High school female - erg question

[row23]

Hello all,

I am 5'10", just under 150lb and 16 years old (female). My 2k is 8:16 and my 5k is 22:33. I'm looking to try and break 8 minutes on my 2k in the next few months. I have been rowing for almost a year now, since spring season 2022. I'd like to row in college but my times right now are not in the right window.

I know it's possible for me to break 8 minutes because there is another girl at my club who has been rowing for the same time I have/is the same height as me and her 2k is 7:36 because she has been extensively lifting for years. Right now I'm not looking to get to a 7:36 as it seems rather unrealistic for now but I am looking to break 8 minutes, even just by one second. She told me I could probably break 8 by the end of the year if I stay disciplined with lifting/working out and start eating more. Is this realistic?

My question is, what is a reasonable timeline to try and break 8 minutes? I have been lifting and attending practice every day but fall rowing is now over and I swim for my school in the winter. I am going to try and lift and erg on opposite days and then attend swim practice later that night but I am not sure if this will really help me, and if it will be possible to do this every day since I would have swimming, school, rowing, and lifting.

As well, what types of workouts on the erg should I be doing? Steady state or sprint/speed workouts? Or a mix of both? Any and all help is much appreciated!

[Tony Cook]

Hi Row23, and welcome.
Have a look at this thread as many of the comments apply to your situation.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=206333
Have a look at the Pete Plan https://thepeteplan.wordpress.com/the-pete-plan/ as a base. You need 80% of steady state to build specific aerobic capacity and a technically good, strong stroke and 20% of intervals to get used to the ‘hard yards’ and build your speed.
Good luck.

[Elizabeth]

What is your primary goal, swimming or rowing? If you want to achieve strong swim times, you'll likely want to work with your coach about how to supplement without detracting from your swimming.

If your teammate is telling you that you can do it with discipline, what does your discipline look like right now? I'm curious if there's something about your approach to practices or timed pieces that led to the comment. Is this around mental toughness, or consistency in training? Are you undereating right now? I'm a hair taller than you and develop signs of RED-S when I'm in your current weight range and training hard, but I know everyone is different.

I can give you better advice if I know where you see the biggest opportunities for you to improve.

I'm also a fan of Pete's Plan.

[row23]

What is your primary goal, swimming or rowing? If you want to achieve strong swim times, you'll likely want to work with your coach about how to supplement without detracting from your swimming.

If your teammate is telling you that you can do it with discipline, what does your discipline look like right now? I'm curious if there's something about your approach to practices or timed pieces that led to the comment. Is this around mental toughness, or consistency in training? Are you undereating right now? I'm a hair taller than you and develop signs of RED-S when I'm in your current weight range and training hard, but I know everyone is different.

I can give you better advice if I know where you see the biggest opportunities for you to improve.

I'm also a fan of Pete's Plan.

I was actually thinking of quitting swimming to do winter training and really focus on lifting and erging, although there were other reasons not related to winter rowing that are leading me to that decision, like schoolwork and other extracurriculars.

In terms of my discipline, I think my teammate meant more consistency with rowing even as I go into swimming. We both put the same effort into rowing practices and in recent weeks I had actually been at practice more than her, in addition to lifting on my own and erging before practice. She also advised me to start eating more a few days ago which I started doing and I am so much more energized now that I am eating more, so I think continuing to eat more will definitely help me. I feel I'm very disciplined and I definitely make time to erg and lift even when it's difficult to find the time.

Right now my schedule is/would be:
Swimming every night (except weekends) from 7-9pm
Dryland (mandatory on-land swim conditioning) from 3:30 to 5pm each Tuesday and Thursday
Lifting on my own or attending winter erg conditioning Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 4:30-6pm then going to swim practice afterward
Saturdays are lifting with a rest day on Sunday.

I've just started swimming season full time this week since fall rowing ran long so I am still working out the kinks. The exhaustion of this schedule, especially as swimming starts having meets 2-3 times a week, is why I am considering quitting swim, plus I won't have time for homework with this schedule.

[p_b82]

Do you know your daily calorific intake and a rough idea of your expenditure?

