Rowing machine/ergometer questions

This forum can answer most of your questions. There are some very knowledgeable,well-trained and respectful folks that post there.

A few take aways from your post:

- 25-27 is a fairly high rate for everyday training. For long sessions it is good to keep the stroke rate between 18-22, focusing on good, powerful strokes. Most people race 2k around 30-36.

- The "resistance" or the damper setting changes machine to machine due to various factors. You want to go to the options menu and check your drag factor. You kind of have to play around with it to figure out what feels best for you. I like it around 130-135 for most distances and that's about the same feeling you will get on the water, except I will bump it up to 170 or so if I was doing an all out 500.

- It's hard to say what is an equivalent pace. Running records are a good deal faster but most rowers can row a lot faster than they can run. Personally, I am pretty even with longer distances but can run a lot faster for sprints.

- I like to have one or two holes showing depending on what shoes I am wearing. Generally, it is best to go with a minimal type of shoe which will help you get a little more power off the footboard.

- I don't wear gloves and have never had problems with blisters. My only problem is once I start sweating hard, the handle gets a little slippery.

Not quite ~ wrote:

choad jock wrote:

What utter nonsense. Of course it has to do with your level of fitness. Now some people are better runners and some people are better rowers, but grinding for an hour is grinding for an hour no matter how you slice it.

You're totally wrong, and have no clue what you're talking about.

Someone who's 5' 7" and 126 pounds and extremely fit, is not going to come anywhere close to the average 6' 6" 280 pounder with long arms on a rowing machine, and this difference has absolutely nothing to do with fitness.

On the water the distance is much closer, but performance (distance) on the erg is highly weight, height, and body proportion dependent.

But genius, the same guy can do the hour test and compare his progress. That was the suggestion.

Tribe wrote:

Yes. But clearly a fit small guy will completely outperform a very unfit small guy. Anyone who has gone all out on an erg knows that fitness has a lot to do with it.

Fitness does not matter at all. unless all rowers are the same size, which they're not. So you're basically agreeing with him.

They have lightweight sub-165 lb. class rowing and ERG records as well as blunderbuss heavyweight classes for ERG records so there is a weight classification.

I think we can agree that a relatively small, serious runner who has a well developed cardio system will row at a higher stroke rating than a 220 pound muscle guy. On an erg.

So if the runner is doing a 2k race piece, he may row it at 35 strokes per minute whereas the other guy might do a 28.

I know I would. It drives crew coaches a little crazy because what do you do with that? The runner/rower won't be able to row at a higher rating than the boat will, so it makes his erg score less meaningful.

whereas the fat guy has the opposite - if he can't row at a rate as high as the boat, then his power won't be applied.

1) For girls, it should hit the bottom of the sports bra. For a male, about 2 inches below the nipples.

2) Hold the handle at the ends, with your pinkie right at the edge of the end. Do not death grip the handle, instead your fingers should act as hooks.

3) Not sure what you mean with "arms go forward at the end of the stroke"

4) The rower takes a lot of technique to get right. Shoot for 2:25/ 500 for steady state (easy runs equivalent). Anything 2:00-2:10 is very solid for steady state.

Tempo would be about 1:50-2:00 but its so dependent on the size of the rower. (I've been assuming you're a male).

Steady state stroke rate =18 - 22 strokes

Tempo ~24-26

Race pace 28-36

5) You want the strap to cross the crease of your toe box.

6) no gloves, especially if you're using your fingers as hooks as described.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAFaDxX1jTM

^ good erging from a national team lightweight (about 6-0 155 at race weight)

Just did a 1 minute erg competition as part of another event. As many meters as possible in a minute. It was one of the most unpleasant things I've ever done. 359 meters, no clue how competitive that is but it did well compared to the people immediately surrounding me.

Pretty good.

I'm guessing you're tall and or heavy.

wet once wrote:

The runner/rower won't be able to row at a higher rating than the boat will, so it makes his erg score less meaningful.

whereas the fat guy has the opposite - if he can't row at a rate as high as the boat, then his power won't be applied.

Thank goodness for weight-adjusted erg scores, and especially for seat races!

I rowed collegiately and kind of sucked at erging. I was consistently in the top third of my collegiate rowing team's erg scores, but never near the tip-top. I was also on the smaller end physically for our women's openweight varsity 8 (5'8.5, 141 lb.). Once my coach started weight-adjusting the erg scores simply to give us another piece of information, I was consistently scoring in the top 2-3 on the team.

Seat races were where I shined though. I never lost a seat race, and I was the most seat-raced athlete in my cohort since my comparatively poor erg scores didn't make a strong case for me being in the 1V. It was such a great feeling to get switched with our 6'2 185 lb top erger and make the boat move faster than when she'd been in it. Regardless of my mediocre erg times, I was a boat mover. "Ergs don't float," as they say.

Ah, the good old days. Haven't touched an erg seriously in about six years now, and don't miss it. Somebody back there mentioned they found erging way more tolerable than the treadmill. I don't agree at all... I find erging so much more mentally taxing. On a treadmill, you can set your desired speed and just try to zone out and hang on... not so on the erg.

bummedHamstring wrote:

On a treadmill, you can set your desired speed and just try to zone out and hang on... not so on the erg.

