Ergo Urban Myths

[old] Pete Marston · Post by **[old] Pete Marston** » July 14th, 2005, 9:39 am

I don't think saying sub 6:30 was harsh - he did say to be considered bloody fit. There are plenty of 30's (and some 40's and 50's) hwt's who are under 6:30. Most of them you would consider bloody fit, but that's the standard that was asked for. For example: 30's - Dan Staite, Hywel Davies, Mark Mitchell, Gary Blackman (first 3 around 6:20) 40's - Graham Price (6:21), Mike Caviston (6:18) 50's - Graham Watt (6:25), Rich Cureton (6:28) So if people in their 50's are going under 6:30, can't be too hard for someone in their 30's? Still need to be very fit, but that was the question.

[old] dadams · Post by **[old] dadams** » July 14th, 2005, 10:25 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(Carl Henrik @ Jul 13 2005, 04:12 AM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>If you think that you can get a good erg score and show up at a rowing club and claim you would be one of the strongest in the crew, you are very wrong. Even if you would learn to row very well, there may still be those who are 15 secs slower than you on the erg, of equal weight, and still beats you on water. Starting out as an erger, the more time and experience I gather in the on water rowing community, the more I see how little erging means for moving a boat fast. Erging is a discipline in itself and some people are better at erging than rowing, even if they train for both, and for others it's the opposite. </td></tr></table> Carl couldn't have hit the nail on the head any better. I consider myself a pretty good erger (5:47.1 best 2k time). That all changed when I entered the boat. They are two totally different worlds. Sure, a club coach will look at your erg scores (so will National coaches). But more for the fitness level than for anything else. Just because you can hammer it out on the erg doesn't mean the boat will move like that as well. Doesn't really answer your question, but I thought I'd give my two cents worth on Carl's comment. Dwayne

[old] ajspook · Post by **[old] ajspook** » July 14th, 2005, 10:45 pm

I think a lot of you have missed the point to my question, obvioulsy I didn't phrase it very well. I'm pretty sure I got the time I was looking for though from some of the posts. <dribble mode on> I asked a similar question about 5 years ago, I was just getting into cycling, I was considering joining in the local road season, and was asking people how quickly I would need to get up a certain hill to be competative, anyway I got a heap of answers, the typical anwer was an A Grade rider could do it in 10 mintutes.. Anyway I decided to start a website up that let local users enter their times, I even got a local Olympic cycling gold medalist to enter his times. Anyway I now know the following information on that climb: Best time: 12:40 by Brett Aitken (in 2002, he won 2000 Gold in Sydney) A Grade Rider: 13-15 minutes (there are perhaps 20 A Grade riders here in Adelaide) B Grade Rider: 15-17 minutes.. And so on. Anyway, my point to this story is I was able to set some realistic goals, maybe if I trained hard I could get into A Grade, but at the lower end. So I knew if I could haul my arse up that hill in say 14 or 15 minutes, I'd pretty much be at the top end of cyclists in Adelaide, not the best, but would be considered a pretty fit rider with this time. Obviously most people that are doing ergo's are goal orientated. People who are in erg clubs, or rowing clubs know what to aim for. But the average gym rower such as myself who is still goal oriented (who would make up the vast majority) need a way to know what's attainable, and what's not. </dribble mode> I would class a local A Grade rider as 'bloody fit', Lance Armstrong might not. So the sort of score I want to aim for is my definition of 'Bloody Fit'. It is a realistic aim. Sure I could aim to get in the 90% percentile, but what does that mean? To me nothing. I want to acheive a similar fitness I had in riding, but don't have that point defined anywhere. I think C2 need to look at making a more objective scale to cater for the many 1000's of hacks such as myself. I'd be happy to start up a website for training/ergo results that has a scale for us mere mortals to aspier to. Perhaps a sub 7 minute club? that might work, or is 7 minutes easily acheived by my Granny who has never rowed an ergo.

