After doing a lot of base and aerobic conditioning work over the past few weeks. It is time for some pure speed work.
Primary – 5 x 5:
5 – 500M pieces, at race pace on a 5 minute start interval. Short and sweet. Do at least two as the first 500M of a 2K race, and mix the remaining at body and last 500m sprint pieces.
Secondary –
1 x 11’ Anaerobic Threshold: Row at 80-85% of Race pace, u pick fan, cadence 24-30 spm.
Great job everyone on the 5000m piece last week. That is a very tough race piece and you all did awesome at keeping after your pace and keeping your technique tight. Very nice job! This week’s workout will be a little different.
Primary –
2 X 8 (10 paddle + 30 Full Power) 5 min rest if solo; switch out with partner quickly if sharing a machine. Follow w/ 8 x 24 weighted squat jumps on the minute.
Row at 85 -100% of your 2000m race pace. Use the first 3 strokes of your 30 full pressure to build up the wheel speed (building momentum – 1st stroke ½ pressure, 2nd stroke ¾ pressure, 3rd stroke 7/8ths pressure, and go full pressure for 27, paddle for 10 strokes, build for 3 and go again). Keep hitting each stroke hard and let the fatigue help you find efficient technique and a mental grove. Nothing to record here, you’re just taking 480 very hard strokes and doing some light squats.
Secondary –
3 x 6’ Anaerobic Threshold: Row at 80-85% of Race pace, u pick fan, cadence 24-30 spm, rest 4 min.
Over distance training or Utilization training is the brain child of legendary New Zealand track coach Arthur Lydiard. Often called LSD, or long slow distance training, it is defined as prolonged work performed at well below your cardiac threshold.
Over distance work in rowing is so muscularly exhausting that the body is highly incented to figure out how to row efficiently – how to use skeletal strength instead of muscular strength, how to effectively use muscular strength, and how to relax any muscle chain that is not in active use.
The other benefit to over distance training is the mental adaptation that can be achieved. The rhythm of drive and recovery in rowing is fundamental and universal, like the filling and emptying of lungs, the beating of a heart or the push and pull of waves breaking on a beach. That rhythm of work and rest can be meditative - can be. Over distance training gives you an opportunity to develop the ability to shut down the left (logical) side of your brain and move into the non-verbal right side of your brain. If you can improve this skill your perceived amount of recovery time will grow and your ability to work without regards to your limits will also expand.
Work at your ability to park your mind by staring at a specific point in space and letting your focus go blurry, repeating a motivation phrase that fits your pace, counting your strokes, rowing with your eyes closed, or try feeling on one aspect of your form for 5 min at a time.
Please find the time to look at at least one of these technique videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ82RYIFLN8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP6OR-G7AxM&feature=related
Primary –
1 x 5000m Utilization Training 1: Row at 70 - 80% of Race pace, u pick fan setting, cadence 22-28 spm.
Secondary –
2 x 7’ Anaerobic Threshold: Row at 80-85% of Race pace, u pick fan, cadence 24-30 spm, rest 3 ½ min.
We showed a lot of good speed in last week’s race pace work workout. That’s really promising for how we can do as a team in the upcoming Mile High Sprints. This week’s workouts will give us an opportunity to build our base conditioning and raise the floor of our sprint pace. These are long rowing workouts, keep you focus on pace and technique throughout. This will give us a good chance for video review.
Base Work
Workouts:
Primary –
2 x 12’ Utilization Training 1: Row at 70 - 80% of Race pace, u pick fan setting, cadence 22-27 spm, rest 6min.
Secondary –
2 x 9’ Anaerobic Threshold: Row at 80-85% of Race pace, u pick fan, cadence 24-30 spm, rest 4 min.
Nice work on last week’s 9x1 workout. This week we are going to back off the pace a little bit and practice rowing at our 2K race pace.
Racing & Recovery
Workouts:
Primary – At your race pace
1 –250M (2 min. rest); 2 - 500M (3 min rests); 3 – 750M (4 min rest); 4 – 1000M (5 min rest); 5 – 1250M; 2K race pace cadence and fan setting. Five stroke start for each piece and right down to race cadence
Secondary – Steady State training
2 x 15’ Utilization Training: Row at 60-70% of Race pace, u pick fan and cadence.
Anaerobic
Anaerobic work is intense physical activity that requires the body to combust its primary energy source adenosine tri-phosphates (ATP) without oxygen. Anaerobic combustion produces less total caloric output per molecule of ATP than aerobic combustion, in addition it also produces the byproduct we all know and love – pyruvic or lactic acid.
