I probably spend too much time thinking about rowing.<\/p>\n
Last year I set my gym-sights on (and barely managed) a 7-minute 2k row, which is\u00a0considered 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n
Like I say, I think about it a lot.<\/p>\n
#1 Dean Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n
The ‘strict’ version of this requires that you just do more\u00a0<\/em>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 \u2013 if you’re very light or deconditioned, start at 140.<\/p>\n
#2 Tabatas<\/strong><\/p>\n
Most people, as previously discussed<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
#3 The Descent<\/strong><\/p>\n
#4 The Descent 2<\/b><\/p>\n
Michael Blevins <\/a>suggested this one: it’s\u00a0very much like The Descent, except that it turns bad faster and leaves you more broken.<\/p>\n
This is\u00a0also a good test of balance: if\u00a0you’re struggling to finish the pressups before the rowing gets hard, you probably need to do more pressups \u2013 and vice versa.<\/p>\n
#5 Death by 500<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
#6 The 2K Predictor<\/b><\/p>\n
‘Here’s the secret,’ says Pieter Vodden<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n
#7 Stairway To Heaven<\/b><\/p>\n
#8 The Count<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\u2026<\/p>\n
10 min row to warm up<\/p>\n
Then:
\n6000m row completed in 500m continuous blocks.\u00a0 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<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n
0-500m @ 18s\/m
\n500m-1000m @ 20s\/m
\n1000m-1500m @ 22s\/m
\n1500m-2000m @ 24s\/m
\n2000m-2500m @ 26s\/m
\n2500m-3000m @ 28s\/m
\n3000m-3500m @ 26s\/m
\n3500m-4000m @ 24s\/m
\n4000m-4500m @ 22s\/m
\n4500m-5000m @ 20s\/m
\n5000m-5500m @ 18s\/m
\n5500m-6000m @ 20s\/m<\/p>\n
Cool down row<\/p>\n
‘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.’<\/p>\n
#8 Up To Eleven<\/strong><\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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\u00a0considered 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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[143,98,144],"series":[],"episode_featured_image":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/concept-2-rower-black-web-2_e_u.jpg","episode_player_image":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":false,"audio_player":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/concept-2-rower-black-web-2_e_u.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Dvad-uy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livehard.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}