rowing – Live Hard

The Joy Of 20 Rep Squats (and other painful experiences worth having)

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 12:29:52 +0000

20-rep squats – or ‘widowmakers’, as they’re sometimes known – are one of the more intense experiences you can have inside a gym. In case you’re unfamiliar, the protocol goes like this:

1. Load a weight that you should only be able to get for about 10 proper reps onto a barbell.

2. Take it out of the rack.

3. Don’t put it back until you’ve done 20 reps.

‘Resting’, albeit with the bar on your back, is fine, and necessary. If you’ve chosen the weight correctly, a good tempo to aim for might be a breath after every rep for the first 5-10, two or three breathes between reps 10-15, and then as many as it takes to get the last five up.

Also, it is going to feel awful. The trick is, the weight isn’t actually that heavy: if you’ve been realistic about your 10RM, you always ‘can’ get another rep. The problem is that you have to do the last few in a state of severe oxygen deprivation, when the bar is digging into your traps and the back of your throat tastes like blood.

They’re extremely worth doing. And they’re not even the worst thing I’ve ever done in the name of exercise.

When you first start training, workouts tends to slot into two categories: they’re either okay, or they suck. But, just as the Sami people of Northern Europe have 50 words for snow (the situation with Inuit languages is more complicated), training for a while allows more subtle gradations, based on physical sensations that are actually pretty different when you stop and think about it. A one-rep max deadlift, for instance, isn’t actually that unpleasant to do, even when you start to go heavy: the real strain comes mentally, in the minutes it takes you to gear up for it and the weeks of heavy workouts you do in preparation. At the other end of the spectrum, running a half marathon is basically one long session of pain management, running at the edge of your limits for a couple of hours while your lungs and legs take it in turns to protest. Those differences are obvious, but it gets much more nuanced: a 500m all-out row, for instance, feels completely different to a 2k, even though the difference in time is only about five minutes – the former is a burst of energy followed by the abrupt horror of trying to hang on, while the latter demands (arguably) more discipline in the face of mounting pain and temptation to stop. A set of cycle Tabatas sucks the life out of you in a completely different way from half a dozen 400m sprints, an a true all-out minute on the AirDyne is worse than almost anything else you can do in a gym. Even 20-rep squats can be sub-divided: a bodybuilder-style set, done strict and to tempo, will cause excruciating lactic acid buildup in your quads and hamstrings, while a widowmaker set (done heavier, but slower overall) is arguably worse on your lungs than your legs.

Why is this important? Two reasons:

Firstly: as I’ve mentioned before, doing more exercise is largely about finding a style of exercise you like. I, for instance, think I can probably lift pretty heavy because I’ll tolerate the sensations of lifting heavy – being crushed under a bar, smoked by one really nasty lift – much better than sustained cardio effort. I will haul a weight off the floor for a single rep that would make my bodybuilder friends walk away from the bar, but if they made me do their arms session for even one day I would very probably cry. I will destroy myself to beat my fellow human beings in a 400m sprint or a dip contest, but as soon as isometric holds are introduced in a yoga class, I’ll start looking for the door. None of us is worse or better: we’ve just found things we like (or don’t dislike) as much as some other things. I’ll say it again: it’s worth experimenting with different forms of exercise. There might be one you can suffer just hard enough to be amazing at.

Secondly: Every different difficult, painful thing you do is going to make you more prepared for other difficult, painful things. I can’t put this any better than Mark Rippetoe has, so I’ll just quote him:

“Intentionally placing yourself in the position of having to complete a task when you don’t know if you can is the single best way of preparing to be in that position unintentionally.”

But I’ll go Mr Rippetoe one further. Intentionally doing lots of different tasks that require different sorts of mental and physical strain is, I’d argue, the best way of preparing yourself for almost anything else. Writing a book or puts you under a different sort of strain from planning a wedding, and they’re both very different (in duration, intensity and mindset) from having a job interview. Experience of different types of stressors can help you deal with anything from one very brief but incredibly stressful experience (a speech at a conference, say) to a protracted, seemingly-endless project at work. Different sorts of exercise demand different approaches to planning, and different challenges demand a different mindset. And it all helps. So: take on a new challenge today, and realise that you’re laying the foundations for future success.

