UT2 training
Willi
5 or 6 times a week (or less), especially on the erg. I have generally
been of the opinion that the erg is a fitness machine, sit on it and
pull as hard as you can for the time/distance you are doing. There
seems to be increasing evidence coming from sports science to back up
my point of view and I now directly state that it is a waste of
limited training time and do not have it as part of my training plans.
However, this is meeting considerable opposition from some athletes.
Are other people still doing a lot of UT2. does anyone know of
research into its effectiveness, especially at the sort of level of
training occurring in clubs as opposed to the professional sport.
Mike De Petris
does this implies sprint racing only? 500m? 1000m? 2k? Or long
distances?
IMHO what you say is good for preparing races up to 1km, of course it
is the opposite for long distance races, and I must add that preparing
for the 2km is the most complicated thing, as you must mix endurance
and sprint, being at the top for just one day of the year, a very hard
and challenging matter.
Willi
I was thinking more as part of a general winter training scheme, for
racing in the short term over longer distances and then preparing for
the summer, when races are shorter. For club rowers with limited
training time i.e five or six sessions a week I have never seen the
point of coming down and sitting on the erg for an hour doing UT2. I
would rather see them do 30 minutes hard UT1/AT and then go home, or
beter still do 30 minutes of weights after a UT1 erg and then go home.
When I used to train properlly I never did UT2 on the erg and would
often skip these sessions or sometime do a shorter erg, say 5k. I was
always up there with most guys 10-15kg heavier than me on a 2k test,
so never thought I was missing out much by not doing the UT2.
Mike De Petris
> I was thinking more as part of a general winter training scheme, for
> racing in the short term over longer distances and then preparing for
> the summer, when races are shorter. For club rowers with limited
> training time i.e five or six sessions a week I have never seen the
> point of coming down and sitting on the erg for an hour doing UT2. I
> would rather see them do 30 minutes hard UT1/AT and then go home, or
> beter still do 30 minutes of weights after a UT1 erg and then go home.
> When I used to train properlly I never did UT2 on the erg and would
> often skip these sessions or sometime do a shorter erg, say 5k. I was
> always up there with most guys 10-15kg heavier than me on a 2k test,
> so never thought I was missing out much by not doing the UT2.
that's it, you had my same experience!
If you aim at 2k that's correct IMHO and I tried on myself, but do not
expect good performances on longer races, nor to be able to benefit
from a bigger quantity of training if you want to increase it for a
period before the most important races, UT2 is useful to support
heavier training, if you can have more time at holidays for example
Tinus
continuous erging 1h20':
4 x 10' @ 75% of 2k power and in between 10' rest @ 60% of 2k power.
In my experience this is a great training to prepare for longer
distances but also to train aerobic power and general fitness for
those who train for shorter distances.
Willi
UT2 is useful for recovery from illness or an injury, a gentle
introduction back into training, I would agree with that.
For your 1 hour 20 of erging
a) you are lucky if you can get your squad to sit on an erg for 80
minutes
b) if so why, not do 4 x 10 minutes at maximum with 10 minutes stop,
stretch and recover between? My understanding of where sports science
is at the moment (and I might well be wrong) is that 40 minutes hard
is better than 40 minutes medium pace. Does the 30 minutes UT2 make up
for the difference? I don't think so, given what I have read.
Tinus
> stretch and recover between? My understanding of where sports science
> is at the moment (and I might well be wrong) is that 40 minutes hard
> is better than 40 minutes medium pace. Does the 30 minutes UT2 make up
> for the difference? I don't think so, given what I have read.
I doubt if Sport Science is able to describe well enough more complex
trainings like fartlek which the described interval training is kinda
based on. The pieces of UT2 allow the rower to work on aerobic power
while still recovering from the pieces in between. Just like
alternating different energy systems from day to day has positive
effects this could also be used in shorter intervals. And maybe adding
to that there might are be many synergistic sorts of effects which
make UT2 more effective when exercised with short bouts of higher
intensity work in between. I am thinking of increased heart rate,
blood flow and enzyme activity. Isn't most research just looking at
plain steady state UT2 work?
