My weekly erg session – 300m pieces

25 July 2015

For the past couple of weeks I have really struggled with recovery, feeling fatigued a lot of the time and struggling in the bigger lifts largely due to the heat. Even last weeks recovery week didn’t seem like a recovery week, probably because I introduced some rowing. It really knocked me for six.

So this week, back in with the weights programme [week 1 of the new cycle] I opted for a rest day mid week where I had scheduled a cardio day which would have been on the erg. Truth be told, it wouldn’t have been a productive session anyway as I could barely walk after heavy legs Wednesday, which had been bought left by one day due to a few things. Instead I rested Thursday and did nothing apart from sleep more.

I am still struggling with nutrition, seriously limited to what I can eat and when. Far too many carbs, no EFA’s and limited vitamin and minerals with poor protein content and quality. I am still constantly hungry and simply can’t get enough calories in nor the right kind [I intend to write a separate piece about this later in the year once I have finished on here and have changed my nutrition back to what I consider its optimum state – it will also be interesting to see how performance etc varies].

Today, compared to the last few ergs I actually felt like I had some strength and efficiency in the stroke, like a positive connection in the drive for less effort. I am fairly confident in what my training structure will look like in due course, but am now considering dropping one of my proposed cardio days of two, to match what I have done this week. Can I really make any gains on just one cardio session on the erg once a week? Time will tell. I will however have the added benefit of nutritional support and a better training environment which could [should] make a world of difference to quality in the session and recovery.

So with the lifting week behind me today I wanted to row and actually felt relatively fresh once I stated. I opted for some metabolic conditioning intervals using 300m as the distance with a fairly luxurious 90 sec rest. Definitely started too soft, but wasn’t to know as my pace has been so erratic due to the heat. Last time I did anything similar to this a week or so ago, I only held 1.34’s – it was 47 degrees though.

Today in a cooler 32 degrees I found a negative split suited nicely to finish a decent training week, only a few more to go then home.

6 x 300m [90r]

1.31.8
1.31.0
1.29.3
1.28.8
1.28.3
1.24.3

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