[old] ajspook · Post by **[old] ajspook** » July 14th, 2005, 10:50 pm

Just thought of another way to phrase my question. If you went to your average gym, full of generally fitter than average people. But just normal gym people, not ergo freaks, but fit people. Visually you can look around a gym full of say 100 people, and out of those there might be say 4 or 5 who are really fit, or shall I say bloody fit. If you were to pop those 4 on the ergo, would you expect most of them to pull sub 6:20's?

[old] chickenlegs · Post by **[old] chickenlegs** » July 14th, 2005, 11:27 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(ajspook @ Jul 14 2005, 09:50 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Just thought of another way to phrase my question. If you went to your average gym, full of generally fitter than average people. But just normal gym people, not ergo freaks, but fit people. Visually you can look around a gym full of say 100 people, and out of those there might be say 4 or 5 who are really fit, or shall I say bloody fit. If you were to pop those 4 on the ergo, would you expect most of them to pull sub 6:20's? </td></tr></table> none. let's see... 100 people in a gym, half would be women (no woman has gone sub 6'20"), 50 men. more than half would be below 75 kg (lightweights), none of which would likely get close to sub 6'20". that leaves 25 men, and only a handful would be over 85 kg and over 1.85 m. in my rowing novice year there were about 20 young men with very little rowing experience (none at the beginning), most in their early 20s, almost all above 1.85m and 85 kg and most regarded as fit as they had atheletic backgrounds. at the end of our first university rowing year the top erg score in our novice group was 6'24". top score on the varsity team was 5'56". breaking 6'20" is hard, and if you do not have the right build for it, if you are of average height (1.75m or so), it's really, really hard.

[old] ajspook · Post by **[old] ajspook** » July 14th, 2005, 11:39 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(chickenlegs @ Jul 15 2005, 01:57 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(ajspook @ Jul 14 2005, 09:50 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Just thought of another way to phrase my question. If you went to your average gym, full of generally fitter than average people. But just normal gym people, not ergo freaks, but fit people. Visually you can look around a gym full of say 100 people, and out of those there might be say 4 or 5 who are really fit, or shall I say bloody fit. If you were to pop those 4 on the ergo, would you expect most of them to pull sub 6:20's? </td></tr></table> none. let's see... 100 people in a gym, half would be women (no woman has gone sub 6'20"), 50 men. more than half would be below 75 kg (lightweights), none of which would likely get close to sub 6'20". that leaves 25 men, and only a handful would be over 85 kg and over 1.85 m. in my rowing novice year there were about 20 young men with very little rowing experience (none at the beginning), most in their early 20s, almost all above 1.85m and 85 kg and most regarded as fit as they had atheletic backgrounds. at the end of our first university rowing year the top erg score in our novice group was 6'24". top score on the varsity team was 5'56". breaking 6'20" is hard, and if you do not have the right build for it, if you are of average height (1.75m or so), it's really, really hard. </td></tr></table> So chicken legs, I think you get my point. If I aim for sub 6.20 I might get disappointed? I'm starting to get some realistic answers I think.. P.S. I've just registered www.paceboat.com and www.ergoscores.com, I might set these up with the aim of giving normal people something to aim for..

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » July 15th, 2005, 12:10 am

Ajspook, It sounds like you are an age 19-33 heavyweight? If so, a 90% of the 2k WR time for you would be: 5:37.0 / .90 = 6:14.5

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » July 15th, 2005, 12:16 am

Adam made this great web site for calculating PATT percentages. This calculates the percentages for all 10 events. <a href='http://www.permanentmarking.com/patt/index.php' target='_blank'>http://www.permanentmarking.com/patt/index.php</a>

[old] jamesg · Post by **[old] jamesg** » July 15th, 2005, 1:22 am

AJS Erg performance is heavily dependent on age, weight, height, technique and endurance. The only ones that you can change are technique and endurance, so get going. Rather than a numerical goal, you need a benchmark. Good ones could be 200W @ 20, HR @<140 for 10k or an hour. There is a little work involved. If 20 is too low for you, use any other reference rating. Do the distance/time at your preferred rating, drag etc, keeping HR <140 and compare your average W output with the 200 reference. Check your Watt for Watt performance every time and take notes. Have a good look at your records after 6 months, around 100 w/o of this type. Whether you are at 80% or 110% of the benchmark is not a problem. "Absolute" goals, maybe using age/sex/weight category world records, can also be of use; the only difference will be that you get a different percentage. It's best to use Watts however, times are flattened by the cube law, while W differences are starker and relate directly to what we do.