Homework: Watch this video of Ed Corney hitting some heavy-ass squats with Arnold (“Three more, no maddah what!”), and then go hit a 500m row, 400m sprint, 20RM, or whatever other physical challenge makes you feel the most queasy at the prospect. Times and weights in the comments, please.

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Rowing workouts that (don’t) suck

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 09:12:22 +0000

I probably spend too much time thinking about rowing.

Last year I set my gym-sights on (and barely managed) a 7-minute 2k row, which is considered the minimum acceptable standard among the fine men and women of Gym Jones. This year I’ve been hitting different distances, and managed a borderline-acceptable 10k time (39:46), and an actually-pretty-decent-for-my-weight 500m PB (1:28.6). I’m currently signed up to Concept 2’s Million-Metre Club, and I’m about twenty percent of the way through. I also talk to my wife, half of the trainers at my gym, a few of the people at work, and a bunch of people on Twitter, about stroke rates and damper settings and pacing strategies and split times, basically all the time.

Like I say, I think about it a lot.

The plus side of this is that I also acquire a lot of rowing workouts: whenever someone sends me a new one, I feel honour-bound to try it out, but trying a slightly new ‘thing’ is more fun than doing a 2k/5k/10k every time you crank up the flywheel. With a decent selection of different distances and times to improve on, there’s always something to beat.

So: here’s a selection. The good thing about rowing, as opposed to running, is that there’s basically no adaptation period needed: you aren’t going to get shinsplints or impact injuries by doing too much, too soon. That said, the pacing strategies suggested here are mostly on the ‘hard’ side of things, so if you’re new to rowing/the gym/exercise, downscale them to something that lets you get a decent amount of metres in without blowing yourself out of the water in the first 60 seconds. Real unpleasantness takes time.

#1 Dean Martin

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink.’ Dean Martin once said. ‘When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” Well, Deano, I drink: and I like doing this workout first thing in the morning, because – unless you get fired or hit by a car or something – it is definitely the worst thing that will happen to you all day. Thanks to the guys of Gym Jones for this: the stupid name is all me, though.

Row 150m in 30 seconds.
‘Rest’ for 90 seconds, but do 10 press-ups and 5 goblet squats (I’d suggest a 24kg dumbbell) during the rest.
Row 151m in 30 seconds. Rest/pressup/squat again, then row 152m, and so on…until you can’t get the required metres.

The ‘strict’ version of this requires that you just do more metres in each interval, which takes concentration and gets bad quickly if you accidentally hit a 156 early thanks to overzealous pulling. If you’re unused to pacing, just aim to hit the required, and gut it out through at least 15 rounds – if you’re very light or deconditioned, start at 140.

#2 Tabatas

Most people, as previously discussed, get Tabatas completely wrong: doing 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, for 8 rounds, is not a Tabata, however much you might wish it was. However, they work pretty well in any format where you can thrash yourself to death for 20 seconds and then barely recover. Advantage: rowing.

Row all-out for 20 seconds.
‘Rest’ for 10 seconds.
Repeat 8 times.

There are two ways to do this: either ‘pace’ it by aiming for a minimum distance per interval (100m is sensible), or just go all-out, every single time. They’re both pretty bad.

#3 The Descent

This comes via the excellent George Mayhew, who is almost definitely a better rower than me. I’ve called it The Descent because, much like the 2005 film, it starts out pleasantly enough, gets very nasty surprisingly quickly and ends in absolute horror. Here goes:

Row 500m in 2:00m
Rest for 2 minutes.
Row 500m in 1:58. Rest 2 min. Keep going, dropping by 2 seconds each interval: 1:56, 1:54…until you can’t make the cutoff. Getting into the 1:40s is a good target – the round of 1:34 is impressive stuff.

#4 The Descent 2

Michael Blevins suggested this one: it’s very much like The Descent, except that it turns bad faster and leaves you more broken.

Row 500m in 2:00m
‘Rest’ for 2 minutes – including 5 pressups.
Row 500m in 1:58. Rest 2 min, including 10 pressups.
Keep going, dropping by 2 seconds each interval: 1:56 + 15 pressups, 1:54 + 20 pressups…until you can’t make the cutoff. If you make it to round 7, you’ll have done 105 pressups. Keep going.

