Rower machine- 1500m ?

BrianSharpe wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Time to get a new coach. Absolutely no one your weight should be using a rowing machine on a Damper of 10. Period!

Why?

That is the biggest mistake of new rowers (and trainers that don't understand rowing at all). I've rowed for four years and competed for three. It's like saying do an entire bike race in first gear. The post above (by anothermfpuser) is a good explanation of damper (not resistance) but even Olympic Hwt men only row around a damper of 5 or so. The damper is supposed to replicate the feel of rowing through water. Higher dampers like 10 is like telling the machine you're a 300 lb, 6 foot 6 man and replicating the drag in the water, certainly not a 64 kg female.

My indoor "club" has many, many indoor WR holder females (including the one that just put in a 6:21, which is just absolutely absurd 2K time this past year, shattering the old women's WR). Trust me, no experienced rowers use a DF of 10 unless they are doing very short sprints (like 500m or less) and no woman that is 64 kg should ever, ever use a 10 DF unless they want to injure themselves. I see their training and also their DFs on logs all the time. Even Olena (the WR holder I just mentioned) wouldn't be doing 1500m rows at a Damper of 10 and she's over 6 ft and much larger than the OP.

It's a pet peeve of all experienced rowers, walking into gyms where the damper is always on 10 and some smaller person is getting off of it. I see your Ironman picture. Cycling is the best comparison. You don't bike a road race on the same gear, that's absurd. Same with Damper settings. It's the same Watts over time regardless of if it's a One Damper or a 10. You have to speed the chain up and the SPM (strokes per minute) on lower drags. You also have to speed the drive (drive speed, not damper is where true power comes from).

Over high dampers lead to sloppy form, curled backs (like a deadlift, you do not want a curled back rowing) and loading of the spine, leading to serious injury. This is the same as asking a lifter to use too high of a weight and do an AMRAP (as many reps as possible) workout with stellar form. It shouldn't be asked because it can't be done safely.

The above posters (@MikePfirrman and @anothermfpuser) have given good advice on damper setting. Women should be setting the damper somewhere in the 3-4 range for sprint pieces - even elite women rowers do this - men a little higher. No one who knows what they're doing uses a damper setting of 10, except for the occasional very specialized technical drill. As Mike said, seeing the damper on 10 is usually a dead giveaway that the person knows little about rowing.

On your central question, how reasonable is 7:00 for 1.5K . . . it should be achievable for most, and easily achievable for many . . . not on day one, but with some reasonable technical coaching and some conditioning. (It might be a challenging ultimate goal for someone very small, extremely light, elderly or child, weak for some reason, some adaptive rowers (physically handicapped, to use an outdated term, to the point of needing specialized equipment or modifications of the stroke in order to row), or disabled in some way.

OP, within what time scale does your instructor think you should be able to achieve 7:00? Your next row? Next month? "Someday"? That may determine your best strategy. If you're supposed to get there right away, and your instructor wants you to get there just by going at it harder . . . get a new instructor. (That would be a good idea anyway, because he's teaching an exercise modality he doesn't understand. If nothing else, both "damper on 10" and the fact that it's 1.5K (no one rowing-knowledgeable uses 1.5K sprints as a normal benchmark distance) tell us that he doesn't know enough about rowing to be teaching it.)

Adults do 1K or 2K sprints. (Masters - which just means older - athletes sometimes race 1K distances, more often on water than machines, as do juniors (high school and younger). Standard adult sprints are 2K, water and machine.) Collegiate rowers also do some 6K rowing machine testing, and others may test 5K or 6K. (Occasionally people row marathons, half marathons or 10Ks, but those aren't sprints, by definition.)

If you want to know a range of paces for 2K, the most comparable distance to your 1.5K, there's a rankings database for machine rowing at https://log.concept2.com/rankings. You can put in your age range, weight class and sex, and see how long it takes women your age to row 2K. If you want to equate that to your 1.5K, use the pace calculator (https://log.concept2.com/rankings) to figure out your current split (minutes per 500 , which is 2:20) and the equivalent 2K time (which would be 9:20 - note that 2K is a bit more difficult than 1.5, so you'd expect to get a slightly faster best split (lower number) at 1.5K vs. 2K, but not a huge lot better.

I don't know how old you are, but for the women 19-29 female all weights category, 9:20 would be toward the bottom: More than 75% of those reporting report a faster time. That's my basis for believing you can get 7:00 for 1.5K. (Older would be slower, in general, but I could do it pretty handily - I'm not well-trained now, and would be breathing hard when I got done, but it wouldn't be a huuuuge challenge, as 62-year-old lightweight. I'm guessing, but at max effort, I could probably do 1.5K in something like 6:30 or a bit slower if I just ran downstairs now, warmed up, and tried to kick one out at my best current pace. I'm not fast - my best times still have around 25% of those my age who're reporting coming out faster than me.)

