Lean forward at the catch. Try to get your chest on your thighs this will keep the seat from going to far forward causing undue stress on the knees and weakening your drive. 11 to 1 on the clock. 11 is the catch, 1 is the finish.

Thanks; this makes sense. I appreciate the "keep it simple" approach and am relieved at your feedback that I'm not outstandingly bad. I was prepared for the worst, so glad it is not the case!

I'm increasingly convinced that pelvic tilt is the universal link in all activities. Biking, running, swimming and now....rowing. I see your point via the video and am happy to work on that as it is a focal area for me in general.

The chin point is too funny. I'd read (here and elsewhere) to row with a high posture, as if sitting behind a tall guy in a movie. Clearly overcompensating and need to relax above the shoulders.

Thanks for the feedback! I may come back for more as I make progress.

Scott

Any time man.

There are some good coaches on here (Martin Crotty leads by a bit in terms of achievement and ability, other than he went to the wrong University), so it can be a good resource.

Aim to get the rock over all done by 1/4 slide. I'd look for a bit more rock over too. 2:30 split isn't really doing anything for someone as fit as you so you aren't really getting connected. You should be looking to hang off the handle with the leg drive and then the body swing and arms just follow through. You should be able to feel the weight partially come off your seat (as an exercise you can lift it right off, but you will need someone to move the seat or you will have a painful landing!) Look for more ratio between the drive and the recovery, think about 1:2 for low rate work so that will mean pressing harder on the drive but taking more time on the recovery.

Some good points have been made by others, but I'd maybe add a couple:

- At the moment your body angle isn't really changing, when what you want is to go from 11 o'clock at the catch (before you take a stroke) to 1 o'clock at the finish (your back angle at the finish is fine) . Try just sitting at the finish, and rocking your pelvis over. You should feel yourself roll over your sit-bones, and when you do you'll notice that the seat actually moves backwards first. This is what you want to look for each stroke as you rock over. Once you've rocked over, your back stays still until you start taking a stroke. If you find it hard to hold the position right at the catch, try dropping your feet slightly (the biomechanical advantage of being able to row in a good position is much larger than being able to push in a more flat line). Keep your upper back relaxed, it doesn't have to be rod-straight, but don't let it collapse over your knees.

- During the recovery phase, you can keep your arms more relaxed, they don't have to be locked out and you don't really need to grip the handle too much. Having said that, you need to get the body rocked over and hands away before your knees come up.

- Your drive is fine, aside from the back position at the catch. Once that's sorted, your back angle should open gradually with the leg push, and the back and legs should finish at the same time. You're getting the arms involved at about the right time, so stick with that. You have a bit of a tendency to draw the handle in a bit low - aim for your sternum or where a hr monitor would be (yes it's super annoying to erg wearing a hr monitor, lots of rowers draw in just above that).

- One of the best drills to figure out whether you've got the drive right is to row without your feet in the straps. It will feel really weird, but you can tell whether you're losing connection because you'll feel like you're falling off the back of the erg. Don't do this for a whole session, maybe just for a few minutes' warm up.


Get some more work on the legs, control your rate (18-20spm is about right for Z2), and I'm sure a lot of this will come quite easily.

Already some good advice, but I have some thoughts below. I will caveat that certain aspects might only be water-relevant, and as all lightweights like to say, ergs don't float (as a heavyweight, I sure wish they did).

The rowing stroke is tricky, as (much like a swimming stroke) it feels clunky until you've learned to fluidly tie all of the different components together. It can broadly be broken down into "the stroke" and "the recovery". While you have things to work on, I do think your stroke is fluid and conservative such that you are not putting yourself at huge risk for back strain or other injuries (in contrast to many people who look like they are trying to power clean when the start on an indoor rowing machine).

1. The stroke
When you're at the top of the slide and beginning your stroke, you should be leaning slightly forward. As you start to to take the stroke you want to feel like you're "exploding" with your legs and glutes as you "catch" resistance (not unlike a swimming stroke); your legs are far stronger than your arms/back and should accordingly bear the brunt of this to both maximize output and limit injury risk (high torque on back = bad). As you continue down the slide, your legs should be the driving force until about halfway down the slide. As the back "half" of the stroke starts, your legs should still be extending as your back/shoulders as you lean back a bit/open while pulling handle to your sternum with the arms. Your legs/back/arms should naturally finish their motion at the end of the slide. Something to consider as you go through the stroke is that the handle should be level (no vertical displacement); while this is more important in the water for boat stability, you can open yourself up to losing resistance if you constantly raise/drop the handle (though this might have been due to our terrible ergs in school).

In the video you posted, there are a couple things that look good and a couple things to fix.