This is also a good test of balance: if you’re struggling to finish the pressups before the rowing gets hard, you probably need to do more pressups – and vice versa.

#5 Death by 500

Over to George again: ‘This is a rowing workout the Scarletts rugby squad have used. I managed 12 rounds at sub 1:42, but I had that horrid feeling for about three hours afterwards.’ Hoorah!

Row 500m in under 1:42
Rest 2 minutes
Do as many rounds as possible.

#6 The 2K Predictor

‘Here’s the secret,’ says Pieter Vodden, who sent this my way. ‘The average pace you can hold for these intervals will be what you can hang onto for a 2k. Translation: if you want to hit a sub-7 2k, you need to hold a 1:45. It’s no fun.

Row 500m
Rest 1 minute
Repeat 10 times

#7 Stairway To Heaven

George again: ‘This is a great one. You go at your 2000m row PB pace. Crossfit do a version of this but they peak at 1000m. This peaks at 1250m and that makes all the difference. I believe this is a proper session for rowers, rather than a rugby one. The toughest rounds mentally are 6 and 7.’ Solid.

1: Row 250M (3 min. rest);
2: Row 500M (3 min rests);
3: Row 750M (3 min rest);
4: Row 1000M (3 min rest);
5: Row 1250M (3 min rest);
6: Row 1000M (3 min rest);
7: Row 750M (3 min rest);
8: Row 500M (3 min rests);
9: Row 250M (3 min. rest);
Do it all at your target 2k pace.

#8 The Count

If you want a nice long session that’s not boring and forces you concentrate on pacing, this is the answer. ‘This is a proper rowing workout,’ says George. ‘By which I mean: one by those who actually row in a boat.’ If it’s good enough for them…

10 min row to warm up

Then:
6000m row completed in 500m continuous blocks. Pacing is done by strokes per minute (s/m). Start @ 18s/m for 1st 500m. Then increase pace by 2s/m every 500m to 28s/m, then go back down to 18s/m. Last 500 is done @ 20s/m. Pace stays between 2:00 and 1:50.

0-500m @ 18s/m
500m-1000m @ 20s/m
1000m-1500m @ 22s/m
1500m-2000m @ 24s/m
2000m-2500m @ 26s/m
2500m-3000m @ 28s/m
3000m-3500m @ 26s/m
3500m-4000m @ 24s/m
4000m-4500m @ 22s/m
4500m-5000m @ 20s/m
5000m-5500m @ 18s/m
5500m-6000m @ 20s/m

Cool down row

‘It’s a different experience rowing to strokes per minute rather than the 500m pace indicator,’ says George. ‘You end up pulling a lot harder. The key is to stick rigidly to the given pace.’

#8 Up To Eleven

Okay, best-for-last time. George again: ‘I really like this as you get a sense of how good you are on the rower. This is a proper rowing workout and there’s quite a lot of talk about it on the rowing forums. I did 10:54. My advice is to sit down with a pen and paper first and work out pacing. To get under 11 mins you have to be going quicker than 1:45 for all of it.’

1000m followed by 3min rest +
750m followed by 2:30min rest +
500m followed by 2min rest +
250m followed by 2min rest +
750m finish. Record total row time.

Total Time

World Class

<10.00

Excellent

10.00 – 10.30

Very Good

10.30 – 11.00

BANG. Add those to your regular rows, and you’ll be hitting new PBs in no time. Hit me up on Twitter: I’ll be happy to congratulate you.

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Gold medal motivation: Olympic biographies you probably should have read by now

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 11:52:25 +0000

Olympic memoirs, with the greatest of respect to Michael Phelps and Jane Torvill, are usually not very good. Typically cranked out as fast as possible to cash in on the post-event high, they’re usually more feelgood fluff than hardcore info: more about childhood reminiscing and it-was-everything-I-dreamed-of platitudes than sets, reps, or the grim reality of 5am training sessions. But when an elite athlete really wants to tell their story, there are few things better – they’re an insight into a world few people will ever have the chance to experience, and into the time, grit, dedication and, er, luck, it takes to become the unquestioned best in the world at something. The books below are like that – and reading them will improve your life.

