A few things

If your heart rate isn't up, you probably aren't using your legs enough, and perhaps not pulling hard enough. On every stroke, I get up on my toes. Great calf and hamstrings workout, translates well to pointing your toes while you're kicking, and pushing off the wall on every turn.

Second, get one of these things that holds your phone for entertainment purposes.

Third, ensure you are engaging your lats on the catch, through most of the stroke. Same with your core.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

I think with ski erg, the best way to work swim catch is replace handles with swim paddles and from there, just to butterfly pull with XC skiing double pole legs and core motion. This way you are still doing the high elbow two arm catch, and you are getting an aerobic workout and and the part of pull from nose to hips your core is doing the exact same thing in XCski double poling as butterfly stroke which will translate to good core endurance for regular swimming (not to mention for running). There is no point mimicing freestyle on concept2 because you lose the aerobic aspect because you will have to take out the core and legs from the loading.

  


thanks, those are good tips. Just to be clear, are you referring to the swimming or skiing movement?
I have no problem getting my heart rate up if doing the skiing pattern. It's just the swimming that I'm finding it difficult to keep aerobic.
So if I understand correctly you're mixing a swim pattern and skiing pattern? Raise toes and flex legs but with a high elbow catch and pull? Are you doing double pulls or alternating single arms? Which resistance level?


Wow, I didn't even know this was a thing. I'll definitely get one! It's going to make it so much more enjoyable!!

I doubt there is any way to get your heart rate up doing swim movement on the Concept2 Ski Erg. The output will just be too low without engaging the core and legs. Your best chance is classic ski motion with arms and step ups on single leg (right leg step up before right arm pull down, compress down and crunch with core, initiate start of pull with core, and finish with left lat, then shoulder, then hands)

I see, thank you! I presume you mean facing the ski erg (a bit like

but with high elbows), and definitely not looking away from it (like
)
, correct?.

Are any swim paddles fine or is a specific kind reccomended? Any tips on how to replace them?

I'm a bit confused, but I assume by "swim" motion, you mean single-polling. It will be a little harder to get your HR up doing that, yes, because you produce less power. You can still use your legs when you are single-polling. It's difficult to explain if you haven't nordic skied, but if you are doing single-pole technique, your opposite leg would be kicking with your hand. IE left hand, right leg.

I do mostly double-polling. I find the reduced effort in single polling is not really worth the slightly more swim-related motion. When I had access to a skierg, I used it 4x a week. 3x was just long aerobic sessions, 90% double polling, with a few minutes of single polling as a sort of "recovery." The 4th session would be super hard intervals, and that was also double polling for the HR and muscular endurance. As far as drag setting goes, the short answer is that it depends and is complicated. I'm not sure what would translate best to swimming, but I would guess a lighter setting since it's non-weight bearing, and the pull against the water is actually terribly inefficient compared to the polling in nordic.

My arms/elbows will actually look more like the reverse of a swim catch, but that's fine since you're upright. The engagement of your lats, delts, tris and bis should be roughly the same. I used to live in Minnesota and Utah, so I did actually nordic ski, so most ski erging was done to benefit nordic, and the swim carryover was just a bonus. Now I live in Texas...no snow here!

There's a lot of good technique videos on youtube that will also help you out!

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

fantastic, thank you.
I think you're basically saying to just do the double polling classic technique, which is what I've been doing most of the time. I've done nordic skiing a few times in the past during holidays so I know the movement. It's still good to remind myself about it with the videos, thanks for that also.

By "swim motion" I meant trying to force a movement more similar to swimming (with high elbows) even though it isn't the natural thing on a skierg.

After watching the videos Dev posted, I don't think it's worth the higher risk of injury to do the 'swim motion.' After all, what does it get you? You don't need to train the recovery part of the stroke, you just need to train your swimming muscles to stay in shape.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

I find this post pretty timely because I recent got a ski erg, after drooling over them for several years.

My plan for this year has been to use it as a replacement for swim training since I don't have access to a pool currently, and don't have real access to open water in the summer. I've been toying with the idea of just using the erg this entire year with an eye on a half distance event in September in Niagara Falls (if it runs). I did that race several years ago when I had easy access to open water for swimming but rarely partook, so I would be curious to see what the trade off is if I just erg but do it much more frequently and consistently.

Currently I'm doing the Concept2 "workout of the day" twice a week; the short and medium workouts. I'm ramping up to doing more but trying to stay uninjured.

If there's interest I would document my progress on a thread here (or in this one).