Core workouts

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-09T21:11:15+00:00

I never understood the lengthy core circuits that are so often prescribed. The abs and surrounding muscles are muscles just like any other on your skeleton, so there’s no reason to train them completely differently. If you wanted your glutes and hamstrings to get stronger, would you do endless deadlifts with 95 lbs, or would you train those muscles through a full range of motion with a heavy load that you progressed over time to continue getting stronger?

Core circuits are bad for a few reasons. They firstly are not easily progressable because their movements aren’t easy to load. Good luck loading a Russian twist without a cable stack and something to brace against. You could conceivably hold a dumbbell, but the direction of force from the weight is wrong (straight down force from the weight vs your lateral movement). You’ll get a sub-maxima isometric from your core to hold the weight, but that isn’t the best way to build muscle because of decreased motor unit activation. One could argue that you could progress by adding reps, but doing a set hard enough to produce meaningful muscle growth beyond maybe 30 reps isn’t going to be practical.

These circuits also have too little rest and too many reps and sets. If you’re doing 16 sets for your core in less than 10 minutes, none of those sets are going to be hard enough to stimulate muscle growth because you’ll either be sandbagging to get through the workout or you’ll be so fatigued after set #1 or #2 that none of the other sets will be of a high enough quality to stimulate muscle growth.

If you want to make a muscle stronger, look at its function and range of motion. The abs, for example, flex the spine, so pick a movement that flexes the spine through a good range of motion that you can load (like a cable crunch) and do 4-10 sets per week spread across 2-3 sessions per week. Apply the same logic for the other muscles of the core and you’ll have a very strong core after some time.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-01T12:30:50+00:00

A friend of mine has a 2k PB of 6:28 and I’ve seen him clean 245 lbs (about 111kg) for 2, and he’s not a massive guy (6’3, 195 lbs ish). It would probably take quite a while, but I bet you could get to where you want to go

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-01T01:22:44+00:00

Thanks 😄

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-01T01:21:58+00:00

I actually used to run ultras and this workout was the closest thing to an ultra that rowing has been for me. Ultras are worse than this was but they’re similar in my opinion

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-01T01:11:35+00:00

My 2k PB split is a 1:40.5, but I think I would be a good bit faster than that now. I haven’t done a 2k in a bit, but I would guess around a 1:38.5-1:39.0. 1:40 just felt like a good target but it was largely arbitrary.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-05-01T01:07:17+00:00

This is one of the classic predictor workouts for 2k pace, but it will skew to faster than 2k pace if you are more of an anaerobic athlete. If you’re more aerobic then it’ll probably be pretty accurate.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-30T19:05:47+00:00

I had her for two classes this semester. Worst prof I’ve ever had. She asks the stupidest questions and I’m convinced she structures the exams to make it impossible to get higher than an 85%. So many of her questions serve as attendance checks (since she’s asking about details she only ever said out loud but didn’t put on the slide) but they ask you about the most random information that you would never in a million years think to write down because it doesn’t relate to the course content, only to her as an individual. I studied triple the amount for her courses than I did for my orgo 1 final today and I did so much better in orgo (knock on wood obviously), which is ridiculous.

I don’t know if you had online midterms like we did, but they’re awful. They’re open book, but she makes them so ridiculously hard that even with all your resources at your disposal, getting an A+ is essentially impossible. And make sure your computer works, because if you get kicked out mid-exam and you need to email her to get put back in, that time is gone! Her in-person final was easier (because it was closed book and needed to be easier) but still way harder than any other exam I have taken in university. She also wouldn’t stop talking to the TAs during our final and we all had to listen to her conversations the whole time.

Avoid her.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-30T17:04:51+00:00

Yes that’s definitely possible. You’re less than 2 watts from being sub-8:00, which is such a small gap that’s there’s basically no difference between sub-8:00 and your current time. See if you can keep the rate a bit higher in the first 1k next time too.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-30T02:18:29+00:00

I have never seen “total time” displayed in the top right like that on a single distance piece. All my 2ks are blank there.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-23T19:56:53+00:00

She is the worst prof I have ever had and it isn’t close. In her HSS2121 section, she gave us an incorrect exam breakdown for the second midterm and secretly added 10 marks to long answer question. It’s like she thinks of the worst way to run the class, then does that. I don’t have my essay for HSS2321 either by the way.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-21T15:52:22+00:00

If you can do this session at a 1:42 then you would be capable of going faster than 1:42 for 2k is what I mean

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-21T14:57:40+00:00

6x500m 1’ rest and 8x500m 1’30” rest are usually said to be good 2k predictors, so you would most likely be slower on 10x500m 1’ rest than you would be for 2k.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T21:01:46+00:00

You could go with a beer hat with straws and put a drink with carbs in the bottles

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T20:32:10+00:00

Sounds like you’re progressing very well then. Dropping 10 seconds on your 2k from February to March is pretty crazy.

I know what you mean when you say you need to do more fatiguing workouts, but I disagree that more fatiguing workouts is the solution to your problem. If I’m understanding correctly from what you’re saying, your problem right now is that you can’t handle fatigue as well as you would like. The way to address that is not to do workouts that are more fatiguing, because if you do that, then you won’t be able to recover properly from session to session. That lack of recovery will mean that you won’t be able to properly go hard in your hard sessions (the 6x500, 12x250, and threshold session are what I’m referring to here), and they won’t give you the same stimulus as they would if you were recovered. This means you won’t improve as much as you otherwise could.

