ergometer

Dec 3 2017

Rowing training or strength training?

Strength or rowing training?

It has been snowing and below zero for most of the week, so I didn’t even bother going to the rowing club. I would have difficulty finding a free erg.

Instead, I took some time after breakfast to plan out my December training mesocycle. I also reviewed our club Masters rowers training plan for the past week and looked at what I have done during the trip to Belgrade, and what I had planned for this week, and tried to find the two missing trainings, for Saturday and Sunday.

I did this, because on Sunday I will be training with the Masters group, so I want to do the same training they do. That turned out to be a 5x5min at fairly high intensities.

So, for Saturday, I had the choice between steady state and something that looked … interesting. I know I don’t get enough strength training and I am a skinny aerobic freak. Perhaps this was worth a try:

5x(6×15 strokes / 10 strokes)/4min at 17spm at 140 drag

So what is that? You do bouts of 15 strokes at max force, with 10 strokes of light paddling. You do this 6 times, then paddle for 4 minutes, and repeat until you have done a total of 5 sets.

If I liked, I might start doing more of these.

I tried the Painsled Beta again during the warming up. I wasn’t able to connect to Zwift because Zwift insisted on installing a 16 minute update download, and I didn’t want to wait for it. I also struggled with the app crashing on CSV data export, but managed to get out my data eventually.

But for the main event, I switched the iPhone for the iPad (with the regular Painsled), because I didn’t want to risk losing data. Here they are:

I found it difficult to count the sets of 15 and remember where I was. If you look carefully, there is one set of 7 intervals. Well, I am glad I didn’t discover a set of 5. Each set turned out to last about 12 to 13 minutes, so it was easy to calculate if I was doing set 4 or set 5.

This was interesting. I found it difficult to hold 17spm and found myself driving to 18spm, even 19spm sometimes.

I was going somewhere between 1:54 and 1:57 pace. As the PM averages over three strokes, it was hard to estimate the exact power. I also think that Work per Stroke is the correct metric to use in this workout. There should be a Work per Stroke display on the PM. But perhaps it doesn’t matter much, as long as you are giving it the maximum per stroke.

I did have to watch posture though. I think this is a risky workout for my back, so I did monitor myself to sit straight and push on the legs only in the first half of the stroke.

Here’s a chart of Work per Stroke, Average Drive Force and Max Drive Force:

I have filtered out all the rest paddling in this chart, but still there is quite a large spread on the horizontal axis. Here is how the peak and average force behaved over time:

I also made this beautiful chart, trying to see if the differences in work per stroke were due mostly to differences in drive length or differences in average force. Looks like a mix of both. Drive length is closer to my usual range of values, though. I conclude that this was a rowing specific strength training.

Greg, here is the chart you requested:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rate restricted, rowing, training

Nov 6 2017

Friday to Monday

Friday

It was a hard day at work and I was looking forward to rowing OTW. Unfortunately, I also had some shopping to do and I got stuck in a traffic jam, spending 30 minutes trying to leave the mall parking garage. So instead of driving to the club, I headed home.

Sat on the erg, booted up the new Beta of Painsled, and tried to connect it to Zwift. I didn’t manage to get that going because I was short of one Bluetooth device. If I understand it well, the phone with Painsled running serves power data. You then need another device with a Zwift Mobile app which collects the data and relays it to the Zwift app running on the iPad. I may try it again, but I am waiting for the next beta of Painsled. You will understand why in a minute.

I put on the latest BRowShow Podcast about recovery and got going.

A nice first 30 minutes in which I pushed the average power to 185 Watts without seeing any alarming things happening, heart rate wise.

The second 30 minutes proceeded in a similar way. No issue at all. Average power 183W. Heart rate where I like it.

At the end of the session I did a lactate test. Recorded 2.1 mmol/L. A few minutes later, I did the test again, now measuring 1.9 mmol/L. I believe this indicates that I have been working in the desired training zone.

