Ok so I'm getting slower on this, which pisses me off. Because it's still a metcon hell.
However, I think playing around with my mechanics is starting to teach me something: There are no gains to be made up in increasing power output through the legs on this sombitch. They appear mostly to be made in stroke length and arm pull explosiveness.
Maybe this is obvious to some of you but I have very short legs so they somewhat limit my stroke range of motion. I thought by getting more explosive hip extension (ie not collapsing all the way into knees at the bottom) I could get more power output. Which I did but this has not improved my times.
During the first 3.5k I was getting 40-43 s/m (which really I am not sure what that means, just that when I work harder, it goes up.) because on my last attempt at this, the 48 s/m number seemed a wasted effort. The 500M pace was around 2:30. This of course didn't translate to a faster row.
(Epiphany - S/M = strokes per minute.)
On the last 1500M of this row, I let my hip and knee angles collapse and didn't try to get power out of the extension, rather I leaned a bit forward so that my feet were forced to come up of the heel to the toe, and I got a bit longer arm pull which brough my 500M pace to about 2:15-2:20. My strokes per minute still hovered around 40.
I am going to repeat the 5K row next week, I think to test this again. I know I can row it in 22:00. I just know it.
2 comments:
Most rowers do a 5K at s/m (which means strokes per minute) in the 20s. At higher stroke rates, you waste energy going up the slide. So go for a lower stroke rate, but row with power so the /500m time goes down.
Thanks. Who's this? If you don't know me, I am 5 feet tall, so my stroke is short. My legs and arms are muscular but I have a 25-30 percent BF at 152#.
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