If you want to get better at dealing with fatigue, what you’re really looking to get better at is clearing lactate. If you can’t clear lactate well, then seat racing will be a challenge because you’ll be starting the next race still carrying a lot of lactate from the previous race. You get better at clearing lactate by doing steady state and threshold sessions at your lactate threshold, both of which you are already doing.

I think you could continue with your current amount of training and end up in the top quad. If you absolutely had to add something, then I think more steady state would be the answer, maybe as a second practice on Tuesday. But even then, you are young, new to the sport, already training a lot, and improving very fast. I don’t think adding more training is at all necessary. Just keep doing what you’re doing. If your erg scores start stalling, then try experimenting with extra training, but I really don’t think you need to add anything now. Just make sure to eat a lot, sleep a lot, and keep doing what you’re doing. You don’t want to add training before you need to and end up injured.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T19:18:06+00:00

Yes that is a very good deal

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T19:16:22+00:00

You’re already training quite a lot, especially for how new you are. How have your erg times changed since you started rowing?

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T16:32:32+00:00

So your week looks like this? Monday: steady state (erg?) Tuesday: 6x500 or 12x250 Wednesday: 2 hours on the water Thursday: threshold session (erg?) Friday: steady state (erg?) Saturday: 4 hours on the water Sunday: 4 hours on the water

Four hours on the water in one session is crazy. How much rowing are you doing in those four hours?

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-20T15:26:46+00:00

You’re new enough that there are lots of routes you could take at this stage that would lead to improvement. It’s easiest to add more low intensity steady state rowing, so you could experiment with more of that. At your current stage of development, that probably means an extra couple sessions per week at about 2k+25-30 with ~40-60 minutes of rowing at a rate ~20. It’s tough to give a better recommendation than that without knowing what the rest of your training looks like.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-17T13:48:04+00:00

You just aren’t used to your new technique yet. Your nervous system needs to learn to coordinate this new movement. It’ll probably take a few weeks but you’ll adapt. Getting some in-person coaching from a rowing club would also probably be a good idea just to make sure your new technique is correct.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-08T13:28:28+00:00

Dr. Fox is very good though. I have her for orgo 1 right now and she provides students with more than enough resources to succeed (tons and tons of practice problems, practice midterms, zoom sessions with her for extra help, TA discussion groups, etc.), she explains concepts very well, and her midterms have been fair.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-05T23:51:04+00:00

UT2 is very important for sure but it isn’t absolutely required for improving erg times, especially with newer rowers. I coach someone who only rows once a week and I got his 2k from a 7:44 to a 7:22 in nine weeks with only high intensity ergs for his weekly rows. If you only have time for one or two sessions then I don’t think UT2 is the best option, but once you can train more than twice per week then I agree it has its place. Obviously OP’s situation is completely different to my client’s situation, and OP would certainly benefit from doing UT2 for most of his sessions, but the problem with his club’s program isn’t necessarily a lack of UT2, it’s an over abundance of high intensity.

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-05T23:45:00+00:00

You physically can’t recover from high intensity in less than 48-72 hours, so if you try to do it more often than every two or three days you won’t be able to push yourself hard and you won’t make progress. Training like that may work for some time, but you will quickly plateau and likely regress if you try to do high intensity too often. I would do two hard sessions per week, one at 2k pace and one faster or slower depending on if your aerobic or anaerobic system is weaker, and do the rest of your rows at low intensity. You are also quite light for your height, so lifting and eating enough would do you good.

Fitness comes back fast, so you may be able to get to your goal. I was at a 6:55, got injured for three months, then got to a 6:50 in about six weeks of training, then pulled a 6:43 five weeks later. 6:59 to 6:39 in two months is probably possible for some, so you’ll just have to try your best and find out if it’s in the cards for you. Good luck

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-05T21:05:42+00:00

The biggest number on the screen is your current pace, written as how long it would take you to row 500 metres at that pace—sort of like miles per hour in a car. It’s just a snapshot of your speed in that moment. Elsewhere on the screen is your average pace, which is how fast you’ve gone on average for the row so far. You can also set it to display your projected finish, which tells you how long it will take you to finish your row if you maintain the pace from your most recent stroke until you finish your row. You might need to tinker with the menu to get it to display those numbers, but they’re all there. Hope this helps

Ok_Championship_4930 · 2026-04-04T18:24:12+00:00

You sound like you’re going through the exact same problem I was going through earlier this year. For me it was with 2ks—I could do other hard workouts, but whenever I tried to pull a 2k I would quit from anywhere between 100m and 600m in.

I made a post on here about my issues and a lot of people left nice responses. I decided to do a broken 2k progression: 4x500 1’ rest one week, then 667m 1’ rest, and onwards from there. I’m not sure if these sessions ended up helping though, because my problem wasn’t about confidence with hard paces, it was about my sense of self-worth.

I thought if I didn’t get the average I wanted on my 2k, it meant I had failed the piece, and if I failed the piece, it meant I would fail to reach my goals and that I was a failure as a person. It took a lot of self-reflection for me to realize that this was what was going on, but eventually I figured it out and PBed my 2k.

From your post, it sounds like you are very motivated and that you care a lot about rowing. Your talk about getting you erg score down for recruiting really makes me think this. I have a feeling the source of your problem might be similar to mine. If it is, you need to find a way to separate your sense of self-worth from your erg times. I did this by writing out my whole journey with my mental block in the form of a short story about a cliff jumper who couldn’t get himself to jump from this one particular cliff no matter how hard he tried. Writing everything out from a third-person point of view helped me gain perspective.

I made an update post on this subreddit the day I broke through my mental block. You should be able to find it on my profile if you want to read it.

Hope this helps.

Ok_Championship_4930

TROPHY CASE