Good things:
- You are catching with your glutes. This is often the hardest thing for people to understand. This mitigates the torque on your back/stress on your arms (which will tire out first).
- The stroke is smooth; you're not throwing your body everywhere and look in control. This should make it easier to tweak your motion.
- You are ending the stroke correctly with the arms pulling the handle to your chest at the right time. I would lean back a little bit more and pull the handle a little higher on your chest, but the motion looks decent.

Things to work on:
- Your catch looks a little weak, though you did mention having a conservative effort level.
- You are sitting mostly upright at the start of the stroke and barely lean back across the. While this is much better than overreaching and leaning too far back (leads to back problems), you do want to be leaning forward at the start of the stroke and finish leaning back. safely maximize the length of your stroke and use your back/shoulder/arm muscles to generate power when appropriate.
- Your back is moving with your legs moving shortly after you catch (thankfully after catching, as mentioned above). You really want to leverage your lower body's strength over the first "half" of the stroke.

2. The recovery
At the end of the stroke, with your back at full extension (for the stroke) and the handle at your chest, almost roll the handle down to your stomach. Then go back up the slide in the reverse order you came down. Get your arms out to full extension, then lean forward with the back, and then finally pull yourself up the slide with your legs once your hands are over your knees. Your arms and back should be as extended as they'll get by the time you move the legs (though take care to be fluid and not "lock out"). When you're at the top of the slide, you can transition from recovery back into the stroke by giving your hands a slight vertical lift to "catch" the resistance of the erg, then explode with the glutes/legs as you start the stroke again.

Good things in video:
- You are naturally entering the recovery with your arms. Again, this is one of the more challenging parts of the stroke to get, so you're a step ahead of most.
- You're not rushing to get back up the slide. While this may be more relevant in an actual shell (imagine a harsh start to recovery in an 8-man boat... a huge jerking motion kills boat speed), it's important for maintaining "ratio". It takes energy to both go up and down the slide, but power is only generated on the stroke. If you're accelerating your recovery too much, you're both wasting energy that won't be used to generate power and exposing yourself to potential stroke inefficiencies (catch can get out of sync, you can lose resistance from the erg, etc.). Obviously a glacial recovery will limit your strokes per minute and impact your ability to output power, so it's a balancing act.
- You're getting pretty high up on the slide, which helps maximize stroke length.

Things to work on:
- Focus on getting your arms and back forward before moving with the legs.
- You look like you're reaching a bit at the end of the stroke, which has the effect of pulling your back a bit forward as well.
- Your recovery looks a little bit accelerated relative to the stroke itself, though understood that at a lower effort level it probably stands out a bit more.

3. Improvement suggestions.
- Implement tweaks subtly while doing normal rowing (small changes here and there) and give yourself time to adapt. It can feel really awkward to change until you've worked on specific movements hundreds or thousands of times. Drills work well; feet out for warmup is a great way to practice staying in control and finding balance between stroke and recovery.
- Video yourself frequently, and use a mirror to get a side perspective.
- Try some stroke-rate based workouts to help find the balance between the stroke and recovery. One that I am partial to is structuring 10' blocks with 4' at 16spm, 3' at 18spm, 2' at 20spm, and 1' at 22spm. Speed *should* change with the change in stroke rate, and these types of exercises really help you get a feel for how much you should be adjusting your recovery as you increase intensity.

General reply to some of yuo and question. I gave GreatScott the visualization of jumping backwards from a squat while hanging on to the handle. I was thinking about that visualization during my run today and then hit the rowing erg and realized that I was not engaging the top of my calves during the catch phase and finishing extending with the toes. When clap skates were invented for speedskating the the heal was liberarted so that the calves found me more active during the finishing phase, suddenly the times in speedskating went way down.

I realized that I was not engaging with full power with an inactive lower leg. Today I did a set of 8x400m hard with 100m cruise and during the 400's I was easily holding 10-20W extra power with no delta in perceived exertion (I realize that rowers almost never use watts, but coming from a triathlon background, I only use watts because I can translate the meaning of this easier).

Also I am 146 lbs or so at 5'6", so way in the lightweight category. Everyone says that I should be down in the low 20's and barely over 30 strokes per minute going hard. Instead I find that when I row at 180W, I am more like 30 strokes and when get up to 260W its more like 37 and if I go any higher between 260W and 300W I am up at 40 strokes per minute.

I feel with a short body and less pure strength and a shorter duty cycle due to height, it makes sense that my stroke rate should be higher than a heavy weight. Also if you don't care about rowing on the water, and only fitness rowing, maybe there is a different technique for lightweights than heavy weights.

The visual that comes to my mind is Sun Yang swimming versus Janet Evans.

By the way, I do the feet on straps for 1km on every row and I can move along at 210W (or just under 2:00) or so with no straps. Once I get a few seconds lower per 500m, it gets tough but generally I have firm contact.