Anaerobic (AN) and Anaerobic Threshold (AT) workouts are designed to raise the floor of when we go anaerobic. Think of it as moving the red-line of your tachometer higher. This will allow us to push to a higher level of performance before hitting “oxygen debt”. The second benefit of this training is that it will expand our anaerobic performance window, allowing us to sprint longer and faster than our previous limits.
The only drawback of anaerobic workouts is that they are miserable. Fortunately, they are short. Go as hard as you can on each piece and track the meters covered.
Primary Workout - Full Anaerobic:
9 x 1 min; above race speed but at race cadence; rest interval 1.5 minutes (switch as fast as possible with your partner). You do these as fast as possible, faster than your 2000m race pace. If your performance fades that is acceptable.
Secondary Workout - Anaerobic Threshold:
1 X 13 min piece at 80 – 90% of your 2000m race pace.
Anaerobic threshold work asks that you work right below your “red-line” and keep it there. You should be breathing too hard to talk, but able to get enough O2 to prevent going anaerobic.
Post row land work
To swim one stroke requires a specific mix of strength, endurance and power. As it does to run one stride, turn one bike crank revolution, or x-c ski one kick and glide. But of all the traditional means of manual transport – running, swimming, biking, skiing – rowing has the highest strength component. Successfully prying a 12’ 6” lever, pre-supposes you’ve already acquired a fair degree of strength. Rowing well assure that you have significant amounts of muscular endurance. This is why rowers tend to be bigger than most traditional endurance athletes.
The drawback of this mode of training is that it exhausts the body. Tour de France cyclists can ride for 100’s of miles in a workout, swimmers can spend 4 – 6 hours a day in the pool. But rowing takes such a toll on the body you can only row so far. The upper limit seems to be around 18-22 miles for a workout. A coach who takes his crew beyond those limits more than once every two weeks will wind up with little more than a slow boat.
Consequently most teams row for less than 16 miles in a workout and then spend time in post row workouts. In a post row workout, it is understood that everybody is 2/3rds gassed from rowing in a driving crosswind in early March, but has enough energy to successfully do crude exercises like squats, bench rows, pull ups and dead lifts.
A post row, much like a CrossFit workout, requires you to quickly move through a bunch of functional movements that exercise the muscles of rowing yet have a lower demand for precision, thus allowing us to fully develop our power capacity – aka - Big Diesel.
Workouts:
Primary – 2 x 8 minutes; 80 – 90% of race pace; 24-30 spm; fan setting = u set; rest interval – 4 minute if alone; 4 x 22 air squats (w/ plate) on the minute between pieces if sharing.
Secondary – Post Row Workout:
Any rep scheme – minimize rest; reps for squats, sit ups and Romanians must be 30/min or faster. Like with all rowing workouts you are training your muscles to fire against load at a pace of 30 strokes per minute or faster. Slow reps do not make for fast boats.
Big Diesel
Rowing requires a ton of oxygen. Every major muscle group except for the Pectorals is called into service when rowing. When rowing hard and fast the demand for oxygen is huge. Big Diesel workouts are one way to build that capacity.
The maritime diesel workout that all rowers know well is the 3 x 20 minute row. Good crews can easily cover over 12 miles in this workout. We will be doing the mini diesel version of 3 x 10 minutes. As we build our capacity we will crank these pieces at just below race pace. But this time through we are going to focus on steady work output and good technique. This might be a good workout to track your drag factor stats.
Inevitably in these workouts you will hit a point maybe in the third minute of your second piece or the eighth and ninth minute of each piece, where the fatigue will tempt you to round your low back or let your shoulders, rib cage and head drop forward thus choking off your lungs room to work. If we can build the mental discipline and resolve of character to say, that “this level of inattention and physical sloppiness is not how I get dressed in the morning, is not how I brush my teeth at the end of the day, and damn skippy, it is not how I row”. If we can cultivate that focus and precision for 30 minutes of duress, then when it comes time to rip off one 2000M piece, those dance steps will be automatic and the only question becomes how much wood you want to toss on the fire. Good luck.
Workouts:
Primary – 1 X 10 minutes. Pieces 2: 22 spm, first 2 min, 24 spm, next 2 min, 26 spm, next 2 min, 28 spm, next 2 min, 30 spm, next 2 min. Pieces 1 & 3: 22-30 spm u pick; fan setting = u pick; rest interval – 4 ½ minute (if alone). If sharing a machine we will do video reviews between pieces. Work effort is between 65%-80% of your 2K race pace.
