When you say stroke length, do you mean metres travelled? I tend to get about 10 but it can reduce at higher stroke rates. When that happens I try to time the strokes so as to maintain the 10, watching the metres counting down or up on the PM3. This usually slows the s/r without losing pace. Unfortunately, when it comes to watching hr, s/r, and pace, I find I can only manage two at a time while the other goes awol
Anyhoo, declaring 7000 metres this morning, comprising 2000 to warm up and 5000 at moderate to high effort, I guess in running terms a tempo.
Thanks, SK and Muttley. I’ve been thinking of trying to connect my HR monitor to the PM5 and that will probably help with judging effort levels on intervals and steady rows.
Just realised I meant drive length (not stroke length), which is one of the stats on my ErgData screen.
Muttley, I’m with you on only managing to keep track of two bits of data at a time. My problem is trying to work out which two bits are the most important ones!
CW: Drive length is very subjective and depends on a lot of things. From what I've gleened from Dark Horse and Training Tall on youtube:
Catch position is with back angled forwards to about 1 o'clock, arms straight, legs bent but only to the point just before your heel lifts, or until your shins are vertical.
Finish position is with the handle drawn in tot he lower chest (not the chin!) and with the trunk angled back to 11 o'clock, no further.
When you go beyond those limits you're pulling the chain further but inefficiently and wasting energy doing so.
The "ideal" drive length is what you can manage between the theoretically ideal "catch" and "finish". It's going to be different for everyone and might change for you if you gain some ankle and back flexibility.
What drive length will give you is a quick indication of if you're doing it basically right. Once you know what your drive length is under normal loads when you're concentrating you'll see if it changes and that's an indication that you're ding something different/wrong.
When I first got ErgData i used to get a drive length of 1.42 regularly. I learned that I was getting "bad length" at both ends of my stroke and I've worked on that. Now "normal" for me is 1.24-1.30. If I start seeing anything above or below that it's a reminder to think about what I'm doing a bit more.
I hope that's helped a bit. Likea lot of things wih this game there are a lot of variables. I reckon if you can concentrate and make of them right in a session you're doing alright.
Thanks, Nellers. That's really helpful. I've been working on trying to reduce my s/r and row more efficiently and consequently was pleased to see the drive length going up from around 1.05 to the 1.30-1.40 range but I'm pretty sure some "bad length" has crept into my stroke too. I think I need to focus on reducing the "lean" at both ends, though mainly the finish, and then try to maintain form while pushing the s/r and my HR up on intervals.
Ah, so nothing at all to do with what I was wittering on about earlier. Just ignore me
I'll take a look at that vid later, but out of interest - do the C2 logbook or RowPro measure drive length, and if so, where can I find it?
In other news, declaring 10,000 metres nice and steady, well within UT2, metres in the bank. Now just over 100k short of 11 million metres on my trusty model D.
I don't think they record drive length anywhere Muttley. ErgData displays it as you row but doesn't record it. It's one of the metrics on the second screen (or the 2 selectable displays on the first screen if you like) but it's not recorded as far as I'm aware.
It's not totally unrelated to what you were talking about. If you have consistent power through a longer drive you should get a longer stroke length and distance travelled, but not always because of all those other pesky variables.
I've done a steady state 15k this morning. Drive length, for reference, dropped to 1.21 and peaked at 1.42 but only for a few strokes each. Mostly it was 1.24 and 1.27 with a bit at 1.30 nearer the end when I put the pressure on a bit.
Just watched the video and found it really helpful, so thanks for that, Nellers. I think I'll try a bit of home videoing and go from there, but I'm pretty sure I'm leaning back too far. Probably worth checking out some of the other faults too while I'm at it!
I think my drive length used to be around the 1.24 / 1.27 mark when I was rowing with a higher s/r, so that's perhaps where I should try to settle when increasing the s/r on intervals.
Muttley, as Nellers said, what you were talking about is not totally unrelated and I have tried aiming for about 10m per stroke, but I think I should stop focusing so closely on stats for a bit and think more about form.
Nice rowing both of you. 11 million metres is pretty impressive. I've not yet hit the 1 million mark.
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Concept 2 challenge: 15 minutes
Nov 2024