I didn’t get to row on the water, but at least I had a decent erg session in. I was looking forward to see the data. So I started export the workouts from Painsled to rowsandall.com, which is normally a simple email export from the app to workouts@rowsandall.com. This threw an error. I tried various settings, and 30 minutes later I still had no luck.

Later that evening, I downgraded to the normal version of Painsled, losing all data in the app in the process. So, no data for this workout.

So, let me recap.

A difficult day in the office
No OTW row because of traffic
A good OTE workout but no data to prove it
Oh, and a couple of bug reports on rowsandall.com.

On that last one, I had spent quite a lot of time doing some user interface upgrades on rowsandall.com, and on Friday I wanted to have all that finished and working. Instead, I was looking at some weird bugs, and there was no way I could understand what was going on. Sometimes, the site seems like a lot of hard work without some real benefits.

I wasn’t in the best mood.

Saturday

Got up early but not early enough. We all went to the rowing club with the idea to start a session at 9AM, and finish it in time for a club activity starting at 10.

I set up the erg on sliders and got going warming up. I was waiting for Romana’s girls to join, and wanted to join in their 6x1km/5min workout (at 6k pace, 28-30spm on sliders).

After a 2.5km warming up the girls disappeared for stretching. That turned into stretching and chatting and I did another 5k at steady state pace in the mean time.

By the time the girls came back to start the 6x1k, there was very little time left. I wasn’t in the best mood (again), because I knew I would have to stop at 10AM and wouldn’t be able to finish the workout.

Also, I had terrible issues with the sliders. I kept bumping against the ends of them. I don’t know if I set them up wrongly or if my technique was so terrible, but it just wasn’t working. I basically became so annoyed that I stopped and walked away from the erg in the third 1k.

Notice the erratic second 1k interval. I really was a jerk on Saturday.

The activity starting at 10AM was mowing the banks of the lake, an activity that we as rowing club members have to do, and I didn’t want to let the others down. So I spent three hours mowing and clearing one part of the lake’s bank. It was a good way to channel some bad energy. Felt a lot better afterwards.

Sunday

The only thing I did was a short run with my daughter.

Oh, and a lot of moving in our house. The boys move to the big room in the attic. Romana’s study goes to the smaller room in the attic, and Lenka goes from the smaller room in the attic to the former boys’ room.

In the evening I found some time to finalize those rowsandall.com user interface improvements. These are a couple of tweaks that don’t change the functionality but make the loading of slower parts of the site much more attractive to the user.

Monday

So no risks today. A stable version of Painsled. Some nice music on, and a session from our club’s official training plan for Masters. I make my own plan, but I try to pick as many sessions from the official plan as possible. It makes it easier to socialize with the other Masters, and even do the odd training together in the club erg room. Today it was

3x15min/4min with 15 min as 3x4min @ 20spm, 1min @24spm

Here’s the result. It wasn’t too hard to do. I am not sure about the physiological training effect of the 24spm speed bumps, but it broke down the 15 minutes in a nice way.

With a 2.5km warming up, that is 16k for the session.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Oct 3 2017

2×30 minutes on the ergometer

A simple steady state workout on the Concept2 erg. Nothing special. I played a bit with Wolverine Plan style rate ladders, but made the SPM jumps smaller, just 1 SPM per transition.

The first 30 minutes was 3x(4min+3min+2min+1min). My radio stopped after 10 minutes because it was running on battery power, so the first seconds of the second 10 minute interval there were no strokes, as I was off the erg connecting the radio to power.

