Fitness (the Basics)

Overview

"If there were an easier way, we'd be doing it" - paraphrased from Jürgen Gröbler

I am mostly speaking from my own experiences here, plus the information that I have retained from years of reading sports science articles and books. I am not an expert, but this information should get you started in the right direction.

1. You have to row a lot to be good at rowing

2. Most of the rowing should be low intensity (conversational pace), but some of it needs to be high intensity

3. For almost everyone, the limiting factor for how much you can train is how well you can recover

1. You have to row a lot

Volume is king. Miles make champions. 

Improving your aerobic capacity takes a long time. This is why most successful endurance athletes (rowers, runners, cyclists, etc) have years of training under their belts before they reach the podium. 

I succeeded in rowing early on due to my anaerobic capabilities. I had a massive sprint, so could drop my average split significantly in the last minute of a piece. That meant that, relative to my teammates, I was much better on a 2k test than a 6k test. 

I only made significant improvements on my 6k test after two years of doing upwards of 180km per week.

In my training now at the elite level, we do between 90-110 minutes of rowing for each steady state session. 

2. The 80/20 rule

Most of the rowing (roughly 80%) should be low intensity (conversational pace), but some of it (roughly 20%) needs to be high intensity.

See the graph below taken from a video by Stephen Seiler (sports scientist that works with the Norwegian sports federation).

For an athlete that's already in decent shape, this graph should be generally useful. If you don't have access to lactate testing or VO2 testing, then you can work off of % of max heart rate (labels on the X-axis). But these vary for every individual!

Other names for these zones are steady state (Zones 1/2), anaerobic threshold, or AT (Zone 3). I haven't heard any cool names for Zones 4 & 5. Those are just hard.

If I'm rowing 10 sessions per week, a typical distribution in the fall (not racing season) would be 2 in Zone 1, 6 in Zone 2, and 2 in Zones 3/4. In the summer, closer to my racing season, that distribution would be more like 3 in Zone 1, 5 in Zone 2, and 2 in Zones 4/5.

3. Recovery is your limiting factor

“For almost everyone, the limiting factor for how much you can train is how well you can recover"

Training, by definition, is a stress on your body. If you want to train harder, you need to recover better to keep that equilibrium.

It is important to remember that there are many other stressors that you encounter throughout the day, too! Work, school, relationships, money problems, loss of sleep, etc, will all pile up on the same side of the scale. 

I have seen people training for some ungodly amounts of time per week, but they can get away with it because they are so on top of their recovery between sessions. I have also seen people "over-train" while doing much less work. Again, there are many more factors than just the total amount of rowing that you're doing.