In the opinion of those who have been on a Vasa Ergometer, do you think 100 meters on the machine is equal to 100 meters of swimming in a pool and or open water?
In the opinion of those who have been on a Vasa Ergometer, do you think 100 meters on the machine is equal to 100 meters of swimming in a pool and or open water?
I think it depends, in part, on how fit you are. If I do a hard 5’ set on the Erg, on the lowest resistance setting, it says I barely went 2:00 per hundred meter pace. I can do around 1:45 pace in the pool swimming that hard.
At a given stroke rate, you can swim hard or easy in the pool. On the Vasa Erg, a given stroke rate is a given effort level. Soooo…if you’re more fit than me, you can make the Vasa go as fast as you can go in the pool. I can’t.
YMMV…
If I do a hard 5’ set on the Erg, on the lowest resistance setting, it says I barely went 2:00 per hundred meter pace. I can do around 1:45 pace in the pool swimming that hard.
YMMV…
The people at Vasa told me that 400m on the Vasa is equivalet to 500m in the water, i.e. 80%. That is because the vasa only uses the upper body and does not give the additional propulsion from the legs. Another way of looking at it is that it is equivalent to swimming with the pullbuoy, which is slower than regular swimming.
So if you can do 400m in 8 min on the vasa, you should be able to do the same time in the pool with the pullbuoy. If you do freestyle, you should be able to do 500m in 8min.
It is supposed to be equivilent to 100m in open water - no pushing off walls so should be somewhat slower than pool swimming. Personally I found a 1:20 effort was reading around 1:40. I wouldn’t use it to count as swimming in my log anyhow so as long as it is consistently 20 secs off of pool times I wouldn’t consider it to be a problem. I probably would pay more attention to the watts rather than the pace. It is a good supplement but I wouldn’t use it as a substitute for the real thing.
-leh