4,723m in 20:00
With ~ 5 min technical warmup pre, and 8 minute "glass squeegeeing" cooldown post.
HR in low 140s. Easing back into things, after an icky, viral weekend.
Sent from my iPhone
11,432m in 50:01.8 with Xeno
Mixed intervals, increasing length, 24-26, and later 28 spm. HR in the 150 range, and on the last hard pulling 28 spm interval, up to 175.
As Xeno would say, a sweaty shirt, and lots of fun.
HM 21,099m in 1:40:18.9
+ 2m.
Thank you, Sherlock Holmes, @MichelleToy, @rowjohnnyrow, and @chucktherower!How Triggers Create Success | I Go 100
via igo100.ca
Michelle Toy makes a really nice point on her blog, as she preps her way to rowing 100 kilometers on a single day in mid June:
How you can keep yourself going on. Which is not a trivial thing, when you're erging (rowing on a rowing machine) for 1, 2,..., up to 10 hours a day.
She uses hot chocolate (HC).
HC is her pre-rowing ritual:
Whenever I drink the HC (hot chocolate), I know that I will be rowing immediately afterward. Even if I don't feel like exercising – if I drink the HC, the next thing I do automatically is row. It appears that I've created a connection in my mind where the HC triggers the next activity.
The NY Times health section had a recent post that also touched on this. You're more likely to stick with exercise -- surprise, surprise -- when you connect it to a concrete, tangible bennie. Much more so than if doing it for some theoretical or deferred benefit (like not dying as soon decades from now).
The students in tonight's rowing class with Xeno Muller remarked the same thing -- the session "just flew by," filled as it was with Xeno and the rest of us chatting (a little breathlessly) about rowing machines, business, healthcare, and the rest of the universe. Chatting was fun, socializing was fun, getting technique pointers from an Olympian was real fun. All tangible, "stroke the purring lizard and mammalian brain" positive feedback.
HC works pretty well, too.
Why the Concept2 website community is more than just bells and whistles
for many people, future health benefits may just be too abstract and speculative to overcome inertia and take up walking, running, swimming, cycling or working out in the gym. So here is a little secret. What really keeps us devoted exercisers going, even in the face of myriad obstacles, is much more tangible.
via nytimes.com
It was a near thing, choosing a WaterRower over a Concept2 rowing machine. The WR got the nod because it was a good fit inside my home (and instantly available for regular use), operated quietly and soothingly -- and because I had a local community already for support, in Row2go and the Iron Oarsman Rowing Studio.
This article form the NY Times Health section (thanks to @RowfitChicago) highlights why that last intangible -- which doesn't come in the box from either manufacturer -- is key to ongoing exercise consistency. And the Concept2 has a very, very robust community of users supporting other users, both online and off.
I'm new to indoor rowing, but I know that a large proportion of my fellows have never been on the water, and have no intention of ever doing so. Whether they row like myself for fitness, or for competition, or for some mixture of both, they can do so forever on machines that are no closer to a bay than the Eiffel Tower.
Kind of like the vast majority of martial artists: even the most die-hard and serious can profitably study and teach their entire lives without ever actually using a real weapon.
There's a very devoted and vocal segment of rowers who actually, you know, row on the water. And their judgments of ergs is charitable, at best, and a prime driver for innovation amongst erg manufacturers. Re-creating and preparing a rower for the water -- or saying that you are devoted to such -- is the ultimate mark of sweat cred for these companies.
But other forces drive them, too: namely, the large market of rowers uninterested in the water. And maintaining and growing this base needs connecting it to something tangible, and immediately appealing.
Enter the community.
Online, group gym gab group, morning walking group -- it doesn't matter. We're born social creatures and we'll die social creatures, and social proof counts.
Meeting my own weight and BP target goals is grand. Wouldn't be around long if I didn't.
But posting my distance and time stats (and doing a quick comparison to those of others) is almost compulsory -- though they have little to do with the key fitness goals.
Getting a positive call-out from others doing the same thing? Makes my day.
And getting a personal reply from an Olympian in the field, or someone who's rowed across an ocean or a country?
Priceless.
10.3 km in 45:05 - it's good to be back rowing
Had to stretch a bit, going past the 30 minute target. Ratcheting back and forth between "just 2 minutes more" and "just 500 meters more," helped to stagger step up to today's 10,000 meter (arbitrary) goal. A wonderful but dietarily wild weekend with the family in the snow didn't help: lots of carbs, protein, and salt.
Even a little blotto-ness is really noticeable when you go knees to chest for nearly an hour.
Was trying to do a moderate intensity, steady state cardio for half an hour...and ended up adding 7 work intervals of 1-2 minutes each over the baseline stroke rate, for 45 minutes overall. Just like Xeno's 45 minute classes, which are usually based on intervals.
Funny, how things work out.
6793 m in 30 min, 10,006 m in 44:11
About 21 strokes per minute (spm), with a 500 m split time of 2:14 yielded a HR of 120-130-ish. That's my moderate intensity target as a 45 y.o. fart.
Borrowing from the Concept2 workout booklet, went for 30 minutes, and rowed hard for 10 strokes every 5 minutes (at about 31 spm, with a 1:40 split, HR in the low 160s briefly, and back down to 130 within 2 minutes). That works out to almost exactly a 10% hard interval workout by time, a basic starting recommendation when trying interval training.
