Just saying hi!

[Pendolino]

Hi!

New user here. I used to use the Concept2 in the work gym many years ago and fell in love with it. Alas, after a minor surgical procedure I let it slip and didn't return, until now! The day job involves sitting down all day, pressing buttons and moving a lever, with the only exercise being a leisurely stroll from one end of my train to the other - I was desperately seeking a sustainable way of keeping fit so went all in and got me a RowErg delivered a couple of weeks back. I've used it almost every day! I'm following the 24 week 'Pete Plan' beginner's training plan, which I used all those years ago and which worked for me.

If anybody has any advice to avoid it ending up covered in dust in 6 months, I'm all ears! I can't see it happening, but I've seen so many rowers that surely started life as somebody's passion simply left by the wayside.

Apart from that, I'm looking forward to getting involved in some of the challenges here once I've spent some time getting up to scratch and back to a decent level of fitness

Cheers all!

[Dangerscouse]

Welcome to the forum.

The best advice I have got is to learn to love the process and keep the results secondary. The BPP is a great idea as you're constantly improving week on week and embedding the discipline and routine of different types of effort.

Posting your sessions on here also provides accountability and camaraderie. Good luck with it all

[mict450]

Howdy! Set yourself down and stay for a spell. Lots of good advice from the regulars on the forum.

[p_b82]

Hi and Welcome,

For me it's just about finding a schedule/habit that works for you and sticking to it - don't push yourself too hard too fast, as that can take the fun out of it before you're ready to get competitive with yourself/others. Once you've got the habit baked in then it's much easier to stick to it however (in)frequent that is

[Pendolino]

Thanks all! Some good suggestions. Personally, I find that setting a die hard routine can be counter productive for me because if I wake up and I'm just not in the mood, it'll feel like a fail day

I tend to say, "Tomorrow might be a good day to jump on the rower." If I do, great! I not, there's always tomorrow. I am, however, trying to stick to an average of three days a week on it for now, whether that's every other day, or three days in a row.

Already feeling the improvements in fitness and technique - have bumped from 5000 m (2:32 / 500 m) to 6000 m (2:23 / 500 m). I've learnt from past experience to make small increases so as not to lose motivation, so I'm not rushing it - that's the result of 7 sessions over 2 weeks or so.

Looking back through my old logbook, back in 2017 I got to doing 8000 m (2:08 / 500 m), so that's my initial target whilst making my way through the Pete Plan!

Definitely prefer sitting on a rower at home than in a gym with music/TV I'm not interested in lol.

[Pendolino]

Little update - all going well, not been busting my balls too hard yet but slowly ramping it up. Have increased from 5 000 metres (2:31.6/500) to 6 500 metres (2:15.8/500) over the past couple of months, although I had three weeks off in the middle due to knee pain - more stretching has helped that!

Thanks again for the advice, so far this is quickly becoming one of the best purchases I've ever made

[Ombrax]

Little update - all going well, not been busting my balls too hard yet but slowly ramping it up. Have increased from 5 000 metres (2:31.6/500) to 6 500 metres (2:15.8/500) over the past couple of months

Congratulations - that isn't a trivial increase in power.

If you haven't found it yet (see link below) the C2 power calculator (or the equations they also provide there) predict the following:

Pace: 2:31.6 --> Power: 100.5 W
Pace: 2:15.8 --> Power: 139.8 W

Because the power required is proportional to 1 / Pace^3 (where pace is time (sec) / distance (m) ) small improvements in pace require significant increases in power.

See this link for more details: https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/ ... calculator

[Pendolino]

Little update - all going well, not been busting my balls too hard yet but slowly ramping it up. Have increased from 5 000 metres (2:31.6/500) to 6 500 metres (2:15.8/500) over the past couple of months

Congratulations - that isn't a trivial increase in power.

If you haven't found it yet (see link below) the C2 power calculator (or the equations they also provide there) predict the following:

Pace: 2:31.6 --> Power: 100.5 W
Pace: 2:15.8 --> Power: 139.8 W

Because the power required is proportional to 1 / Pace^3 (where pace is time (sec) / distance (m) ) small improvements in pace require significant increases in power.

See this link for more details: https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/ ... calculator

Thanks!

This is definitely not 100% gain - I consciously limited myself at the start as it was a new exercise for me again, but am slowly zeroing in on pulling for aerobic fitness now.

I have an engineering-y background, so the relationship between pace (velocity) and power is a familiar one to me -.in essence, to pull twice the pace requires eight times the power!

[jamesg]

If anybody has any advice to avoid it ending up covered in dust in 6 months, I'm all ears!

The WODs are useful in this, a new one every day. I don't like plans but don't mind surprises, so using these via Ergdata since February, very simple.

https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/wod

[iain]

As I am sure you are aware, the BPP increases the SS rows 500m / week to 10k. It also increases the intensity of intervals from a gentle introduction to hard workouts, also it is normal for the pace of improvements to slow during the second month or so. As a result, the SS rows need to actually get a little easier through the program as the fitness improvements are from regularity and the hard work in the intervals, the gains from doing the SS faster are small compared to the potential losses from not being able to do the intervals as fast. As stated above a 40% increase in power is huge. I would recommend that you are cautious about continuing to increase the pace on these. I suggest that you set an 8k TT at the end to test your objective rather than getting to regular 2:08 paced SS rows.

Great start and look forward to seeing your future improvement.

[Pendolino]

If anybody has any advice to avoid it ending up covered in dust in 6 months, I'm all ears!

