slightly better sleep last night, but it took 2 herbal sleeping pills, a pharmacy supplied sleeping pill and then another herbal and a paracetamol while attempting to get back to sleep at 3 after my sick son woke me up

feel awful today again and ... felt disgusting in the gym so this stops now. I am gonna go really clean from a nutrition perspective and leave the alcohol totally alone at home for the next few months. The challenge for me is always to get through the first week..once I do that, I'm generally very good from a discipline perspective, so I just need to pull up my big boy pants and do a better job.

Training

Press - 5x5-50kg
Bent over Row - 4x8-70kg
Deadlift 5x5 - 90kg

I dropped the weight on my press down and practiced having my hands in vertical position as per the comments above. it felt really weird, but I'm gonna persist with it.

I deadlifted for the first time in a few months and so kept it very light to hopefully keep the DOMS manageable.

happy to have re-introduced some pulling into my program again and the shoulder pain has already receded substantially...I was really dumb not to work that out for myself, but I do appreciate the comments up thread

Just use suicide grip on Press imo. I use bulldog aka compression grip for both press and bench but if you have trouble getting the bar further into your palm with thumbs around then I'd just drop the thumb altogether.

(disclaimer: 2p2's weakest presser)

So I think I've settled on a training structure and schedule for my rowing. I've drawn a lot of it from this text, which was really useful

http://www.rathburn.net/rowing/train...2_abridged.pdf

specifically
- a broad structure of session types for my plan to train 4 times per week
the pace and stroke rate for my UT1, UT2, AT & TR sessions based on my 2k time

but I've also kept some elements of what I was doing before...specifically the interval sessions and more regular PR attempts...which fit my 'need' for regular check ins on progress to spur me on. the plans on the link go 6, 12 and 18 weeks between time trials and I just don't think I can cope with that.

So the plan is a 6 week schedule where I'll train my 2k PR at the end of week 6.

Basically it'll be 3x2 week schedules....with a different time trial attempt at the end of week 2...either 5k, 1k or 2k.

Week 1 will have 2xUT1, 1x Interval at AT (longer intervals...eg 1500, 2k), 1x UT2
Week 2 will have 2xUT1, 1x Interval at TR (shorter intervales, eg 1k, 500 etc), 1 x time trial...

at the end of each 6 week period, I'll have a deload week and then I'll use my (hopefully improved) 2k time to set the UT1, UT2 and Interval targets for the next 6 week plan

for the first schedule, I'll be using

1.54.5/500m as my UT1 pace
2.00.0/500m as my UT2 pace

I'll be picking the exact UT1 and 2 workouts from the Level 4 schedule on table 5.10 on the link, which I hope will be challenging but still attainable

Training

1k warm up 2.07/500

12mins @ 1.54.5/500m - 3146m stroke rate 24
5 mins rest
12 mins @1.54.5/500 - 3144m stroke rate 24

1k warm down 2.17/500m

wow...I wasn't expecting that to be as challenging as it was - was a real struggle to stay on pace. Had an ok, sober sleep last night but still not feeling my 100% self at the moment..not sure if that was why it was so tough, or if I'd underestimated it.

It's certainly the case that what I've been thinking were 'UT1' sessions, were actually UT2 sessions.

also, thanks guys for the form feedback on my row video. What struck me is that I finish my pull with the handle a little too high and perhaps leaning back a little further than ideal? I think that may have been a feature of rowing at only 20 strokes a minute in that session, but I concentrated on a slightly shorter stroke and lower finish today and it felt pretty good

Re: form - it looks really good. Your shins are supposed to stop at horizontal at the catch, so perhaps stop it a bit earlier like Monte said. I do the same thing and it's so difficult to judge where horizontal is when you're rowing. It is a bit of wasted energy though.

Re: the plan - I read that last summer but don't remember any of it now. I do remember that it seemed pretty solid though, so there's that. The most recent UT1 session is definitely not UT1. They aren't supposed to feel like a struggle and that you can't finish. You're supposed to finish strong and itching to row again. It might just be that your UT1 and UT2 paces are slower than what the pdf says. If you need to look at it from a different point of view to make you feel great, your 2k pace is so much better than your UT1 and UT2!

Thanks for the input

Yeah, the UT2 pace in particular is really punchy and you may be right that I need to tone it down, but I’m gonna persist with their times for the first few weeks and see how I fare before I make the decision. A few weeks of hard training shouldn’t hurt and might help anyway.

I’m interested now what Monte’s coach has given him for his UT1 and UT2 pace - I still think Monte is fitter/faster than me as a rower despite my slight edge in times, but I think we’re close enough for our pace to be comparable so if his coach is setting him similar or different paces, that’ll be an interesting input

He doesn't really give me target paces (or, well, he didn't at first - more on that later); he gives me target stroke rates and, like Arjun says, tells me how he wants it to feel. For UT2, I generally warm up for 10 minutes, reset the monitor, and then start the session proper at around 15 spm, which ends up being around 2:08 to begin. Stroke rate and pace naturally ramp throughout the session as I continue to loosen up, until I'm finishing around 2:02-2:03 at 17+ spm. My UT2 session averages have decreased from ~2:07 to 2:05 over the last month or so once I stopped being stubborn and did the sessions how he wants. I used to be angsty about what it would do to my times if I ramped like this and would just try to do the same pace/rate for the entire session, but in retrospect, starting that fast really fatigued me and made the latter part of the session more of a struggle than it needed to be. "Feel like you had a great session and could have done more" is his general training philosophy.

