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As a way to approach the whole ‘Rowing Plan’ thing slightly differently, I originally used the 500m plan help prepare myself for the 2020 Scottish Indoor Championships, and the 2020 British Rowing Indoor Championships – I also used it as a chance to slip in some heart rate based training.
This is a 5 day plan that will last 5 weeks. With a test after 3 weeks (which was the Scottish champs for me) then another one 2 weeks later (that was BRIC).
But unlike the 2K and 5K plans it only consists of Low intensity workouts (which I refer to as BOTTOM TIER) and Max Intensity, which I call TOP TIER workouts.
What you need in order to be good at the 500m race is power – and the fitness to hold that power. The BOTTOM tier sessions give you the fitness to get through the race, and the TOP tier sessions will give you the power and speed that you want to hold.
You could replace one of the BOTTOM tier workouts with a MID tier. But what I’m doing with this plan is guarding against training in the ‘Middle’ zone.
You’ll notice of course that this leaves 2 days ‘hanging’. If you’re working hard enough through this plan, you should definitely need one of those days as a complete rest day.
I advise using both as rest days – but I know how it is! Just don’t do anything too intense on the other rest day.
If you do end up doing a max intensity race/time trial / competition event on that day, you may want to change one of the MAX intensity workouts the next week to a Low Intensity, to let your body recover.
But you know you.
The plan begins with a BASELINE 500m row, to set your current ability. It then ends with a 500m row, to reveal your improvements.
The full YouTube playlist for the RowAlong workouts is here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8ookhrQKwvLEbjOccuyAK7E3lObaSW13
The TOP tier sessions will be either high intensity, fast, speed workouts to get your speed up on the machine and make you work hard, so you’re able to face into what you’ll be feeling during the 500 race – or they’ll be power sessions, all about wringing out every last watt of power from your body.
The BOTTOM tier sessions – this is where it gets interesting. They will always be steady state, longer rows. But the difference this time round is that as well as giving you a traditional pace guide (2K+18 etc) I will be rowing this based around the Maffetone system for controlling heart rate.
The MAF heart rate is calculated by subtracting your age from 180. Which in my case, means I don’t want to see my Heart Rate go over 135 (I’ll allow +/- 5 beats but always try to ease off / speed up to get to 135bpm.
An alternative to this is to keep your HR between 65 and 75% of your maximum (as I’m not in total harmony with the cookie cutter approach of 180-age).
But the key is to not go above this effort level in the BOTTOM tier sessions. Keep this as a general fitness, 02 building session, and make sure to go nowhere near the MID TIER workout. This will help build your foundation general fitness level – and then the TOP TIER workouts will be the ones where you can push and exhaust yourself. And if you do them right, you won’t have the energy or desire to push these BOTTOM tier workouts.
The Setup
You can do this on any rowing machine – but it may be that the pace guides I call out will be more accurate on a Concept 2 than on other machines. But as I give effort guides for all rows, you should be able to work out the range you need to row at for the monitor you have.
When setting up the monitor – if it’s an interval workout, I recommend setting the REST periods to UN-DEFINED on the Concept 2. Otherwise, we will end up out of sync. Ideally, you’d programme in the intervals, and have the full data to refer back to – but because of the delay, it’s better to choose undefined. And in the case of the sprint intervals, to lump the effort and rest together.
I hope you enjoy Rowing Along with me. Please get in touch either by email or through the various socials if you have any feedback or suggestions. If you wish to become a Patreon, use the link below.
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