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.
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).
Why? To keep weight in check (more about food choices, but no question 70 min total/day of cardio helped), bp under control without meds (so far, so good!), and stress relieved. Plus hopefully all those other wonderful fringe benefits -- mainstream benefits, really: longevity, emotional stability, anti-aging, dementia risk chop down, brain neuron growth and complexity increase, improved learning and memory, antioxidant production. And so on.Competition is nowhere in there.But tracking numbers and comparing some can help keep the motivation up.Then there's Daniel Pink's Third Drive.Which is what a bit different from what I'm talking about just above; it's about the intrinsic value of the activity itself, as opposed to a reward you chase, or a punishment you avoid. Rowing, you can really find a groove, the groove, pretty easily, if you're not intent on "hammering it." That's a nice place to be -- stay awhile, then maybe play with things a little. Then it can seem fun to cruise towards certain target goals, as opposed to being driven by them.That is the dog, with the rest being the tail.
On my march back towards a more well-rounded (yet clearly effective) exercise regimen, I've added indoor rowing -- aka erging -- into my schedule. Once or twice a week, for 45 minutes, courtesy of Xeno Muller in the video above. He leads a class of us, on the WaterRower, and his energy is infectious (which coming from a physician is saying something).
For me, weight control, stress neutralization, and BP management go hand-in-hand with continuous session aerobic exercise -- hence, the old treadmill in the garage getting 6 day a week use, 30-40 moderate intensity minutes per session. That, plus Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution eating habits (an Amazon.com affiliate link, but I'm following that regimen myself, feel free to find it separately if you like), has so far kept my weight to within a pound of 200 lbs -- which for my 6'2" frame, I haven't weighed since college.
But the next step is to add two higher intensity, shorter session days, while keeping the total days/week at 6. And something other than running faster or harder had a certain joint sparing appeal.
My 220-age max heart rate is estimated at 175. Today's workout, where I really pulled for the first time like I had a purpose, pushed it to over 181. Not that rowing is about maxing out, but it just goes to show how you can get your heart really going with what is essentially a zero impact activity.
I'm basing my strategy on John Ratey's outline in Spark [another affiliate link], which touts exercise first and foremost for brain health: 4 days/wk of moderate cardio, 2 days/wk of high intensity but briefer cardio, and on those 2 days some strength training. Dr. Gundry's book gives some interesting counter arguments for a more genteel yet focused regimen, emphasizing not too long but slow cardio + occasional sprints + strength training. Like the Taoists, trying to avoid burning yourself up (along with your muscle mass).
Will continue to evolve. Oscillating now, to find that exercise sweet spot. So far, with the weight, cortisol, and BP behaving, that seems to be brisk walking/jogging most days, plus rowing.
