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There are many variables involved with rowing and at first it's not easy to work out what to focus on to get the results you want. Below is a list of the rowing variables with guidance on handling the common pitfalls.
When you got your indoor rower you might have intended to just row on the weekend, and certainly that's better than not rowing. However you really need to row at least three times per week to achieve and maintain a healthy fitness if rowing is your main or only form of exercise. All RowPro rowing plans have at least 3 rows per week, and up to 7 rows per week in top-end plans.
At the other end of the scale, you can also over-train. Over-training injuries are becoming more common as more people over-train. If you plan to row more than 7 times per week you probably need to get expert advice to avoid the very real risk of over-training problems.
Most people who row at a gym are completely exhausted after 5 minutes on the machine and can't even imagine how anyone could row for 20 minutes or even an hour or more. It just seems impossible.
However it's just a matter of backing off the pace to a level where you can row aerobically, meaning your heart rate stays below your Anaerobic Threshold or AT.
If rowing is your main or only form of exercise, you really need to row a minimum of 20 minutes in any session to get a useful training effect that carries forward to your next workout to produce and maintain a healthy fitness.
Virtually all the workouts in RowPro rowing plans are at least 20 minutes long, and can be a lot longer depending on the type and level of rowing plan.
At the other end of the scale, once you're rowing sessions longer than an hour you need to take measures to keep hydrated, plus most people rowing marathon distances also need to use special seat padding arrangements and possibly hand protection to avoid problems from excessive rubbing. Ask around the forums for advice from seasoned veterans of longer rows.
A very common pitfall is to find a workout type that suits you, like say 30 minutes hard work, and just repetitively do that workout whenever you row.
The reality is your body needs a combination of strength, speed and endurance work to maintain a healthy fitness, and this means you need to mix it up a bit.
The workouts in RowPro rowing plans are a professionally-designed mix that cycle your body through a series of strength, speed and endurance phases to produce the training effect you are working towards.
So if you've never done an Interval workout and are hesitant to start, just go with what the rowing plan says and you'll quickly start enjoying the variety.
The damper setting is possibly the most poorly understood variable.
There’s a popular gym cult that "you’re not a real man unless you row with the damper on 10", but this is rubbish. Think of a 10-speed bike. Who in their right mind would say (or believe if told) "you’re not a real man unless you ride in 10th gear"?
The bike gear lever and the rowing damper are very similar. Concept2 has cleverly arranged the math inside the PM to ensure this is the case. You can easily prove this to yourself by monitoring your heart rate and rowing with different damper setting. Provided you stay at the same SPM and Pace, your heart rate will be the same regardless what damper setting you choose.
The reality is that like higher gears, higher damper settings require more muscular strength, but you go further with each push / pull. On a bike, you quickly work out which is the optimum for you – too high and your muscles get really tired, too low and you’re wasting too much energy just moving your legs back and forth.
People rowing soon work out their own optimum damper setting. On Concept2 Indoor Rowers, women and lightweight men tend to row with a damper setting between 3 and 5, and heavyweight men tend to row between 3 and 7.
Your heart rate is like a meter telling you how hard you're working, which is why it's so important to monitor your heart rate while you row, particularly when you're rowing to a plan, and to keep your heart rate within the target band for your workout.
The first thing to realize is that rowing for more than a few minutes is only possible if you keep your heart rate below your Anaerobic Threshold or AT, otherwise your muscle cells simply run out of the energy that fuels Anaerobic work, with the result that your muscles suddenly feel dead - it's called "hitting the wall".
The question is how to tell what your AT is. To avoid you having to do a test, RowPro uses a simple age-based formula, however this is conservative, so if you're already quite fit you may find this results in your heart rate target ranges feeling too low when you do a RowPro rowing plan.
The 'correct' solution is to do a test to determine your AT and then plug that into your User Profile in RowPro. Ideally this test should be done while rowing on a Concept2 Indoor Rower. Testing to find your AT is commonly done either by Lactate testing involving pinpricks to take blood samples, or by a Conconi test involving ramping up intervals and monitoring your heart rate until you physically have to stop.
Either way this testing requires maximal effort, so if you plan to do a test you should work with a professional who knows what to do and you should get clearance from your doctor first.
There are other heart rate ranges below your AT, and it's important to stay in these ranges to get the intended training effect. For example, if you're wanting to do a fat-burning row, you need to keep your heart rate well down in the appropriate range, otherwise you'll get a good cardio workout but won't burn much fat.