It certainly kept things interesting. So did the puppies needing to go out 15 minutes into the previous workout -- false alarm! And when back inside, the monitor had reset to zero.
But starting over was a pleasure with my new WaterRower. On the We-Row forum, one member put it beautifully:
In order to move [a] boat faster, you must pull the oar throught the water faster than the water is moving past you...Again the same is true on the water-rower, you must pull the blades of the rower through the water faster than it is spinning. The design of the water rower is a never ending river conveniently rolled into a small circle.
NB: if you're a new WR owner, and hear little ticks or creaks, get out the included Allen key and resnug the nuts. You've probably worked some lose with your initial enthusiasm.
Step one: find a rowing pace for moderate intensity cardio
For a HR of 130-135, that's about 20-21 strokes per minute, with attention to decent form throughout, at about a 2'20" pace per 500 meters.
The emphasis is on the HR, not comparing race paces, though.
Will study whether 30-35 minutes at that HR is comparable to the same while jogging on a treadmill; I'll know if with a total daily exercise duration of 1 hour, my "fitness factors" are optimized.
Not competitive racing speed and short split times, but
- Blood pressure
- Body weight
- Neutralized stress hormones (i.e. freedom from freak shows)
- Mental resilience
- Memory and learning
Plus, there are just enough variables to pulling a perfect stroke to keep you coming back for more, seeking that synchronous total body pull. Nowhere near as ridiculous as golf, thankfully.
Sent from my iPhone
Resisting the considerable pull of indoor rowing, but just barely
Another morning session with Xeno at the Iron Oarsman. Not the most death-defying MetCon workout I've ever had, but spent most of the 45 min class close to my max HR, and definitely felt gassed in the last few minutes. Xeno managed to keep the session balanced between warmup, technique focus, interesting intervals, and getting delicately smoked.
Really liked the 10 or so minutes afterwards, just "paddling" (probably because of what ended immediately before). Went from 17 strokes/min up to a more comfortable 20, feeling the coordinated whole body ease of it; HR was in the 140's, so even that was technically high intensity cardio. Am sure I could learn to throttle it back, probably by having less water in the WaterRower's tank for resistance. How do you gauge how much water to put in the tank?
Got to try the Concept2; gotta admit, it felt nice, probably due setting it on a lower dialed-down resistance, plus the rounder handle cross section. But my Xeno model WaterRower is on its way, and it's definitely more pleasant in its liquid swoosh, what I'd imagine a scull on the water sounds like. The chain sound isn't unpleasant on the C2, neither is its soft airfan whir, which may actually be quieter than the water moving away from the WR's tank paddles. But the C2 is definitely more gym equipment in construction and feel, and would not fit our home. And I refuse to row a fan-based machine in the garage.WaterRower's website lacks robustness, compared to C2's. It's focused, but doesn't feel as full and inviting, like you could learn everything you wanted about indoor rowing from it, short of having a machine. I hope the company does well in other areas, because I'd hate to lose mechanical support down the road if its lesser Internet presence causes it to tank.Certainly am hoping that Xeno's efforts can create a viable meeting ground to fill that niche...and that WR will come around.C2 is the standard for competitive indoor rowing ranking. There are ways to offer something similar for WR; these should be learned from, not copied. The most unoccupied niche seems to be fitness for the new rowing enthusiast focused on other things besides competing.Look at pedometers; there's an immediate thrill from seeing those steps really add up. A walk around the block adds hundreds of steps to your daily total, typically shooting for the magic 10,000 mark. The meters rowed statistic functions similarly, like today's session + the 10-ish minute paddling: 13,018 meters. You can rack up the meters, time rowed, HR and time, torque, and stroke rate, or any combination. Offhand, meters rowed feels the most tasty, with the HR + time being a close second in terms of sensibleness. Just like walking/treadmill cardio for fitness, and the pedometer + HR & time.Online logging definitely adds something, tho'. Especially with new or virtual friends/training colleagues.Hey, hear that sucking sound? That's the whirlpool of communal, tribal proof and competition calling.It's a frakkin' siren call, is what it is. An easy Charybdis to fall into and get lost. It can be surprisingly hard to resist the pull of a thankless, seemingly left-field niche, filled with the earnest young and young at heart, training and competing in extremis. With hundreds of years of cachet and tradition. That describes rowing, sailing, and most traditional martial arts (guilty as charged). Remember why we came here:- Alternate continuous session cardio to cross train with walking/jogging/running
- Joint sparing, even at high intensity levels
- Quiet, doable at any hour without waking family
- Potentially meditative, or soothing
- Fits in within the home decor (only not an issue if you are Single with a capital "S")
Still planning on doing 1 hr most days of cardio...would like it to be 30 min of moderate walking/jogging/running, and 30 minutes of moderate rowing. And 20-ish minutes twice weekly of high intensity rowing (plus strength training).
Peter Beck Kim
At work, I'm a medical director, primary care physician, and healthcare IT consultant for an EHR.
Twitter handle: @doccottle
Main blog: http://www.MedicalRecordShow.com
Everything else goes here.
My Other Sites