There are 3 main paths you could take to getting a faster time (or you can combine them): 1) Cardiovascular (CV) fitness improvement (including endurance as well as peak capabilities), 2) strength improvement, and 3) technical improvement. CV and strength improvement are certainly things you can work on, but they're inherently slower; technical improvement takes intelligent training but potentially can give you some quicker improvements, especially if you're pretty new at this. I'm skeptical that your instructor will give you the tools you need to make technical improvement.

I'm going to suggest a few technical things, even though the idea of coaching via forum post is freakin' ludicrous.

1. Watch the Concept 2 beginner video (and the other videos at https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/technique-videos). Work on the things they suggest. If you can, get someone to take a little video of you rowing, and compare it to what you see there.

2. Practice at a low strokes per minute rating (mid to high teens at first) to get better technically as per the videos. Slow, steady practice is the foundation of improving CV fitness, too, so you're getting two birds with one stone. Don't bother to go above the mid-20s unless you're doing timed racing. (Even racing, you may find you can hold a faster split at a lower stroke rating, if your technique breaks down at higher spm rating, as it does for many beginners). Focus on technically correct strokes that are strong - watch the split (immediate (not average) estimated time per 500m) on the monitor, try to make it be a smaller number (faster) by making technical improvements.

3. Some of your best bets, in my experience, for knocking some seconds off your split:

A. Getting the legs-body-arms on the drive, arms-body-legs on the recovery sequences correct, as per the videos. You're trying to suspend your body weight between the foot stretchers and the handle, and maximize the total length of time each body part contributes to the time, but still have enough overlap/continuity between them that you don't lose the suspension. "Suspend" means you will feel your butt unweight slightly from the seat - not come all the way off, but "unsquish" a little as the handle and your feet take the majority of the force. On a Concept 2 rower, the force curve display is a help (push the display button til you get the graph with Kg on the vertical axis). On each stroke, you want to see a smooth "hill" shape, possibly with the peak shifted a bit to the left, but smooth up to the peak, and smooth back down. A taller hill with steep slopes is a good thing, though the right-hand side can be a little more gradual slope (you don't want just an ultra-steep mountain, either). Any dips within the hill imply a lack of smooth transition from one body part to another.

B. You'll want to be starting the drive with shins at or near vertical. If your heels come up a little at this point, be sure to press down your heels as the very first thing. I can usually knock a couple of seconds off my split by focusing back on this.

C. Once you can feel that "suspension" thing at the catch (beginning of the leg push), focus on pushing harder - smoothly, but add leg strength almost if you were pushing to jump horizontally - i.e., don't just move up and down the slide, use power at the start. Don't so much think of that power as causing your legs to unbend, but as propelling the handle (and your still forward-swung body and straight arms) as you start to move your body up the slide. This will be easier to feel if you work at a stroke rate as low as 14-16 and focus on each individual stroke for a while.

D. After the leg power, use the body swing and arms to continue accelerating the handle, which should be traveling at a level angle out of the flywheel (not upward or downward). For most women, this will usually mean that when the handle approaches your body, it's somewhere around the level of the lower band of your bra. The arms can even add a little snap or oomph at the very end. (Let your elbows relax naturally out the the side, rather than trying to keep them unnaturally tight to your torso.)

E. Don't try for too much body lean backwards. Keep it relaxed and natural. If you lose suspension between feet/handle, there's no point in more layback. If your layback keeps you from doing the next item below, either, then it's too much layback. (Some instructors who don't know what they're doing will encourage too much layback for the rower's physical development level.)

F. This next piece is my very best "hack" for improving split at no great energy cost: When you finish the drive - the power part of the stroke - smoothly and quickly send the handle away from your body with your hands/arms and swing forward from your hip socket. You want to feel like that first arms + body part of the recovery goes at about the same speed the body and arms were moving at the end of the drive, but in the opposite direction. Quick hands away keeps the flywheel spinning freely, and will give most people a split improvement. Then, relax your knees and let the slope of the rail plus the flywheel action bring you back up for the next catch - this is your mini-vacation - don't invest effort in pulling yourself back up the slide with your legs. Rushing back up the slide is a total waste of energy. Just relax after the body swing, and it will "just happen". A way to work on this is to not strap your feet in, just put them on the footstretchers. You should be able to row almost as fast (split wise) with your feet out, as with them strapped in. You spend more time on the recovery (in total) than on the drive.

That's what I've got, for suggestions.

Except the one I'd repeat: Get a new instructor, if you want to do rowing.

Best wishes for improving your 1.5K time!

Sauleeh wrote: »

Thank you so so much for all of this information. I just find the row very difficult so I just run on the treadmill instead. Also to answer the question how quickly he wants me to improve is that every time I get on the machine I need to at least improve by a second but I get so out of breath I need to stop to drink water and continue. It is also at the end of my program and I'm pretty tired so I just find running easier 1500m in 10 mins

While not directly related to the rowing...does your trainer really expect that you will be faster every single time you row-no matter what? That’s not a realistic expectation.