[old] Matt Newman · Post by **[old] Matt Newman** » July 15th, 2005, 1:23 am

Using the if you went to your average gym scenario - lets pretend its a REALLY big gym of 1000 people and out of those there might be say 40 or 50 who are really fit.... My rough estimates: HWT under 6:20 - 0.1% (1 person) HWT under 6:30 - 0.5% (5 people) HWT under 6:40 - 1.5% (15 people) HWT under 6:50 - 3.0% (30 people) LWT under 6:40 - 0.2% (2 people) LWT under 6:50 - 0.6% (6 people)

[old] Neb154 · Post by **[old] Neb154** » July 15th, 2005, 2:02 am

I'd say that general defintions of "fitness" do not really apply to the erg. Breaking 7 I think would be a commendable effort. I have only reached the highschool rowing levels, but a top heavyweight higschool rower is almost never below 6:25 at graduation, after months of training. For someone to just hop on the erg and pull 6:20, at any reasonable age, seems at least to me, "bloody" impossible. 6:20s is about where good varsity college lightweights are, so I think that'd be too high a goal for yourself. For a "normal person", breaking 7 seems like a good goal.

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » July 15th, 2005, 3:12 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(Matt Newman @ Jul 14 2005, 10:23 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>My rough estimates: HWT under 6:20 - 0.1% (1 person) LWT under 6:40 - 0.2% (2 people) </td></tr></table> There is a 25.6 second difference between the lightweight and heavyweight records. From 6:02.6 to 5:37.0 is 92.94 percent. To be equivalent to a 6:40 lightweight performance, a heavyweight would need to row at least 6:11.8 for a 2k or faster.

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » July 15th, 2005, 3:15 am

Thus for every lightweight who rows a time of 6:40, there should be at least 10 to 20 heavyweights in the range of 6:11.8 to 6:20.

[old] Matt Newman · Post by **[old] Matt Newman** » July 15th, 2005, 3:36 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(John Rupp @ Jul 15 2005, 07:15 AM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Thus for every lightweight who rows a time of 6:40, there should be at least 10 to 20 heavyweights in the range of 6:11.8 to 6:20. </td></tr></table> Hmmm - lets test that theory - sounds way out to me. 2004/5 season online rankings Male LWTs under 6:40 = 180 Male HWTs 6:11.8 - 6:20 = 165 So based on that evidence there is less than 1 (not 10 - 20) HWT in the range 6:11.8 to 6:20. Thought it sounded strange - maybe I've miss understood JR's point....

[old] Bill · Post by **[old] Bill** » July 15th, 2005, 4:09 am

AJS, I am a very ordinairy garden type average normal person I've been using the erg for 3 years now and would be ecstatic if I could break 7:00 for 2k. (47yo male heavy) Suggest you use that as a preliminary worthy goal - if its too easy for you then you will probably be able to settle down upon something better. You need to get some feedback from the forum as a starting point, test it, and settle upon your own targets. There is a rule of thumb that might be helpful to you for estimating your time for one distance if you have a result for another - you probably have something similar for cycling and running. "Double the distance add X seconds to the pace" X seems to vary between 3 and 7 seconds for many people. You will need to do some tests to see how it fits you. In this context "pace" means time taken to cover 500m and you will see lots of paces quoted like this 2:05 which means - 2mins 5 second to do 500m Aussie indoor rowing club SCIRC meets on Yahoo discussion groups you may find that interesting. Bill

Concept2 Forum

Ergo Urban Myths

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training

Training