For elite rowers, who spend a lot of time at the sport, try to be the best they can be, and therefore don't have any glaring problems with either fitness or technique, give or take a bit at certain points, training bands on the erg (UT2, UT1, AT, TR, AN, max) come every five seconds per 500m, and the whole edifice stares you in the face like the rock of Gibralter.
To get better, you can work at any point in the edifice, trying to get better at scaling whatever mountain is involved there, but in the end, because of these relationships among the training bands, you only get better when you move the whole edifice.
The question is, then, how can you do this, personally, given who and what you are, etc., given your strengths and weaknesses, rowing and athletic history, and so forth?
Not an easy question.
For Mike VB, for instance, if he now does UT2 at 1:57 or so, max is pretty unshakably 1:32, that is, UT2 - 25. Then the other training bands array themselves in between: UT1 is 1:52, AT is 1:47, TR is 1:42, AN is 1:37.
If Mike wants to move this whole edifice in order to get better, he could chip away at any point, hoping to move that foothill.
On the UT2 end, the issue is efficiency and aerobic capacity.
On the max end, the issue is effectiveness and anaerobic capacity.
Pick your poison!
Most people, I think, choose to move the whole edifice by working from the UT2 (efficiency and aerobic capacity) end, although this is certainly tricky.
As Mike Caviston rightly urges, to _improve_ your UT2 rowing, you can't just rest and row slowly when you train.
You need to pull hard and rev the heart rate to frightening heights, day after day, over excruciatingly long distances.
Sure, you row at low rates, but you don't use your 2K stroking power or a UT2 heart rate when you do so.
Something else entirely is involved--overload, severe stress, tons of sweat and aching muscles, and a lot of other unpleasantness.
Undoubtedly, this is why he got fired here at UM as a trainer.
Telling the truth about how to be good at rowing can be pretty frightening for the normal undergraduate, however talented they might be at rowing and however much the scholarship they have depends on them doing well in the sport.
As Nav points out, depending on who you are, you might also try to move the whole edifice by working from the max end.
I suppose that's what he tries to do.
But how to do this is pretty tricky, too, I think, and I am not sure than Nav has found any way to do it that is comparable to the way Caviston's Level 4 rowing or my RWBs (rowing with breaks) can improve your UT2 rowing.
Undoubtedly, there are probably some ways out there that this could be done, though, and if someone ever discovers them, they will make a great contribution to what we know about training for the sport.
Is it weights that improve your explosive power and therefore top-end speed?
Is it squats?
Is it certain kinds of work on technique, so that you can get the rate way, way up with less stress?
Got me.
Even more intriguing, though, and baffling, really, is the fact that the two ends of the training edifice are so intimately connected that, in most cases, if you move one end, you move the other end, too.
If your fitness is high and your rowing balanced and technically sound, effectiveness aids efficiency, and vice versa.
Improve one and you improve the other.
So, that's training for rowing in a nutshell.
Enjoy!
I suppose we'll just have to wait and see, and God knows when it is going to happen fully and therefore factually in all of the races, but by improving my technique, I think I have succeeded in moving my training edifice as much as four seconds per 500m.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that this magnitude of improvement is available to any novice who, being new at the sport, now rows poorly but is willing to work long and hard (in any and every way possible) to learn to row well.
Even in erging, "technique" is important.
The relation of what you do to how the erg responds is not entirely transparent.
You can't just do any old thing and get the best result.
ranger
Rich Cureton M 72 5'11" 165 lbs. 2K pbs: 6:27.5 (hwt), 6:28 (lwt)