Secondary – 10 X (3+30) above 28+ spm; experiment with fan settings do at least four pieces with fan at - 4 guys, 3 girls; Rest plenty. At race pace not above (no sprinting). Rest is 20-30 paddle strokes.
Ass pain, compression shorts and jog bras
Occasionally we will hear people complain about how their bony paleo butts are inconvenienced by rowing workouts. Mind you these are people sitting on padded (not wooden seats). Mind you these are people sitting on completely level and stable work platforms (not tippy vessels that routinely crash down to the port or starboard, or worse can list to starboard for miles). No these people are safe indoors and not buffeted by cold, wind and the relentless back splash of the morons you happen to be rowing with, no this is not the case at all. It is not exactly that this whining falls on deaf ears, but I have seen Alex have to physically restrain Louisa on a couple occasions.
Having said that we feel your pain. Get a patch of ¼” thick close celled foam, about the size of the concept II seat, cut out two silver dollar size holes where the sit bone indentions are (optional), then put two loops of duck tape on the bottom, place the pad down on your favorite machine and the nick name sweet cheeks will no longer be superfluous.
Men. Depending on your size each one of your legs probably weighs between 50 and 85 lbs. When you are rowing right those mules are slamming down as fast as they can. You do not want your junk to get caught between those presses. Get a good pair of compression shorts and keep everything high and tight.
Women. The rowing stroke finishes right under your breasts and just above your rib pointers. We don’t finish at our chins, our necks, or our navels; we accelerate right into the sternum. If this reality dictates certain jog bra choices, most excellent.
Workouts:
Primary – 4 X 3 ½ minutes seat races. Last year’s race pace – 4 (spm); fan setting = 95% of last year’s race pace. Rest Interval – 5 minute.
Secondary – 2 x 6 min; 24-28 spm; you chose first fan setting for first piece, second piece = 4 guys, 3 girls; Rest Interval – 7 min.
It’s more of a pry than a pull
If someone were to hold a gun to your head and insist that you either do soul crushing work all night long or dance all night long. Which would you choose? If you’re a friend of KO’s the choice should be obvious. And that’s going to outline the major enhancement to this year’s rowing program.
Last year’s performance was outstanding. We trained hard, had good technique, outstanding conditioning and great race savvy. Our performance at the Mile High Sprints was a resounding confirmation. So the levers for improving are few.
My goal this year is to continue to do what we did well last year, and to increase our awareness and experience of rowing as a dance; a brutal and somewhat medieval dance, but a dance with a tempo and rhythm none the less. If we can capture that tempo and bring it to the erg, I think it will make all of us that much more of a force to be reckoned with.
On the water eight men (or women) convert, 8 - 12’ 6” carbon fibers oars into levers that in unison behave like a series of compound bows that flex mightily and then launch a 70 foot long paper thin water dart with about one ton of loose cargo around 120 feet down the race course. With that spring and pop, and water’s demand for grace, it is possible to concentrate oneself into a rhythm of work that significantly exceeds the amount of work one can actually do.
As with any dance, we need good foot work. So we will drill a lot this year. We are going to video as much as we can. But footwork is not enough. Every dance has its demands for rhythm, timing, body position, cadence, and in this case a savage intensity that is often best served by rowing above 30 strokes per minute.
FRCF rowers always have two goals. One – to be efficient and comfortable with pacing so that rowing is not an obstacle to WOD performance. Two – to be able to blaze a 2000M piece like no body’s business. This rowing program is about goal two.
We will get very good at rowing at a high cadence. For some of our bigger guys this will be challenging. For some of us we may race down the course at 28 spm and that will be most optimal. But I think for a number of us, we will find a higher gear than we had last year. Lots of work.
Workouts:
Primary – Five x (3+30) stroke pieces above 28 strokes per minute; fan setting = 4 guys, 3 girls. (3 + 30) means you are paddling and then you take 3 full slide strokes to build pressure and wheel speed. The fourth stroke is at full pressure and the first stroke of your full pressure 30. (3+30) 3 to build and 30 to go, plenty of rest between pieces.
Secondary – 3 x 3 min track “Drag Factor” over each piece. Move the fan by at least 0.5 settings between pieces. Observe how diff you feel with diff fan settings, and observe what happens to drag factor number.