Charles Carroll
You write that "40 minutes hard is better than 40 minutes medium pace."
Can you cite any studies?
If I remember correctly Mark de Rond in "The Last Amateurs" says that Duncan
Holland had Cambridge in 2006 begin its training at six in the morning with
two 90-minute erg sessions at 20 spm. Apparently something must have worked
because after several weeks of this level of training the crew saw
improvement in their erg scores.
Do you think they would have seen even more improvement if they had raised
the intensity of their work outs while reducing the time they spent working
out?
My own experience has been that high intensity workouts for shorter periods
of time will result in immediate improvements in my erg score. But very
shortly, within several weeks of high intensity work, I'll peak, and from
then on my erg scores will remain static.
Cordially,
Charles
Walter Martindale
wrote:
Hi Charles,
This is more of a general response to the thread...
Higher intensity training requires greater rest intervals so the body
can properly recover and "supercompensate" It's far too complex for a
few lines on RSR. I've heard physiologists refer to high volume
rowing training as "junk mileage", and I've seen programs that have
high volume training programs win international gold (see Canadian
women in the early 90s - during January of 1992, the women in the
Olympic camp each put in 240 km/week during that month - as reported
to a coaching conference by their coach).
"UT2" or "U2" or "Category 6" or "Low Sub Threshold" or "Long Steady
State," as described in various training taxonomies, has its place, as
does everything in between that and doing some 20 second intervals
with 3 minute rest...
Anecdotally - a former member of Canada's HM8+ described how he got
from 6:10 on the 2000 ergometer test to "sub 6 minutes". For one
month prior to the test, he sat on the ergometer and pulled as hard as
he could for an hour. Every day.
I imagine that the first couple of weeks weren't fun, but that the
performances (distances pulled per hour) increased thereafter.
I think that volumes are coming down, somewhat, and intensities are
going up, somewhat. We had a coach who visited the Danish training
camp several months ago, now. His report to us was that they didn't
train below 22 strokes/minute, and they rarely went more than 12 km in
a session - a 20 km row was very long for them, and it would be very
long at a higher intensity.
W
Charles Carroll
I, too, believe that in a good training program almost every type of
training intensity has its place.
But I am also keen on Steve Fairbairn's idea that "mileage makes champions."
To quote Frans Goebel, "Sculling is a sport that if you work long and hard
at you can achieve a lot."
I only seriously question the idea that there are secrets and shortcuts.
Lord knows, I have had enough experience looking for those, haven't I?
Have you ever come across Mike Caviston's Wolverine Plan? It is very
interesting. But I suspect that it may require a little more discipline than
the average Club rower can muster.
http://www.concept2.com/forums/wolverine_plan.htm
http://www.row2k.com/features/print_feature.cfm?id=391&type=Feature
Gotta run. I am taking Sandy to a movie and dinner.
Cordially,
Charles
Willi
wrote:
As I suspected, lots of different opinions. The trouble with anecdotes
and 'experience', including my own, is the lack of a control. What if
the Cambridge 2006 crew had stayed in bed for an extra 1 ½ hours and
only done 90 minutes UT2, or done 45 minutes at UT1 or 2 x 20 minutes
at AT?..... We will never know.
carolinetu
I have just got back from the Lake District, where 60 rowers, mostly
of mature years, circumnavigated Lakes Coniston and Windermere. We
had a great time, saw some wonderful scenery, got rather damp, and
consumed a fair amount of alcohol. We rowed for about 3 hours on
Friday and Sunday, and 5 hours on Saturday. If that counts as UT2
training, then let's have more of it!
In a normal week, my view is that UT2 session(s) should be geared
towards consolidating good technique in the boat. As somebody said
(possibly Steve Fairbairn though I'm not sure) - there's no subsitute
for doing miles on the water.
Caroline
Mike Sullivan
"carolinetu" <carol...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:5f4f071f-2d17-41c5...@e8g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> UT2 training on an ergo? Personally I would die of boredom.
>
yep. Go run, cross country ski, something else for long aerobic training if
you can't row.