Stroke rate is one of the most important variables in your rowing, as it has a profound effect on the type of workout your body gets. A "middling" stroke rate would be around 22-26 SPM. When you go lower than that, say 18-22 SPM, this is more demanding on your muscles and is basically a strength workout. When you go higher, say 26-30 SPM, you're moving more into cardio-respiratory work, and over 30 SPM you're doing speed work.
All of these are important types of work you need to cycle your body through for effective training. It's important not to just settle on one stroke rate and always do that for all your workouts, because you'll be missing out on the other workout types and your training will be less effective in delivering the results you want.
A note of caution though: Take care when rowing under 20 SPM, because the load on your lower back muscles in particular is substantial. If you find your lower back gets sore, increase your stroke rate a little and ease off the pace until you can row without any soreness or pain, then gradually come back down to the lower stroke rate again.
Stroke technique is also critical at lower stroke rates. A common problem in stroke technique is "shooting the slide", and doing this while rowing under 20 SPM is really bad for your lower back muscles and can lead to injury. To explain:
At the catch your trunk is leaning slightly forward and your knees are folded up. At the finish your trunk is leaning slightly rearward and your knees are straight. As you move from the catch to the finish, you need to progressively tip your trunk from the forward tilt at the catch to the rearward tilt at the finish.
The thing not to do is leave your trunk tipped forward while you drive with your legs, and only begin tipping your truck rearward when your legs are more or less straight - that's what "shooting the slide" means, and that's what overloads your lower back muscles. For guidance, look at the coaching clinic and match the way the Oarsman does it there.
One other common pitfall is that at first it seems completely counter-intuitive to pull a lower SPM at a higher pace, but it’s definitely possible and an important skill to master. RowPro can train you in this. Follow the timing of the Oarsman on-screen to get your drive and recovery sensible. The Oarsman does the correct drive to recovery timing when you row at any given SPM. Basically you do a slower recovery, rather than pausing anywhere in the stroke.
Also, click Coaching Clinic on the RowPro main menu, and click the Stroke Rhythm button beside the coaching notes. You’ll see the drive to recovery ratio changes with slower SPM. It’s this changing ratio you need to learn to do, so your drive to recovery timing is optimized for your SPM at any given time. It feels very odd at first, but as you get more skilful at it you’ll find eventually it becomes second nature.
For many people, pace is the first thing on their mind, whereas it probably should be the last. You may have noticed that when you row sessions from a RowPro rowing plan, a) there is no pace target, and b) you can't use a pace boat.
Both of these are deliberate. To get a given training effect from a workout, you need to row for a specific time at a specific stroke rate and in a specific heart rate range. When you do that, the resulting pace is just that - a result. When you row at a certain heart rate, then the pace is what it is. When you get fitter, your pace will be faster at the same heart rate as when you were less fit. In this way your training automatically adapts - you row at a faster pace when you're fitter.
The key point is that it's your heart rate and stroke rate that determine the training effect you get, not your pace. This is also why you should not train with a pace boat unless you're specifically needing to train at a specific pace.
The math for pace is that Pace = SPM x DPS, where DPS is the Distance per Stroke. This means that to go faster, you need to either increase SPM without conceding DPS, or vice-versa. This is easier said than done! Interestingly, there is a slight HR advantage if you row the same pace at a lower SPM, hence if you're training for competition it's a good idea to include plenty of low stroke rate strength workouts.
RowPro competition plans include lots of strength workouts. They deliver a performance peak at a defined date to optimize race results, while recognizing that achieving high peaks on race day requires dropping off those peaks in between, hence the training varies. The bottom line is that always doing the same training and seeking to just incrementally get faster has in-built limits that are lower than proper peaking, and you can readily prove this to yourself by trying it each way.
A common dilemma when you're following a rowing plan is what to do if you miss one or more scheduled sessions. Here's how to handle the common scenarios:
You'll notice in Session Setup / Training you can select the session scheduled for "today" and you can also select the session for +/- 3 days from today. This enables you to adjust your training schedule to handle days when you can't row. The main caution is not to do the harder workouts one day after another, because your body actually develops in the rests when you're not rowing and it needs the time to recover from the harder workouts.
If you miss a week, or even two weeks, you can continue with your plan. Just take it up again at whatever point "today" is, so in effect the sessions you missed stay missed.
Don't be tempted to "re jig" your plan so you start again at the same point you stopped at a week or two earlier, because RowPro rowing plans contain cycles of strength, speed and endurance workouts and if you jump the plan around you will break these cycles and make your training less effective.
If you miss three weeks or more, your plan is effectively defunct and should be abandoned. Start a new plan.
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