The WODs are useful in this, a new one every day. I don't like plans but don't mind surprises, so using these via Ergdata since February, very simple.

https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/wod

Thanks for this, I'll look at incorporating it into my training if my body permits!

[Pendolino]

As I am sure you are aware, the BPP increases the SS rows 500m / week to 10k. It also increases the intensity of intervals from a gentle introduction to hard workouts, also it is normal for the pace of improvements to slow during the second month or so. As a result, the SS rows need to actually get a little easier through the program as the fitness improvements are from regularity and the hard work in the intervals, the gains from doing the SS faster are small compared to the potential losses from not being able to do the intervals as fast. As stated above a 40% increase in power is huge. I would recommend that you are cautious about continuing to increase the pace on these. I suggest that you set an 8k TT at the end to test your objective rather than getting to regular 2:08 paced SS rows.

Great start and look forward to seeing your future improvement.

Thanks for the words of wisdom! As I'm up to 7,000 m SS and 2:12.0 ish / 500 metres, I'm definitely not aiming to reach a pace of 2:08 by 8,000 metres - I'd only lose motivation if I burn out before finishing, so my plan is to do as you say and set it as a target after finishing the BPP. My other challenge upon finishing is dropping below the 20 minute mark for a 5,000 m SS row.

I'll be sure to try to find gains in the intervals where possible as well - I've been guilty of trying to shave 1-2 seconds off my pace for each 1000 m increase in SS instead of holding it steady, but that's because I intentionally held back at the start while I found my feet. So, in essence, I've been slowly honing in on what seems to be a good pace for the SS's instead of maintaining what would be too slow - my first 5,000 m row I performed at 2:35 / 500 metres ish to break back into it, which feels awfully slow now!

Thanks again for the advice - hopefully my next update will be in a few months so say I've smashed those aims!

[iain]

To answer your question, many of the people who start doing regular ergs and then lose interest do so because they try and row hard every row and beat their previous times. At first this is highly motivating and improvements in basic fitness, the body adapting to rowing and ironing out technique faults allow rapid improvements. Unfortunately these quickly slow and the rower ends up pushing very hard every session and so they don't give their bodies time to recover. It is a fact that (ignoring technique improvements) we only get faster when our bodies recover. So the rower hits a plateau considers the sessions "failures" and loses motivation to row. The answer is to for us to do 1-2 hard sessions a week when we push to our limits (these provide the main training stimulus to improve core fitness of increased cardiac output) and do the other sessions at a pace that provides some work but doesn't set back recovery from the harder sessions (these still provide the regular stimulus required to maintain the peripheral adaptions to allow our muscles to take on and use more oxygen).

[Pendolino]

To answer your question, many of the people who start doing regular ergs and then lose interest do so because they try and row hard every row and beat their previous times. At first this is highly motivating and improvements in basic fitness, the body adapting to rowing and ironing out technique faults allow rapid improvements. Unfortunately these quickly slow and the rower ends up pushing very hard every session and so they don't give their bodies time to recover. It is a fact that (ignoring technique improvements) we only get faster when our bodies recover. So the rower hits a plateau considers the sessions "failures" and loses motivation to row. The answer is to for us to do 1-2 hard sessions a week when we push to our limits (these provide the main training stimulus to improve core fitness of increased cardiac output) and do the other sessions at a pace that provides some work but doesn't set back recovery from the harder sessions (these still provide the regular stimulus required to maintain the peripheral adaptions to allow our muscles to take on and use more oxygen).

Thank you once again for such an informative post.

That sounds like me, right now.

With that in mind, I'm going to make a conscious effort to wind down (maintaining pace) on my increasing distance SS rows, whilst using the intervals to wear myself out. In saying that, I've not been following the BPP day by day - a week of the Pete Plan translates to roughly 2 weeks in real life for me... I wonder if this is because I'm listening to my body telling me to rest for longer on account of me 'pushing it'.

On a positive note, I've just pulled two intervals of 2500 m each at a pace of 2:04, with a 2 minute rest in between. I know this is still 'slow' compared to a seasoned rower, but it made me think that if I can knock that pace down to 2:00 (in due time, of course!) and tie those two intervals together into a SS session, there's my 20 minute 5k row! It's things like that that motivate me, always chasing the light on the horizon I guess!

Having said that, it killed me

[Dangerscouse]

In saying that, I've not been following the BPP day by day - a week of the Pete Plan translates to roughly 2 weeks in real life for me... I wonder if this is because I'm listening to my body telling me to rest for longer on account of me 'pushing it'.

On a positive note, I've just pulled two intervals of 2500 m each at a pace of 2:04, with a 2 minute rest in between. I know this is still 'slow' compared to a seasoned rower, but it made me think that if I can knock that pace down to 2:00 (in due time, of course!) and tie those two intervals together into a SS session, there's my 20 minute 5k row! It's things like that that motivate me, always chasing the light on the horizon I guess!

Having said that, it killed me

There's definitely a fine line between pushing enough and too much. You need to break out of your comfort zone to make progress, and that will entail training when you're possibly telling yourself you're too tired, but that comes with practice.

If you're taking two weeks to complete one week of the BPP, assuming you've got the available time, my suspicion is you're either going too hard do you can't recover properly or you need to go harder as your convincing yourself it's not possible.

I always suggest chasing the question mark rather than the exclamation point, and that way you find solutions and results that you didn't know were possible.

Don't worry about how fast or slow your time is compared to anyone else except yourself. It's easier said than done, but it's really important you focus on your abilities and your results alone.