Strokes Per Minute

[upl47sea]

Hello--

A little background info--I am a 31 year old ex-D1 rower. I had my first child 8 months ago and started erging again 5 weeks ago. I have been doing 30 minute pieces 5x a week and rowing about 6500 meters. I have been logging my workouts and notice improvement and I feel stronger. I have lost 11 lbs so far.

The past two days I have noted that my SPM have dropped to 17 (instead of my consistent 18-19) in the heart of my workout. No notable drop or spike in my heart rate.

Is 17 too low? Should I always aim for 18-19?

[heroesfitness]

You need to change your program as your body has adapted to your intensity, I would look at doin 4 to 6 weeks of high intensity interval training to increase your lactic acid threshold, look online for some good HIIT training on the rowing machine.

After this program go back to your orignal one and you should start to improve on your past results

Any problems go and see a good PT in your area to design the program for you.

[hjs]

Hello--

A little background info--I am a 31 year old ex-D1 rower. I had my first child 8 months ago and started erging again 5 weeks ago. I have been doing 30 minute pieces 5x a week and rowing about 6500 meters. I have been logging my workouts and notice improvement and I feel stronger. I have lost 11 lbs so far.

The past two days I have noted that my SPM have dropped to 17 (instead of my consistent 18-19) in the heart of my workout. No notable drop or spike in my heart rate.

Is 17 too low? Should I always aim for 18-19?

17 is a bit low, this way your stroke is very depended by strenght and less about aerobic fitness. For base 30 min sessions 20/22 would be better. Keeping the same hf you now use.

The fact you got a lower rating for the same speed/hf in itself is positive ofcourse, but its better that increase in fitness in erging faster and not getting a lower and lower spm.

Don,t go doing hitt like stuff. Rowing in a endurance sport, so most of your work should be aerobic. For racing you need speedwork, but that can be trained in a relative short while.
To train your anaerobic fitness, its wise to do some faster shorter work, but that does not need to be much or 100% max. After a session a few fast 1 min. a few times per week would work.

[Bob S.]

It depends on your goals. If it is weight loss and/or fitness, its looks to me that you are doing fine just as you are. You have a good strong stroke and are getting in lots of meters per week. For fitness and weight loss that should be sufficient and the stroke rate doesn't really matter, especially if you are comfortable with it. If you are interested in competition or just improving performance, then it would be worth while to incorporate shorter faster pieces at higher stroke rates and/or doing an occasional longer distance time trial.

Your 6500m in 30' would rank in the upper 45% or so of the women in your age bracket this season and it is just done as training rows at low rate, whereas the ranked pieces were likely mostly done as serious time trials. I have no doubt that, if you did a 30' time trial, your result would be well up into the high ranks. Not surprising, considering that you are an experienced rower.