Wow, Slowtwitch delivers! This thread makes me want to hang out with the rowers. Looking forward to following the sport more closely now that I have a sense of the community. I may even get a scull up at the lake.

I’ll report back after I put these nuggets of advice to work.

Rowing feet out is very hard (and not really possible on a static erg) at anything harder than a steady pace, so don't worry about that.

You don't want to be pointing the toes at the finish when rowing. If your heels are coming up off the footplate at the end of the drive, it means you're losing connection (try pointing your toes doing the feet out drill). In the drive, once you've reached the peak of the power curve, everything else is pretty much just trying to hold onto that, rather than adding more.

Lots of rowers use watts these days. Training in rowing is a bit weird, as a lot of making boats go fast is about training a crew to work together, rather than training optimally for an individual.

Rate and intensity aren't necessarily correlated. Because of the way the flywheel provides resistance, you can push harder at a given rate and still have more resistance without needing gears like you do on a bike. All rowers, be they lightweight women at 57kg or open weight men at 100kg+ follow broadly similar approaches to rate.

I'd really recommend keeping the rate around 18-20 for Z2-type sessions. Generally speaking, lightweights tend to rate higher than open weights, but this gap gets smaller as you get up to higher level open weight athletes. Also it only really applies to higher intensity work where lightweights tend to prefer tapping along at a slightly higher rate (+2-4spm) (something that is likely to be true for other endurance athletes).

High intensity work is likely to take you anywhere from 30-38 on the rate. 40+ on a static erg is really quite high, and I don't know many people who spend a lot of time there who aren't quite good rowers doing it during short intervals. Tempo/Z3 work is usually going to be mid to high 20s.

I think one of the best things about the erg (and where it fills a gap in general endurance training) is learning to develop force. Rate-capped intervals where you try and produce as much power as possible at a low rate (20-24) are amazing. A famously unpleasant session is 30mins at r20, as hard as possible. Higher intensity intervals at 24 or up to 30-32 are also great.

(background: I'm an ok university lightweight rower who's started getting into triathlon over the last two years)

Thanks, Just to be clear, every one of my rowing workouts is intervals. Normally, every swim workout is intervals, but I can't swim now. So I am doing the equivalent of some swim sets on the erg (in time). My sessions on the erg are short and generally after a run or bike warmup (like 4000m-6000m....sometimes I am on there 2x per day...yesterday was 4000m after my run and 3000m after my ride)

100m swim/400m running ~ 400m on erg
200m swim/800m running ~ 800m on erg (but I use 1000m)
400m swim/1600m running ~ 1600m on erg.

so all my work after my warmup is in the range of 200W to 260W depending on how long or how hard (I am currently around 66 kilos). These tend to be in the 30-37 range.

On the use of calves for sure, the heels never come off platform (whether in straps or out of straps). Basically what I was alluding to is active use of calves to finish stroke vs them doing nothing at all which is what I was doing.

Anyway, I was actually wondering if there are any differences between optimal erg technique and optimal on water technique. If you never care about going on water and you don't care about doing things on the erg that would not work on the water, but which would allow you to work harder (more watts) for less perceived exertion, are there things that rowers do that gains them more on the erg that they cannot transfer to water?

18 is awfully low and requires a pretty solid rug to keep that chain moving and watts up. I think it would be better for him to develop the sensation of spinning a bit more than grinding. That would be like telling a newbie biker to keep everything below 70 rpm (I’m just ballparking here). There’s not a right or wrong answer here, but personally, I would go 20-22 (maybe even slightly higher) for Z2 work.

To non-rowers in this forum, the advice you are getting in here has generally been focused on making you a better rower (which is good advice!). There are things you can do on the erg that will allow you to generate more watts but wouldnt make a boat go faster. So, ask yourself is your goal to become fast on the erg has or do you ever plan on taking to the water?

In my case, the quick answer for now is that this machine is a rehab+fitness machine for running and bike and where I can do way higher intensity more often than in those two sports and I think its better total body fitness than run or bike (although I cannot do as long duration).

But I suppose I don't want to totally eliminate the chance of getting on water at some future date when I am retired and have way more time, as I can imagine it must be quite blissful. That's more like 5-8 years from now though. I can't see the time to get to the local club during my working life. Its just way too far out of the way and involves traffic etc.

Also I could see how on water the boat would have some vertical displacement between strokes with the movement of of the people inside the boat relative to the oar that you don't have on the erg

I imagine the heels never coming off depends on ankle flexibility. I’d rather have my heels come off slightly to fully recover the hips. I am noticing how towing and the flow from lower body to upper body has helped my oly lifts and putting pressure through the floor.