 Workout Summary - media/20171003-1926400o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07324|30:27.0|02:04.8|188.7|20.4|150.3|168.0|11.8
W-|07330|30:27.0|02:04.7|188.1|20.4|149.7|168.0|11.8
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|168.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00954|04:00.0|02:05.7|173.3|18.9|130.2|139.0|12.6
01|00717|03:00.0|02:05.5|177.0|19.2|142.1|145.0|12.5
02|00488|02:00.0|02:02.8|188.7|20.3|147.5|150.0|12.0
03|00247|01:00.0|02:01.7|195.8|21.1|151.7|154.0|11.7
04|00859|04:00.0|02:19.8|176.2|19.2|141.7|149.0|11.2
05|00730|03:00.0|02:03.3|186.8|20.3|150.1|155.0|12.0
06|00496|02:00.0|02:01.0|197.7|21.0|156.5|160.0|11.8
07|00251|01:00.0|01:59.5|204.9|21.7|159.6|162.0|11.6
08|00979|04:00.0|02:02.6|190.1|20.6|158.1|163.0|11.9
09|00741|03:00.0|02:01.4|195.6|21.1|158.8|163.0|11.7
10|00501|02:00.0|01:59.9|203.1|22.1|162.5|165.0|11.3
11|00368|01:27.8|01:59.4|213.6|23.0|166.4|168.0|10.9

I took a very short break, just to drink a bit of water. Then I did the second 30 minute interval as 3x(5x2min):

        Workout Summary - media/20171003-1926200o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07259|30:04.0|02:04.3|183.7|20.2|160.2|168.0|12.0
W-|07267|30:04.0|02:04.2|183.2|20.1|160.2|168.0|12.0
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|168.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00488|02:00.0|02:02.9|182.1|20.0|143.4|156.0|12.2
01|00497|02:00.0|02:00.7|199.1|21.2|159.0|162.0|11.7
02|00502|02:00.0|01:59.6|204.3|22.1|163.2|166.0|11.4
03|00495|02:00.0|02:01.2|197.0|21.2|166.3|168.0|11.7
04|00485|02:00.0|02:03.6|185.3|20.5|163.8|166.0|11.9
05|00474|02:00.0|02:06.6|172.5|19.5|157.8|160.0|12.2
06|00486|02:00.0|02:03.5|185.8|20.4|159.6|163.0|11.9
07|00491|02:00.0|02:02.1|192.1|21.5|163.3|166.0|11.4
08|00484|02:00.0|02:04.0|183.6|20.2|163.5|165.0|12.0
09|00475|02:00.0|02:06.3|174.3|19.6|160.7|164.0|12.1
10|00468|02:00.0|02:08.2|166.2|18.5|157.8|160.0|12.6
11|00473|02:00.0|02:06.8|171.3|19.4|157.6|160.0|12.2
12|00488|02:00.0|02:02.9|188.3|20.1|162.3|164.0|12.2
13|00476|02:00.0|02:06.2|174.6|19.4|162.9|165.0|12.3
14|00485|02:04.9|02:08.9|171.2|18.4|161.4|163.0|12.6

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rowing, training

Sep 21 2017

Planning

Wednesday

Back on the erg. This time I was a bit better prepared. For example, I listened to a podcast from the RowingChat series. Catching up with these RowPerfect podcasts, I listened to the episode where Rebecca Caroe was the interviewee.

At one point there is a short discussion about rowing data, and Rebecca remarks that people respond well to small challenges, leading to incremental improvements. YES!! I entirely agree with that. Measuring and trying to improve is a huge motivator. And it can start with simple measures. Even counting strokes on the erg. Or counting the number of strokes you can row with clean blades.

The workout was simple. I did two full sets of 5k, with a roughly one minute break in between. In the last, third interval, I rowed 2.5km at normal steady state pace, and then started to lower the stroke rate. I wanted to generate some data to look at the new Distance per Stroke metric on rowsandall.com.

I noticed that I should clean the erg. The drag factor is a bit low.

So, here are the charts with the nww metric:

Thursday

Rode to work and back on the bike. It was nice weather, and this is a very time efficient way to get 90 minutes of cross training. I am puzzled by the 600m difference between the morning and afternoon ride. It was the same route.