Assault On Lake Casitas

Brad Alan Lewis

It’s possible you’ve never heard of rower-turned-prolific-author Lewis, but that needs to change. Firstly, he took the hardest of all possible routes to the Olympics – after falling short in the single scull trials and being passed over in selection for the doubles, he did everything from training alone to scrounging his own boat en route to the 1984 finals. Secondly, he’s an incredibly thoughtful, honest writer – it’s fairly tricky to get across the physical and psychological horrors of rowing a legitimate all-out 2k via words on a page, but he somehow manages it. And thirdly, there’s a wealth of training advice here, on everything from sets and reps to psychology and ‘shadow rowing.’ Once you’re done with this one, you’ll want to move onto Wanted: Rowing Coach, and Lido For Time, Lewis’ annotated book of pre-Olympic workouts – they’re both inspiring reading, and the second one even has a recipe for waffles.

It’s true, it’s true

Kurt Angle

Yes, really. You might know Kurt Angle as the star-spangled-singlet-wearing WWE star who once attacked Vince McMahon with a milk cannon – or you may just not know him at all – but pre-professional wrestling, Angle was a legitimate monster on the mat, ultimately winning Olympic gold with two fractured cervical vertebrae and a pair of herniated discs in his neck. His book’s worth reading for the chapter on his Olympic training alone, including his leg workouts ‘I’d take 80lb dumbbells, squat down and jump up as high as I could, 50 to 100 times,’ his training under Dan Gable – he once wrestled one ‘match’ that lasted 70 minutes – and the mornings he’d do hill sprints carrying his manager. Yes, he occasionally comes across as arrogant – especially in the second half of the book – but the way he applied the same Olympian work ethic to succeeding in the WWE is an object lesson in competence spanning fields. He also trained at Foxcatcher with Dave and Mark Schultz, and his thoughts on them are worth your time.

Open

Andre Agassi

Fine: Agassi isn’t really most famous for his Olympic gold, even though he took it as part of the impossibly-rare career ‘golden slam’ – winning it alongside all four major opens, a feat which only Nadal has matched among the men’s field. But you should read his book anyway, because it’s a terrifying account of just what it takes to succeed at that level, from hitting 1,000 balls every morning under the watchful eye of an obsessive father, via the ultra-competitive environment of a teen tennis academy, to the reinvention via strength and conditioning that it takes to succeed on the main tour. Even if tennis does nothing for you, the pain and perseverance on display in this book ought to give you a newfound respect for its athletes – and the combination of strategy, psychology, nutrition, conditioning and sheer, awful repetition it takes to succeed might give you pause next time you see what you think is an overpaid athlete throwing a strop. Oh, and there’s a lesson in here for Black Swan fans and pushy, too: all of Agassi’s siblings underwent similar training, and only Agassi made it – after nearly dropping out of tennis. Success is never guaranteed.

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Antifragile Fitness: why you should fast more, sprint less…and do press-ups all the time

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 08:34:51 +0000

Life is tough, and also unpredictable. Nicholas Taleb has made a literary career out of pointing this out – after making at least two fortunes betting on it as a risk analyst. To massively oversimplify the theory he puts forward in his bestseller The Black Swan, extremely rare events – like 9/11, the 2008 stock market crash and the success of Facebook – are impossible to predict, no matter how much anyone says otherwise after the event. The only logical response, Taleb argues in his most recent book, is aiming to become ‘Antifragile’ – to design your lifestyle so that you’ll benefit from chaos and volatility. This isn’t the same as just being resilient in the face of bad things happening: it’s about becoming stronger because of them.

Examples? Sure thing. In mythology, for instance, the Phoenix is robust – it dies, but comes back unchanged. The Hydra is Antifragile – chop off its head, and it grows two more. Become an entrepreneur instead of working for a large, unwieldy company, Taleb says, and you’re like the Hydra – more able to adapt and change when bad things happen. Chase after status, and you’re at the mercy of trends – develop social capital, and you’ll be well-prepared for most problems. When chaos comes, you’ll adapt better than most, and end up ahead.

