Fast track training

[bstorey]

Ridiculously out of shape, no training for 8 years but must be in peak form for October (Master's Charles eight). Unfortunately only have 30-40 minutes/day, 5 days a week to train because of work/children/wife. Any suggestions? After 10 days I've finally cracked 7 minutes for 2k just doing 4 x 2k peices on the erg at various rates/intensities but have no plan. Back in the day with four hours a day training it was easy but I'm thinking with less time to train it might be better to do some of this interval type of stuff. Can you just go hard pieces every day and hope for the best?

Ben
Kennebecasis Rowing Club

[iwantmorepies]

Maybe. Throw some weight circuits in there too?

[caustic]

Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.

Intervals: Yes. 20s, minutes on, minutes off, 500m pieces, do 'em

Weights: Critical. Big exercises, lower reps, focus on POWER. Due to time constraints, keep it simple - squats, deadlifts, benches. 5x5 each, takes about 30 minutes. Mix it up a bit by swapping out deadlifts with rows, or benches with pullups. Keep the squats all the time. It's great lifting motion.

Endurance: Depends. If you want to test, test. But don't ball out with 80% max HR every day for 4 months. You're gonna destroy your body, not build it up. Do recovery rows, with HR under 65%, taking it nice and easy. For your tests, go all out, but take the next day easy.

Recovery - every 4 weeks, take a week where you do everything at 1/2 intensity. Let your body fully recover. Focus on technique, not on pushing the envelope. Look for perfection.

[oxygendebt]

Yeah I have a suggestion. Start going to bed at 10 and getting up at 5. You'll have a lot more time to train in the AM.

Get a head race training plan from TBFit or one of the other online coaching programs, where you can plug in your current conditioning #s. Would strongly suggest you use now to 6/30 to build a conditioning base, then jump into a 12-14wk race prep program.

[Almostflipped]

No experience implementing that type of training. Best I have are these two links just to provide some sort of framework, but they are aimed at 2k. They are generic templates and seem to only have 4 days of training a week. Most intervals are quite short and volume is low.......although the second link has a fair bit of UT3 rowing included (I thought UT3 was simply being alive).

http://concept2.co.uk/training/fast_tra ... ulate=true

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/olympic ... amme-41421

Probably best off googling for training templates from other sports and seeing if you can adapt them. Alternatively I would agree that giving Bohrer a call may be worthwhile or even looking to see if any Crossfit stuff happens in your area. I get the impression their stuff would fit your time constraints and erging is part of their training.

[abr]

I have found that erging about 6 times 5 minutes on, 1 minute off, with the "on" pace 2-3 seconds per 500m slower than 6k test pace, several times per week, is an efficient way to maintain fitness when I have either not had enough time for longer workouts, or just refused to submit to the boredom of longer, slower erg workouts. Staying just on the slow side of the lactate threshold seems to allow fairly intense work while also allowing very quick recovery from the workout. This kind of training is suggested by multiple sources. I think something like it was recommended by Tom Bohrer in his Rowing News column several years ago, specifically for athletes with severe time constraints.

You're trying not just to maintain fitness, but to regain it, so I'm not sure how this would work for you. A tricky part would be selecting and adapting pace targets as your fitness improves. Access to lactate testing would probably help.

[bstorey]

Yeah I have a suggestion. Start going to bed at 10 and getting up at 5. You'll have a lot more time to train in the AM.

Yeah, I don't see that happening. But the other suggestions all seem pretty good. That C2 website actually had almost exactly what I was looking for in terms of the thresholds, etc. Thanks.

I just couldn't believe how out of shape you can get doing nothing. Well, it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise I suppose, but the first day I had to bail after a very, very near puking incident about 12 minutes into a "warmup" at 1:55 splits. It's clear in a not too distant memory pulling 1:41 for forty minutes about XX pounds lighter!

Ben

[KitD]

This is pretty similar to my regular training allowance.

I find a combination of :
1. 10k @ rate 20 for endurance, aiming to maximise distance while maintaining an even split. This will end up being near AT.
2. N x 1k intervals with 3mins rest. Adjust N to fit your growing fitness levels. Don't go beserk, but keep good technique and aim to have splits even across all intervals.

works well for me. But I would also add some weights and cross-training (I run quite alot). You have quite a lot of time to go which is good, but you don't have time for UT2s etc, so each session has to be pretty hard. There's a section about preparation with limited time in "Rowing Faster" btw which talks about all of this.

[bstorey]

There's a section about preparation with limited time in "Rowing Faster" btw which talks about all of this.

That's funny actually, Volker is going to be rowing with us at the Charles. I'd ask him but he'd just tell me to get up at 5 in the morning and I don't want him to know a) how bad shape I'm in or b) that I don't have his book. Things are looking up though, I think I'm more or less doing a combination of what has been suggested. 10k three times a week and a mix of 500, 1000 and 2000 peices the other days. Not organized enough to get weights going yet. Thanks all for the suggestions.

[Stewie Griffin Should Cox]

Having made a couple of these naught to race returns I would have one tip.

If on any one day your program say do X and you get on the erg and its just not there, not happening and the tank feels empty.
Then get off, shower and come back another day.

Its not being soft....weak, its just being realistic and responsive to the body's signals.

[singlesculler]

After not being able to row for about a year because of my back, and finishing grad school, I finally got going again in my 1x about 3 times/week starting in mid March. I'd say it wasn't till about this past week that i was finally able to start pulling decent splits again. so i think it takes about 2 months to get going.

[caustic]

After not being able to row for about a year because of my back, and finishing grad school, I finally got going again in my 1x about 3 times/week starting in mid March. I'd say it wasn't till about this past week that i was finally able to start pulling decent splits again. so i think it takes about 2 months to get going.

Crap; just when I think I'm getting faster, now I gotta get passed by you on the water again!

[bstorey]

A couple of people asked me for feedback on the high intensity training thing so I figured I'd put it here to avoid writing it all down multiple times. I ended up doing basically a mixture of what everyone suggested -- 45 minutes a day 5-6 days a week made up of short hard pieces 500 to 2km in length about 80% of the time. Ten minute warmup and then something like 6 x 1k one day and 4 x 2k the next and once or twice a week a continuous steady state. Whatever I did, just dropped the splits by 1 second/500m every 1-2 weeks. Didn't do any weights, did it mostly on the erg and about 1/3 on the water with the same workout plan

Unfortunately I don't have much enlightening to say. The best advice was from SGSC which was to not be afraid to can a workout if it wasn't there. This happened a few times and it was nice to have the "bail workout" in the training arsenal. Hard to say if it was "better" or not as I had nothing to compare it with but I steadily improved workout splits and lost about 10 pounds. It stands to reason your going to improve faster pulling harder but It was definitely more painful than long pieces but way less tedious. Most importantly, we nipped a couple of old rivals in the Danish-American crew and ended up 2nd in the 40+ eight. Nobody was quite sure whether or not the wheels were going to fall off halfway through and somehow they didn't. Thanks for the tips everyone and will hopefully be back next year younger and faster!

Ben Storey
Kennebecasis Rowing Club