Zone out on a treadmill and you're instantly doing flips off the back.

However I could zone out for hours on an erg, even sleep and erg all night.

great stuff

I actually made someone cry once by a seatrace...I'm 140 pounds, he was 165 (lightweights), his erg score was 20 seconds faster than mine...but in a seatrace I beat him by a length and I got his seat.

rowing is a big mysterious physics experiment. everything is moving, nothing is measurable.

By zoning out, I mean getting into a groove without fretting over the numbers.

The way I see it, the treadmill sort of does the work for you by moving you along at a desired pace (assuming you can actually hang with it -- otherwise, as you point out, bad things happen fast). If I'm tempoing on a treadmill, I can just dial in my desired pace and try to hang. It's easy to avoid looking at the screen and instead dial in my focus on my breath and form, and it's also easy to quickly check the screen when I want, to see how far along I am in the piece.

On the erg, YOU have to generate and remain faithful to your desired pace. I find having that pace feedback on each and every stroke can be mentally exhausting somehow, specifically if I'm doing a hard piece and aiming for a very specific time. It's not like in a track workout where you only get hard pace feedback every 100m, or out on a road run wearing a garmin that you can check in on at your leisure -- on the erg, your stroke by stroke performance stares you in the face the whole time and it's hard not to stare back. Just a funny mental thing for me I guess.

Certainly a different story for longer steady state workouts that are more effort-based, where it doesn't really matter if you're pulling a 2:06 or a 2:12 in a given stretch of strokes. I would often push my monitor up so I can't see it for those scenarios. It was also pretty cool in college to do blind erg pieces with the monitor up every once in a while.

God, I miss seat racing drama.

Thanks everyone for so many detailed replies. Letsrun never ceases to amaze me.

Another question: Should my heels ever be coming up off the platform?

I am a guy, and I really don't see myself getting down to 20/min, though I haven't done any 'long run' equivalents yet, usually only 5k/day, just having some fun at the moment.

I should watch some videos now (haven't watched any yet, but thanks all for the links).

I rowed briefly in my freshman year at college, but couldn't hack the early morning practices and stay awake in class. I ended up running 220/440 yds my junior and senior years at an NAIA school. I am in my early 60s and have been using an erg for cross training for almost 20 yrs now. I run about 40-50 mi/wk.

Through trial and error I have settled on rowing two 10 minute pieces before running almost every day. Depending on my training cycle and racing season I row between 1800 and 2100 M in 10 minutes. My natural cadence is about 29 stroke/min. I understand how to work on most efficient stroke, but I am not working on that. I am working on the most helpful running cross training. I row with the damper on max and reach until my knees hit my chest. I use the rowing for preserving range of motion and core strength, not rowing efficiency. Think about what you want to get out of your rowing workouts.

state wrote:

Thanks everyone for so many detailed replies. Letsrun never ceases to amaze me.

Another question: Should my heels ever be coming up off the platform?

I am a guy, and I really don't see myself getting down to 20/min, though I haven't done any 'long run' equivalents yet, usually only 5k/day, just having some fun at the moment.

I should watch some videos now (haven't watched any yet, but thanks all for the links).

Yes your heels should be coming off the platform, although you should mostly press through your heels

I don't understand the "getting down to 20 min" part... Most steady state workouts are done at 20 strokes per min, no matter what the split is. The split should be pulled at around a 150bpm HR. or maybe like 2:05-15 for you.

state wrote:

Another question: Should my heels ever be coming up off the platform?

Yes, when you're going forward.

I am a guy, and I really don't see myself getting down to 20/min, though I haven't done any 'long run' equivalents yet, usually only 5k/day, just having some fun at the moment.

I'm a skinny 5' 8 1/2" and did 18:54, though it took work to get there, and I was better at longer distances. Being 6'3 you will have no problem breaking 20. I used drag from 50 to 360 in practice, but usually a little less than 100 for 5k through HM. High drag is slow and it's easy to get fast paces, but all strength and not so much of the CV system. Low drag is great if you have a good CV system, are coordinated and can maintain a higher than usual rating.

Rowers use low rates so everyone can keep the same rate in a boat but it's not optimal for reaching top performances. The top lightweight international 4's maintain 38 to 43 spm on the water, and similar on their ergs, and that's for people well over 6' in height.

That's 1:23 pace wrote:

Pretty good.

I'm guessing you're tall and or heavy.

6', 200 lbs. obviously not much of a runner any longer, have gravitated toward more strength related adventures because I was too big to be a runner even when I considered myself one. Other than an all out 2k, which is definitely the hardest thing I've ever done, this was right up there. At least it's over quick.

Which rowing machine do you using?There is a different type of rowing machine in the local market which have a different function.What are your height and weight?Here are some rowing machine and its usages, Click here for more details

https://fittingguy.com

amkelley wrote: lifetime runner with zero upper-body strength who has been struggling with Achilles tendon issues for 14 months.

did it ever occur to you to wonder whether the two might be connected?

I know, you're going to say, "but my upper body is, like, a long way from my achilles, dude," or some such child-like gibberish.

so I respond:

1. have you ever wondered why you swing your arms when you run?

2. as a runner, do you know where your gearbox is?

cheers.