetics also plays a role. Since this influence is hard (impossible?) to determine, though, it remains an unknown. Who knows what we are genetically inclined to do (and not)? Perhaps we will have this information some day, but for now, any appeal to genetics (in this matter at least) is just mysticism. One comment: What we do without any instruction or obvious reward is also hard to determine. Given the enormous influence of learning in human develoopment, environmental influences (instruction, award) are infinite and largely indeterminate, too. Few (no?) humans are lab rats. You certainly can't relegate all avid interest to genetics. For environmental reasons, we often love to do the opposite of what we do well naturally, and we often neglect what we do well naturally altogether. ranger

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » June 30th, 2004, 3:06 pm

Rowing "hard" every day, without any kind of measurement, is quite subjective. I would think someone rowing 100% every day would be able to do time trials at the various distances, at least once a year. Really I think a lot of athletes who say they train hard every day are really just saying they "train a lot". Which after all is what a lot of people do. Derek Clayton used to say he ran "hard" every day, around 5:00 pace or so. It turned out a lot of his running was at 6:00 pace though, still reasonably fast considering his volume, but certainly nothing like "training hard every day", meaning "all out" every day. Every person can tell if they are recovering from day to day, and the level that makes hard training and then recovery from day to day possible, and/or in a cycle week to week, is the right one.

[old] ranger · Post by **[old] ranger** » July 1st, 2004, 12:36 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'> Rowing "hard" every day, without any kind of measurement, is quite subjective. I would think someone rowing 100% every day would be able to do time trials at the various distances, at least once a year. Really I think a lot of athletes who say they train hard every day are really just saying they "train a lot". Which after all is what a lot of people do.  </td></tr></table> John-- I disagree. I suppose that a sustained heart rate for an hour or more near the anaerobic threshold (170 bpm or so for me) might be one measure of a hard session. Another would be the wash of sweat produced by the session. Another might be rowing at an intensity and distance that takes you to the limits of endurance/tolerance, that is, rowing until you can't row anymore (for some reason) and throw down the handle. All such hard sessions are easy to distinguish from rowing easily. If I strap in, take the stroke rate up to 28 spm, and row an hour at 2:00 pace (7 SPI), my heart rate stays in the 120s, I barely sweat, and when I get to the end of the hour, I don't have to stop; I can keep going for four or five more hours. _That's_ rowing easy. Defining _easy_ vs. _hard_ in these terms, I row hard every day. For the last couple of years, I haven't had any interest in time trials. For me at least, training and trials are different matters. IMHO, after your 2K time plateaus at a high level, as mine has, you only improve by working in a sustained way of your weaknesses. So that is what I do every day. This strategy was _very_ successful last year, and I suspect it will be equally successful this year. My major weakness is in my timing, leg drive, and finish. The best way to improve these things is to row strapless at low drag and low rates. Trials tend to accentuate what you do well, not what you do poorly. ranger

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » July 1st, 2004, 4:42 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Trials tend to accentuate what you do well, not what you do poorly.  </td></tr></table> Yes, hence a good reason for doing them periodically, to ascertain what you can do well -- and where you need to work more.

[old] ranger · Post by **[old] ranger** » July 2nd, 2004, 8:07 am

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE (John Rupp @ Jul 1 2004, 03:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Trials tend to accentuate what you do well, not what you do poorly.  </td></tr></table> Yes, hence a good reason for doing them periodically, to ascertain what you can do well -- and where you need to work more. </td></tr></table> Distance trials? Don't think so. My weaknesses are technical and specific to the 2K (power per stroke, leg drive, finish, etc.). These weaknesses don't have anything to do with distance rowing. My distance times could be improved, sure, but (at this point) doing trials won't improve them and however such trials might turn out, they would tell me nothing at all about technical matters and other things that I need to improve for the 2K. I already know that distance rowing is one of my strengths. ranger

[old] Jim Barry · Post by **[old] Jim Barry** » July 2nd, 2004, 9:48 am

Ranger, I think I noted a few months ago that you were sure that to see your 2k move you were going to have to see 1:46 for the hour. Is that still a valid connection? I think you were saying since you had basically maxed the physical that 1:46 was only possible via technique shifts (more efficient) and that same efficient stroke would probably be the one for a 2k as well. Is this still valid or are you thinking of another test these days that will confirm that you can take on a new 2k pace? In my work on "the new stroke" (10MPS strapless) I think I mentioned that I simply have bigger legs. Curiosity got the best of me and I had to see if they were indeed stronger. Yep. Despite a complete dearth of any training specific to 500m I banged out a 1:33.4 (44spm 9.75spi) last night without a struggle (in fact my wife came in the room with 100m to go and totally distracted me!). That bettered a PB by 1.3 seconds that was done during much more specific training (But not 10mps). I'm happy to see the early signs of progress. Cloud nine. I guess another PB was seeing lowest splits ever. I saw 1:25 a number of time in the start and did the second 50m at 1:27. After the row I cooled off and then finished my training row that I was supposed to do (Guilty I guess). Lots more to come, I'm sure.

[old] eurofoot13 · Post by **[old] eurofoot13** » July 2nd, 2004, 10:40 am

The one problem with training hard ALL the time, is that often, the body needs more time than the (I hope) nine or ten hours of sleep you give it. This is why reps in on-water racing are so hard - less recovery time. The basic principle of recovery is supercompensation, that is to say that after a period of full recovery, the body will exceed its previous capacity - this is why we make progress after training. Unfortunately, without enough rest the body goes into overtraining, that is when the body begins to reject really, the training. It involves severe effects to your performance, as well as your mind.

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