Ok this "workout" kind of evolved. There was no plan. I ran through the trails near my house and partway through a 15km run ended up at the track and ended up doing a 5000m....initial km at the track was 5:06 and then decided to keep going for another one and gradually round them down ending the last one at 4:30 pace. Final 5km was 24:24. Actually quite dissappointing given all my run mileage but the weighing scale does not lie. Then got on the erg and just started playing around and doing some intervals and cruising and I realized at the 3400m point if I did a moderate hard 1600m I would break 21:30 for 5000m, so I picked it up a bit and was rowing at 1:58 per 500m speed. So I ended that 5000m rowing basically doing a mix of intervals and cruising 3 min faster than going "pretty hard" for the 5000m run. I think I can get the 5000m run down to 22:30 with a proper race effort and the 5000m row, 20 min should be doable (its holding 210W, but I have never rowed moderately hard for that long). Generally I do 400m, 1000m and 1600m hard rowing or 20 strokes super hard and 20 strokes super easy. I never go moderately hard for any longer than 6+ minutes.

Old thread, I know.
Anyone still erging?
I got my C2 pre COVID and used it some, then not so much. This fall I decided to do the Holiday Challenge. 100,000 meters in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Seems easy, only about 3000 meters a day. Due to much of life and other activities I only had 12 days I could hit the erg. When I could, I mostly did the Workout of the Day and then something else to add up the meters. I finished the challenge with a few bigger sessions for me.

I'm thinking of trying to hit 1 million meters by end of 2024-5 season in April '25. Not too many 100k months planned, I'll take it easier than that.

Yes, pretty regularly. But differently than you. Every since I retired from competitive rowing like 20 years ago, I just find no enjoyment in slogging through lots of meters. I use the erg for power, testing myself at the old benchmarks of 500m/1000m/2000m. I get the vast bulk of my endurance-paced stuff on a bike.

I'm the opposite - aerobic intervals on the erg (AeT/UT2), but any high intensity on the bike. Easy cycling is so boring and my glutes fall asleep if I don't erg. Good for a 5k @1:43/500m (and helps with top of the pedal stroke when in the aero position)

Starting in August I (55m) committed to 2x/week rowing sessions. Figured that I needed some different exercising and started rowing. Very slow and tentative at the start, and gradually working up duration and intensity, while doing all I can to keep good form.

It's been a revelation for me. Feeling better all over. Gradually starting to jog again without hip and knee pain. My cycling fitness has stayed strong and I'm feeling better at high intensities. Back has been feeling better than it has in a long time. My hypothesis is that the leg and core strength has turned the clock back for me.

Today I did 1000m warmup, then 3x1000m and 4 x 500m to end, 1 min rest in between each interval. I can keep my 500s in the 1:55 range, and my 1000s in the 4:00 range. I'm going to start at least 3x weekly workouts for 2024, and am hooked. Feeling better and stronger than I have in the last 7 yrs or so.

This thread has been helpful. Thanks to the experts who have contributed.

How are you doing against those old benchmarks. I’ve always thought that is I’m am fit and putting the work on the erg I could maybe get close to old 6k times but can’t imagine matching times on the shorter stuff.

Not terrible given I'm now 50, and my rowing days were in my 20's and highly competitive. Around 5s/500m slower, and that's with 1/100 the rowing training volume from back then. I think it's like collegiate swimmers, that highly efficient muscle memory from countless hours just sticks with you. Maybe 10s slower for the 500m...just got a 1:29 in a CrossFit workout, and I'm pretty sure I could go well sub 1:20 Back in the Day (tm).

I don't think it's the same with running. I could not run 400s within 5 seconds of my old collegiate 800m/1500m pace. No way.

While we’re on a rowing topic…the closest thing to rowing on the ST training log is paddling. What does it take to get rowing added along maybe with aerobic points for the effort?

1:29 is like holding 500W for 1.5 minutes. I assume this equates to holding 500W for around 4.5 minutes on the bike? How much do you weigh. That is solid. I see your old 1:20 equates to 683W !!!

so in a way, you can say it is only losing 10 seconds, but its more like losing 25% or so of the wattage over roughly three decades. That seems reasonable though in terms of losing ultra high end, where 20 seconds would come from purely anaerbic contribution!

Times are very impressive at your age. But that’s the type I gap I meant when I said I expect a huge drop off in times at the shorter distances. 10s/500m slower is huge. It’s just so hard to produce that power at our age( I’m just a couple years younger)

He also mentioned running drop off. Running takes into account weight (as in weight gain). At least in rowing, if you gain say 5 kilos you don't have to carry it against gravity, you just have to feed it with oxygen, and it MAY help you produce more top line watts. In running, you have to carry it and the heat dissappation penalty is massive from the extra weight (assume most people may be less lean at 50 or 60 than at 20). Assume for rowing (erg) you can just run a fan over your body with more airflow to evacuate the heat from being heavier.