For me 90mins of slow steady state rowing is burning ~900 calories (and I most def have the excess stores to spare currently ); your schedule appears to have double that exercise volume every day bar sat/sun; so if you've not matched your input/output of fuel correctly it may explain why you've plateaued a bit.

In a past life with a higher metabolism and a larger exercise volume I couldn't keep weight on, It wasn't until I actually did some calorie counting for a month or so that I was able to spot the deficit being quite as large as it was. In conjunction with that, I also had to change my eating habits - more smaller meals more evenly spaced rather than just increase the volume of the existing meals.

Can't give you any advice on improving your actual times as I'm a n00b at rowing myself.

[Elizabeth]

If you participate in swim, it would be very hard to effectively do any erg conditioning on top of the 7 sessions (5 water, 2 dry) that you're already having with the swim team, plus the strength sessions. You need recovery as well. Often, when you hear about training schedules that have a ton of volume in them (the record-setting cross-country skier in the last Olympics comes to mind), the athlete spends years building up to that kind of volume, and most of it is low intensity - not multiple swim meets in a week on top of work towards a second sport.

Food is fuel. Your body gets stronger and faster through a combination of both training stimulus and recovery. I've seen young female athletes succeed temporarily by pushing through inadequate nutrition and/or overtraining, but it often doesn't end well.

I think you're very smart to step back and try to figure out what fits into your goals and your life. You also need time for sleep, homework, and a social life.

If you decide to leave swim and prioritize rowing, your coach could likely give you pointers about how to best address your weak points.

[row23]

Do you know your daily calorific intake and a rough idea of your expenditure?

For me 90mins of slow steady state rowing is burning ~900 calories (and I most def have the excess stores to spare currently ); your schedule appears to have double that exercise volume every day bar sat/sun; so if you've not matched your input/output of fuel correctly it may explain why you've plateaued a bit.

In a past life with a higher metabolism and a larger exercise volume I couldn't keep weight on, It wasn't until I actually did some calorie counting for a month or so that I was able to spot the deficit being quite as large as it was. In conjunction with that, I also had to change my eating habits - more smaller meals more evenly spaced rather than just increase the volume of the existing meals.

Can't give you any advice on improving your actual times as I'm a n00b at rowing myself.

In terms of caloric intake, I don't know the number of calories, but I eat pretty regularly throughout the day now (but have just started eating like this within the past few days).
- Breakfast is around 6:30am, usually a protein smoothie and toast, peanut butter on protein waffles and fruit, protein cereal w/milk
- If I'm hungry I eat a snack around 9:45am.
- Lunch at my school is early - 10:20am - and I've been eating lentil soup, peanut butter sandwich, pasta, fruit, etc, and usually a combination of several of these.
- I eat a snack at school around 12, usually almonds, pita chips, or a granola bar or some combo of these.
- Another snack after school at 3:30 of pretzels and a cheese stick, guacamole, random leftovers
Since I've been lifting and swimming I've been eating two dinners - one smaller one before swim practice and a regular one after swimming at 9:30pm.

This is a huge increase in my intake from just last week - previously I would eat a small breakfast, medium-sized lunch, a small snack, and one dinner, not because I wasn't hungry, but just because it seemed like an appropriate amount of food based on what other people were eating. I would frequently be extremely hungry during rowing practice and would have a granola bar after but it was never enough to satisfy my hunger.

And as for calories burned - my Apple watch says that when I lift I usually do about 200-300 calories burned and when I swim it's about 200-300 as well. Rowing it's between 300-500 per practice. To be honest, though, this doesn't seem accurate, as I feel a lot more tired after swimming or rowing than my watch thinks I should.

[kini62]

IMO you should continue to swim if you enjoy it, and or are competitive in that you can vie for wins, and for the team camaraderie. Enjoy your high school years, once they're gone they're gone. You still have plenty of time after swim season and before the next row season to get your times down.

Also, adding running over the summer will help with your base aerobic conditioning and threshold.

Good luck. And have FUN.

[p_b82]

What you're now eating sounds more right to me for the volume you're probably doing; hopefully it helps you feel better generally - I've learnt to listen to my body and eat what it tells me to. Some days I get cravings for food stuffs that hold certain vits/minerals and just stuff my face with them.

