Training For Competition

Tips for a successful training program:

  1. Plan your workouts in advance but be willing to adjust depending on how you are feeling. Feeling great? Go for it in time or intensity. Feeling stressed out and tired? Make the workout relief. Cover the monitor, turn on the radio or TV and just row for the release of it.
  2. Include a period of warm up and cool down in each workout. This time can also be spent working on proper rowing technique.
  3. Experiment periodically with both your wind damper setting and your race stroke rate. You may find that a change in damper setting may make you slightly more efficient and compliment your improving cardiovascular conditioning and strength. This may also be true with stroke rate.
  4. Be sure to supplement your Indoor Rower workouts with body exercises that encourage additional flexibility and reciprocal joint and muscle strengthening. For example, try push ups, pull ups, stomach crunches and back arches, as well as simply bending over and touching the fingers to the toes, letting gravity help lengthen you out a little.
  5. Be sure to schedule in rest days as well as test days.
  6. Keep a log. This helps in terms of motivating yourself by noting your improvement and helps identify a successful series of workouts.
  7. Train with a friend either on two Indoor Rowers or by alternating pieces on one Indoor Rower while one of you is stretching or doing body exercises.
  8. Enjoy the rowing. It is a great way to spend some time with your body!

The Coach's Favorite Five:

Your preparation for the 2,000 meter race should fall predominantly into the aerobic area and should continue to be focused on distance, measured both in time and in meters. With this in mind, I would like to offer my five favorite types of workouts as a guide for your race preparation. Good luck and good racing.

  1. Endurance: Rows of 30-45 minutes or 7,500-10,000 meters. This workout category includes:
    • Thirty minute time trials for the World Ranking.
    • a continuous 10,000 meter piece with increasing intensity (decreasing splits in terms of pace) each 2,500 meters.
    • "swing" rows at 20-30 seconds easier than race pace - a swing row is a steady moderately paced row; not so fast that you can't keep up a conversation the whole time.
    • and the old favorite: a continuous piece which consists of 5 to 8 repetitions of (3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute, as follows. Row 3 minutes @ a low stroke rate of 22 spm (strokes per minute); then 2 minutes at a moderate stroke rate of 27 spm; then 1 minute at a high stroke rate of 32 spm. Then repeat. There is no rest between these pieces.
  2. Overdistance: Rows of longer than the race distance; such as: 2 x 6,000 meters with 5 minutes rest between, keeping the pace steady but trying to improve your overall time for both pieces in the course of your training.
  3. Repetitions: Moderate intensity work intervals alternated with short rests; such as: 15 x 1:40 work/:20 rest. For the 1:40, work at 4-6 seconds slower than race pace.
  4. Long Intervals: 3 to 5 repetitions of 1500 meters at 3-5 seconds slower than race pace, with 3-5 minutes rest between pieces.
  5. Intervals: high intensity work intervals with rest for 1-3 times the work duration, such as: 2 to 3 sets of 3 x 500 meters at 3-6 seconds faster than race pace, with 3 minutes rest between 500 meter pieces and 6-8 minutes between sets.

The current racing distance for indoor rowing regattas is 2000 meters. The training suggestions given below are geared to this race distance.

WORKOUT FREQUENCY: 4-6 times per week (less when you are rowing on-the-water.)
DURATION: 30-80 minutes depending on the intensity of the workout.
WORK TYPE & INTENSITY: the whole range, from racing to easy steady state. Different types of work should be done at different times in your training year.

The CRASH-B Sprints

Key Workouts to Prepare for a 2,000 Meter Race

  1. 30-40 minutes steady piece at a moderate to hard intensity, focusing on effective technique.
  2. Three 10-minute pieces with 2-3 minutes rest. Your total meters rowing should end up being more than the meters you row in a single 30-minute piece.
  3. Four to six 5-minute pieces with 2-3 minutes rest. Make these pieces more intense than the 10-minute pieces.
  4. Four 1000-meter pieces with 3-4 minutes rest, at about the pace you might row a 2000 meter race.
  5. Six 500-meter pieces with 3-4 minutes rest, at a pace 2-3 seconds faster than your pace for the 1000 meter pieces.