First Impressions On The Slides

[[old] John Rupp]

Carl,<br /><br />Yes I noticed that right away. There is definitely much less body and air movement with the slides and more heating up. Puddling on the slides and bungee means making sure they are protected and then dried off well afterwards. I have the garage door open and winter is coming so this helps. Otherwise some kind of air circulation would be helpful.

[[old] John Rupp]

A major thing is it is much easier to pull the erg back to my body -- i.e. or my body forward for recovery -- than it is on the erg.<br /><br />It was likewise easier to pull the erg back to my body on the model B, than the C.<br /><br />It would seem the downward sloping railing on the C would make recovery easier, but my feeling is that the reverse is true. Think if the entire erg (or rather, one's body) had to be pulled back up the railing each time for recovery, which effectively is what happens. This is more difficult when the railing slopes to the front than when it is level. <br /><br />For one session or in one week it probably doesn't make much difference. But when training over a long period of time, then it does. <br /><br />The slides help to compensate for this, as the weight that is pulled back up the railing each time is much lighter.

[[old] PaulS]

<!--QuoteBegin-John Rupp+Oct 18 2005, 09:24 AM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(John Rupp @ Oct 18 2005, 09:24 AM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A major thing is it is much easier to pull the erg back to my body -- i.e. or my body forward for recovery -- than it is on the erg.<br /><br />It was likewise easier to pull the erg back to my body on the model B, than the C.<br /><br />It would seem the downward sloping railing on the C would make recovery easier, but my feeling is that the reverse is true.  Think if the entire erg (or rather, one's body) had to be pulled back up the railing each time for recovery, which effectively is what happens.  This is more difficult when the railing slopes to the front than when it is level.  <br /><br />For one session or in one week it probably doesn't make much difference.  But when training over a long period of time, then it does.  <br /><br />The slides help to compensate for this, as the weight that is pulled back up the railing each time is much lighter. <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />Ah, finally we're back to the "180deg out" phenomenon. For a while there, things were seeming far to reasonable. <br /><br />Shouldn't this all be in the Thread dedicated to JR? Please stick to the rules, it makes it much easier to find and follow the discussion.

[[old] John Rupp]

Back on the erg today..... arghhhhhhhh.<br /><br />I did the same session as yesterday, with a slightly longer warmdown afterwards. The middle of the session consisted as follows:<br /><br />ERG<br />10x 60s with 15s rests at 1:57.1 pace<br />the last 4 were at 1:55.5 pace<br /><br />This is 1.5 to 2 seconds slower than yesterday on the slides and felt harder.

[[old] John Rupp]

The erg felt sluggish warming up but then so did the slides the last 2 days. <br /><br />I was expecting to do be able to do the same pace for repeats, and for them to be easier than before from incorporating the same movements from the slides. However, I found that my movements were already the same, and I had been doing the same thing before, i.e. pushing with my legs. However, the major difference is that drawing the erg back up (sliding forward) is much more difficult on the erg, i.e. moving body weight instead of the fan, and not having the bungees to toss the momentum back and forth.<br /><br />Regardless, at this point and based on just this one session so far, the slides appear to be about 1.5 to 2 seconds faster than the erg.

[[old] GutBustin']

Curious to see whether you come up with a new formula for your SPATT percentage, or if it will just be a constant added to the existing one.<br /><br />GB

[[old] John Rupp]

I concur with FrankJ, that the slides are much more fun than the erg.<br /><br />Rowing on the erg today felt like drudgery, after being on slides the two days before. Also I am not nearly back up to par yet, so that makes a difference too.

[[old] John Rupp]

<!--QuoteBegin-GutBustin'+Oct 18 2005, 12:19 PM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(GutBustin' @ Oct 18 2005, 12:19 PM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Curious to see whether you come up with a new formula for your SPATT percentage, or if it will just be a constant added to the existing one.<br /><br />GB <br /> </td></tr></table><br />I won't be making a new percentage for the slides. <br /><br />The difference depends so much on the weight of the rower and, anyway, C2 only has the two divisions by weight.

[[old] Carl Henrik]

<!--QuoteBegin-John Rupp+Oct 18 2005, 07:20 PM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(John Rupp @ Oct 18 2005, 07:20 PM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I concur with FrankJ, that the slides are much more fun than the erg.<br /><br />Rowing on the erg today felt like drudgery, after being on slides the two days before.  Also I am not nearly back up to par yet, so that makes a difference too. <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br /><br />It's strange...Some people (including rowers) look at erg they say it's so boring because you are not getting anywhere when in fact you are getting few decimeters forwards and backwards every stroke. If this movement is minimized to just a few centimeters by using the slides, the same people may say it's more fun? Where is the logic <br /><br />Personally I think the slides are fun as well...but sweaty.

