500m Plan

As a way to approach the whole ‘Rowing Plan’ thing slightly differently, I’m going to use the 500m plan to not only help prepare myself for the 2020 Scottish Indoor Championships, and the 2020 British Rowing Indoor Championships – I’m also going to use it as a chance to slip in some heart rate based training.

The Plan

This is a 5 day plan that will last 5 weeks. With a test after 3 weeks (the Scottish champs for me) then another one 2 weeks later (BRIC).

But unlike the 2K and 5K plans it only consists of BOTTOM and TOP tier workouts:

DAY 1 BOTTOM TIER
DAY 2TOP TIER (HIIT WORKOUT)
DAY 3BOTTOM TIER
DAY 4TOP TIER (POWER WORKOUT)
DAY 5BOTTOM TIER
Weekly Structure for the 500m Plan

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.

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.

The Sessions

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.

The Workouts

This plan started on 3rd November 2020 – so please be patient as I work through the weeks adding in the sessions as I go.

Week 1 Session 0 – BASELINE TEST
Warmup for 20 minutes – then do a 500m test.
Week 1 Session 1 – BOTTOM TIER
4 x 9 min (1min rests) – Split into 3min chunks – 15/18/20spm
Week 1 Session 2 – TOP TIER HIIT
20 sec Sprint / 10 sec rest x 8 – rest 2 minutes – repeat two more times.
Week 1 Session 3 – BOTTOM TIER
30 mins at 20spm – around 2K+18 pace
Week 1 Session 4 – TOP TIER POWER
20 x 1min/1min at 20spm OVERLOAD POWER
Week 1 Session 5 – BOTTOM TIER
3 x 12mins at 18/20/18/20spm

Week 2 Session 1 – BOTTOM TIER
7 x 5mins at 22spm with 1 min rests
Week 2 Session 2 – TOP TIER POWER +Pace
4 x 1min/1min + 4 x 30sec/30sec + 4 x 15sec/15sec increasing pace
Week 2 Session 3 – BOTTOM TIER
30 minutes at 18spm
Week 2 Session 4 – TOP TIER
(20sec/20sec x 10) x 3 with 3 minute rests – All at max pace
Week 2 Session 5 – BOTTOM TIER
40 mins alternating 20 and 18spm every 10 minutes

Week 3 Session 1 – TOP TIER HIIT
20 sec Sprint / 10 sec rest x 8 – rest 2 minutes – repeat two more times.
Week 3 Session 2 – BOTTOM TIER
3 x 10mins at 20spm – power stroke every minute
Week 3 Session 3 – TOP TIER POWER
1min on 1min off x 5 – 4 times. At 20/22/24/22/20 spm
Week 3 Session 4 – BOTTOM TIER
30sec at 500m pace – straight into 19:30 at 18spm 2K+20-22
Week 3 Session 5 – TOP TIER (Scottish Champs for me)
500m test – or 8 x 2mins at 2K pace with 2 min rests
(The test video starts with my race – then goes to a repeat of the Baseline Test warm up and row – for you to do YOUR test