Planning

I have been playing with a new training plan for the coming 12 months. I am going to try out 9 day cycles, as opposed to week cycles. The nine day cycle will enable a very simple ‘rhythm’ of workouts:

Hard/easy/easy/hard/easy/easy/hard/easy/easy

Three of those cycles (plus a few days) is a calendar month, which I plan as training blocks with emphasis on a certain type of training, with a specific goal. The three cycles will be

Intensive, low volume
Low intensity, high volume
Low intensity, medium volume

Of course reality will interfere and there will be deviations, but I hope that the longer cycle of nine days ensbles me to be more flexible.

Tomorrow: another hard day. A full out 8km row on the water. In the single. Whatever the weather.

Rowsandall.com

Apart from the new metric, I have also made a few changes in the code to make adding new metrics even easier. Introducing a new metric (from a new sensor, or a new calculated metric) now is almost as simple as adding a new line to a configuration file. In case anyone is interested.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 4 • Tags: concept2, erg, ergometer, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Jun 9 2016

Hill / Random / Heart Rate / Manual

Wednesday – traveled to Brussels.

Going through the Vienna train station I noticed there was a wifi network called “refugees”. It’s easy to be cynical about it. But it shows how important access to information is nowadays, for everybody.

At Vienna airport I saw a Boeing 787 Dreamliner from Ethiopian Airlines. It was a nice sight between all the Austrian Airbuses and Fokkers.

This morning, I found my regular hotel’s fitness room completely revamped. Wow!

The cycling machines were now wall-facing. Apparently pedalists were staring too much at the other users of the fitness room. 🙁
The water fountain had been moved by 1.5 meters to the left and around the corner.

The LifeFitness equipment still offered the usual menu:

Hill
Random
Heart Rate
Manual

I usually choose Random but today I felt adventurous, so I did treadmill on Hill, elliptical on Manual / Intervals and the cycling on Manual / Watts. It was a completely new experience! Still the same old track/hill/map/bar chart choice though:

Ergometer Physics

On the train and during the flight, I have been playing a bit with my physics of rowing toybox. I never really looked at the erg model, so when a discussion was stimulated recently on rec.sport.rowing about the part of the power that is not captured by the PM, I started improving my erg model.

As a result, I have two erg models now. Both have their weaknesses, but they seem to agree on the important bit.

I apologize for the color inconsistency between the two graphs (this was done on an airplane!) and clearly there is a lot to improve, but here are the topics of discussion.

During the drive (first 0.8 seconds of this graph), leg power is used to accelerate the rower’s body and to accelerate the flywheel. The acceleration of the flywheel is done by the force on the handle. That is the red curve in both graphs.
Half way during the drive, the rower’s body starts to slow down. There has to be a negative force on the rower’s body. There are two sources of this, one is the handle force and the other is the leg force. By pushing less hard on the legs and starting to swing the back, the rower slows down. In the top graph, you can see “leg power” go negative. This is where the rower is actually hanging/pulling in the footstretcher in order to stop. If he had rown strapless, he would shoot off the slide.
During the recovery, the rower has to accelerate, then break. One is a positive power (force and velocity have the same direction), the other negative.

The discussion is about how to count these negative lobes. Clearly, they are not measured on the PM. The human leg is not a spring, so you cannot store energy for reuse during the drive, so this negative power has to be accounted somehow. In my model, I just take the absolute value of this power and add it to the total power balance.

It is also clear that the bulk of this extra power is generated during the recovery. During the drive phase, a large part of the kinetic energy in the rower’s body can be transferred to the handle effectively.

Don’t catch me on the numbers and exact shapes of the graphs. It was really toying around trying to explain the principles.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, hotel fitness, OTE, training

1 2 3 4

ergometer

Rowing training or strength training?

Strength or rowing training?

Friday to Monday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

2×30 minutes on the ergometer

Planning

Hill / Random / Heart Rate / Manual

Calendar

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