[[old] Laupi]

I love my slides - they feel relaxing for long rows as more steady and independant for muscle rest over time. Can use legs only, or one leg only or arms only for erging - then giving full body action after a certain rest time - long rows feel more durable for mee.

[[old] John Rupp]

Experiment #2<br /><br />I did some max splits last week, first on the erg then the slides, <br />doing 6x 50m with 90s starts. I did 1 set on October 15, 16, 17, 18, <br />no set on the 19th, and two sets on the 20th, as follows:<br /><br />Erg<br />day 1: 99.0, 97.3, 96.3, 96.2, 95.3, 94.6 at 1:36.45 and fastest at 1:28;<br />day 2: 98.8, 97.4, 96.6, 95.3, 94.1, 93.9 at 1:36.02 and fastest at 1:28;<br />day 3: 96.5, 95.0, 94.1, 94.0, 93.6, 93.4 at 1:34.44 with fastest at 1:27.<br /><br />Slides<br />day 4: 97.5, 98.6, 97.2, 97.9, 95.9, 95.8 at 1:37.15 with fastest at 1:29;<br /><br />This was my first day of ever doing sprints on the slides. I have done them quite a few<br />times before on the erg, so am more used to them on the erg. However, the 1:00 repeats <br />had been faster on the slides, so my expectation was the sprints would be faster as well.<br /><br />I had noticed during the orginal first couple of days on the slides, that it took awhile <br />to get going and the same for getting up to speed each time on the 1:00 repeats. However <br />this could have been due to it also being the first days of me being back rowing after a layoff. <br />Since then I've been rowing most of the time on the erg and have been feeling much smoother <br />again, though not quite back to where I was before the start of the summer. <br /><br />This first set of sprints gave me considerable difficulty on the slides. The first drive<br />was fine, shooting the slides to the front, then bringing them back on the recovery. But<br />then the second drive didn't get them back to the front again, as they resisted that and<br />seemed to stay stuck in the back, no matter how hard I was pushing with my legs or how<br />long I was going back at the end of the drive. This same issue continued through the end<br />of the set, remaining unresolved, and left me with a puzzle to solve.

[[old] John Rupp]

I skipped the sprints the next day, while thinking of possible reasons and determined to<br />find out how to get the slides to the front on the sprints. The 6th day I did 2 sets to make<br />up for the day missed, and used the first set as experimentation and warm up for the 2nd.<br /><br />Slides<br />day 6.1: 105.2, 100.1, 96.0, 97.1, 96.2, 96.6 at 1:38.53 with fastest at 1:29;<br /><br />Building into these more slowly gave me a chance to observe and see what was getting <br />my legs to the front as the speed was building up faster and, more importantly, building<br />up to speed from a start. This definitely helped. I was surprised by the 3rd one coming <br />down already, but the next 3 didn't go any lower. My legs were getting to the front now<br />but the time wasn't getting down any lower. <br /><br />I want to mention that day 4, the first day of sprints on the slides, results were so far away<br />from erg results that my thought was to stuck with doing them on the erg. However I wanted<br />to solve the start problem first. <br /><br />This 1st set on the 6th day felt a little better but not much.

[[old] John Rupp]

The 2nd set went a bit better.<br /><br />Slides<br />day 6.2: 94.5, 94.8, 94.1, 93.9, 94.6, 93.8 at 1:34.28 with fastest at 1:27.<br /><br />Aha! The first one surprised me as it was 1.3 faster than the fastest of the 12 previous<br />sprints on the slides. Also the max splits on the first 3 were consistent at 1:27 pace<br />and my overall average was slightly faster than my average on the 3rd day on the erg.

[[old] John Rupp]

The cause of the puzzle was that my first recoveries were taking too long in comparison<br />to the speed of the drive and fan. Thus there was a lot of time and energy lost in recoveries,<br />while the the fan was getting up to top speed. The remedy to this was to cut the length of<br />the recoveries way down after the first few strokes, this way delaying that recovery time<br />until the fan was going much faster by the 3rd, 4th, and 5th strokes.<br /><br />I have seen of people doing this on the erg before but didn't notice much difference.<br />Now that I see what a major difference it makes on the slides I will try the same on the erg.<br />However I can usually get to top speed by the 4th or 5th stroke on the erg. I don't know if<br />it is possible to get it going any faster than that but we shall see.<br /><br />I have learned a lot from this experiment and am looking forward to more.<br /><br />A comparison of sprints on the slides with the erg is not possible yet, until I do quite a few <br />more sets of them on the slides. However I'm not planning to do any more of them for awhile now.

[[old] PaulS]

Are you sure that the Slides are level? Sometimes teh bungee tension needs some adjustment also. to do this, pull the Erg all the way to tone end or the other and let it go, it will bounce back and forth finally settling to a stop, note the position (should be close to the middle of the slide). Repeat from the other end. Adjust the bungee tension until it settles in the middle of the slides.<br /><br />