It’s sensible thinking, and the book’s worth reading. But how does this relate to your training plan?

Taleb does make some suggestions about fitness in his book – he does some powerlifting, and suggests switching between diets on a near-daily basis – but, with respect to him, it’s not really his area of expertise. And it’s true to say that the point of any sort of training plan is to take advantage of the human body’s natural antifragility, since adapting to the stress of lifting weights or running is how your body gets stronger. But can you go further? Yes, you can.

Here’s the thing: it can actually be quite difficult to plan to introduce some chaos into your workout, but by embracing it when it happens you can better prepare yourself for the randomness of life: now and in the future. Unless you’re a professional sportsperson or you’re training for a competition, you want your training and nutrition to be sustainable pretty much forever – which means making it adaptable without making it into a completely random mess. Here’s how you do that.

Introduce disorder

Really, this means having a workout that will force your body to adapt. When you start training, this is simple: that’s why P90X and Crossfit get such miraculous results in the early going. As you get fitter, it’s harder to introduce the right kind of stress to your body – which means keeping track of your gym numbers, and aiming to improve them.

Think upside vs downside

Taleb’s books are all about this. If your investment strategy makes a steady stream of income but can see you lose all your money in an unpredictable (but likely) random event, that’s a lot of downside. If it minimises risk while giving you the chance of making a fortune, that’s a lot of upside. Exercise is the same: every move or training protocol you can pick has risks and rewards. If rowing and sprinting will both get you to the bodyfat percentage you want, is it worth risking a blown hamstring with the latter? If snatches will make you 10% more explosive than a similar frequency of trap-bar jumps but could wreck your shoulders, which do you do? For non-athletes, the answer is almost always to pick the exercise that will get the most results with the least possible risk of injury.

Throw things out

The Romans, Taleb notes, called this via negativa. Yes, having a cable-cross is nice, but do you really need it when you can get similar results with a set of go-anywhere gymnastics rings? Strip out the unnecessary from your training plan and you’ll have more time to concentrate on the important. If in doubt, consider Gym Jones’ classic SMMF – 1,000 lunges, or 100 handstand pressups, done over an hour or so. Simple and nasty.

Add to your workout ‘quiver’

If you’re lost without the gym’s only E-Z bar, workout time is always going to be frustrating. Conversely, if you can train with whatever’s to hand then you’ll never have to wait for kit – and your body will benefit from the variety. Bare minimum, you should aim to learn, by heart, a workout you can do with no kit at all, then ones that use a single piece of kit: a pull up bar, a barbell, some dumbbells, and a TRX…and expand from there. Nobody likes the guy curling in the squat rack, but if you have six different leg workouts in the clip, you won’t have to deal with him.

Train through the day

Ignore the false dichotomy between ‘gym time’ and the rest of your day – activity is activity. Pavel calls it Greasing The Groove, while anyone preparing for the SEAL’s notorious Hell Week knows the value of doing dozens of pressups, spaced out through the day. Make doing a set of pull ups, pressups or squats during downtime instinctive, and you’ll increase your work capacity with barely any effort.

Learn to ‘fast’

Eating six small meals a day works great – right up until life makes it impossible. Learn when your body does (and doesn’t) need fuel, and a day without tupperware won’t send you into a panic. The rule of thumb? More carbs around training sessions, less on rest days, and no meltdowns if you have to skip a meal entirely. Part of the benefit of fasting is that you’ll learn that it’s okay to be a bit hungry. A green tea will be fine. Maybe have an apple.

Learn to cook

Obvious, but underrated. Crucially, learn to cook meals that use leftovers, different cuts of meat, and things that are available in your local 24-hour garage – no cardamom pods required. Learning six ways to make eggs and leftovers palatable is more important than perfecting a coq au vin, and easier. Start here.

Plan, but be adaptable

This is what it all comes down to. Funnily enough, most athletes’ training plans are very ‘fragile’ – if your plan relies on six training days a week, a tailored nutrition programme and 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep and you aren’t a paid professional athlete, you are probably going to fuck up somewhere. Strip it back to the basics: three hard sessions a week, more walks to the shops and pressups whenever you’re at a loose end, your workout plan should be near-bulletproof.

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