And I'll echo the comment of do what you enjoy the most - and make sure that whatever your chose to do, that you continue to have fun.

Life's too short to feel you "have" to do something & if you get more out rowing than you do swimming then focus on it; conversely if you're an amazing swimmer with loads of potential put the rowing on the back burner.

[jamesg]

My 2k is 8:16 and my 5k is 22:33

Depending on the ratings you used in your 2 and 5k tests, you may need a bigger stroke. If so, do the sums and then train it. Short intervals to start with. Have fun.

[Elizabeth]

Your new diet looks like it's overall a much better amount of food. As a tall, active girl, you'll need more than friends who are shorter or less active. If you're hungry, that's typically a sign to eat more, but it can also be an indication that you're not taking in enough of a specific macronutrient. If you're vegetarian - I can't quite tell from what you're describing - you may need to pay more attention to protein in particular. I often have a protein shake as an afternoon snack.

[row23]

Your new diet looks like it's overall a much better amount of food. As a tall, active girl, you'll need more than friends who are shorter or less active. If you're hungry, that's typically a sign to eat more, but it can also be an indication that you're not taking in enough of a specific macronutrient. If you're vegetarian - I can't quite tell from what you're describing - you may need to pay more attention to protein in particular. I often have a protein shake as an afternoon snack.

I used to be vegetarian but stopped a few years back as my parents told me I needed to eat meat again. I usually don't eat meat, though, unless it is served for dinner, and even then I don't eat pork/beef. So basically I'm vegetarian unless forced to eat meat.

I'm the tallest of my friends by at least six to eight inches and the most athletic, so that's probably why I had a distorted idea of what to eat. I used to eat a lot of protein smoothies and then kind of forgot about them but lately, I've been having them for breakfast... I'll consider adding one after school as well. I try and eat a lot of beans/lentils and drink milk for protein, and I've added a lot of nuts into my diet, but I have yet to figure out what types of alternative proteins, like tofu, etc work for me. I'm still figuring out how to eat like an athlete so once I can figure out what works best for me then I think I'll be golden.

[row23]

My 2k is 8:16 and my 5k is 22:33

Depending on the ratings you used in your 2 and 5k tests, you may need a bigger stroke. If so, do the sums and then train it. Short intervals to start with. Have fun.

My more recent 2ks are done at an average stroke rate of 27. 5ks usually are at a 26 or 27 as well. My 2ks from this spring, which was when we did a lot of training at high rates, were at 28-30s, but these times were obviously a lot worse than my current times.

When you say do the sums and train it, what do you mean? Should I start doing training for shorter intervals at higher rates?

[Dangerscouse]

When you say do the sums and train it, what do you mean? Should I start doing training for shorter intervals at higher rates?

Judging by the best 2k results, higher rates are better, but I'm a big advocate of finding what works for you as it's only a means to an end to make you the most efficient you can be.

Definitely try and get used to r30+ and give it a good go too, but it might work out that lower is better for you. There's no benefit in rowing at r32 only to find you can't control your inner chimp (a Dr Steve Peters reference if you don't know) and you HD. There are different limiters for all of us, for example, oxygen utilisation or oxygen delivery and you'll suffer in different ways from them.

[Elizabeth]

Beans and nuts are great. I really like to roast chickpeas with different herbs and spices and then use them to top salads. Roasted tofu can be delicious, if you haven't tried that. And simply reading packages can really help. We're having Barilla Protein Plus spaghetti tonight, which at 10g protein per serving has more than most pasta. Some veggie burgers can be good sources of protein and others are tasty but are essentially just vegetables. (Dr. Praeger's.) Greek yogurt has 17g serving per serving compared to 8g per serving for milk; I love it with some fruit and cereal for breakfast.

My CRASH-B 2k earlier this year was at 27 spm, and then my WRICH 2k a couple weeks later was at 30 spm and a couple seconds faster. I've been working on increasing rate by trying to keep rate around 33-34 for speedy interval work, such as 8x500. I've set a couple of new PRs this fall in the 33-34 spm range. My steady state is still mainly in a 18-22 range.