UT1 is similar; the basic instructions there are to warm up (I do 15 minutes), spend 5 minutes at 22 spm, and then ramp to 23-24 spm over the next 20-25 minutes. He had to give me a target pace for this (which I still exceed) because my UT1 is still too heavy at the catch; I still need to be faster at the catch, with lighter pressure than UT2 - this is why my first UT1 pieces being "too fast" was "bad", because I wasn't executing correctly.

I'd avoid taking those charted numbers as gospel and more use them as an indicator of where your fitness could relatively improve; that UT1 session might have been a bit too intense. My UT1s have settled around there recently, but it may still be slightly too quick. UT1 sessions should, as per Gardner, be a "quick tempo AEROBIC effort. Your should be breathing quick but not hard or uncontrolled. Your legs will get tired but will not burn."

Hope that helps.

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welcome Miami.

I hope Miami can out alpha loco Up Itt

* - OHP is not my area of expertise. I'm probably most helpful with bench press and DL form if you do any of that.

I would never use the suicide grip. There's a reason its called that.

I agree with others that having your wrists be straight under the bar is more efficient. I'd squeeze the bar hard with my thumbs around it.

I would take the hat off or at least turn it around so you can press the bar closer to your center of gravity. The weight is way out in front of you and you're leaning back to compensate.

If any of that feels bad in the shoulders or other joints, I would question whether or not doing barbell OHP is good for you to do right now. Have you tried DB OHPs? Do those feel bad on the shoulders too?

I had to stop OHPs a while ago because I mess up my neck every time I do them. I also stopped barbell rows because they mess up my elbows, wrists and shoulders due to my hands being in a fixed position. I figured out other ways to get strong and (somewhat) balanced. I have learned as I have gotten older, there's no good reason to do movements that cause joint pain.

I thought UT1 was up to 80% of max heart rate. An elite athlete can hold slightly faster than ut1 for an entire rowing marathon. So that you striggling with 2x12' is a bit disturbing.

I think Gardner said that even a high school rower can hold ut1 for 70 minutes.

For a runner, I would be able to pick off exactly whats going on. But with a rower, no clue. Maybe you been photoshopping fast c2 rower times?

Also, I thought you looked okay for 200lbs in the rowing video. But in the press video you look a bit soft bro. You shooting for the Goden Bacon look? You need to drop twenty for the Golden Rich look.

But on a serious note, a lot of my training is based on my current shape and I am shooting for my training paces to eventually match equivalent goal pace. So exactly what you are doing. But i do combine it with heart rate and rpe, and all three almost always match.

In this case your rpe did not match this ut1 training pace. RPE overrides both heart rate and pace. If you had an accurate hrm, we would have a better idea what happened. They cost $80 bro, arent you a fellow rich like the montecore? Thought you would have the 1k garmin by now.

As someone from a lifting background, I can tell you that training sessions near TR for my goal times are joke easy. And UT2 is easy also but I use to deteriorate fast when I first moved over to endurance.

But I was awful at UT1 sessions to AT sessions. The chart did not match my rpe. Too hard. So I had to eat a little ego and go slower. UT1 should still be somewhat enjoyable and AT sessions should feel like a toothache and not a migraine. My man Nick Willis taught me that.

thanks for this

hat off is a good tip in conjunction with the bar being too out in front but it makes perfect sense and I can see it in the video.

tbh, the shoulders hurt the same when doing barbell or DB and the pain has reduced significantly in the past 10 days since I've re-introduced some pulling. I've just done a bench session and I didn't feel my shoulder pain at all for the first time in a few months, so I do think/hope that it's an impingement than I can reduce/eradicate by being less dumb with the balancing of my lifts

i very much agree re the point about cutting out exercises that cause issues/injuries. I wrote in my OP that I have cut out back squat, squat clean and squat snatch completely. Shame, as the Snatch is by far the most fun lift I've done and I used to build my training back in the day around squatting twice a week but they just kept getting me injured. And to date, my gym attendance has been far more consistent since I stopped these exercises

re UT1, I honestly don't know. I took the UT1 target pace off my current 2k PR time as per their chart. I would guess the reason it was too hard is that despite having good natural ability for this sport but I'm not as 'trained' for it as my time suggests? Or maybe their time is too punchy and unrealistic? Or maybe it was just an off day. the current pace is a little slower than my current 5k PR but faster than i think I could do for a 7.5k PR

please don't be doing the bolded...we don't accuse each other of lying where I'm from.

re the weight..it's honestly not something I really define myself by, but I would say I can lose 5kg of mud fairly easily and that's basically what I'm hoping to do over the next 6-8 weeks so that I come into the 50th celebrations looking lean. Your/the internet's esteem about my nudes isn't what I'm going for but I think I'll be happier at that weight and will hope I can avoid any drop in performance.

Dropping 20lbs would be a struggle but achievable, but I don't think I have the will to do it. I was a while ago now but I ran my marathon at 182lbs. that involved 12 weeks of running a lot and only doing one weight circuit per week and I was 18 years younger.

I have been contemplating buying a HRM and I do think it's inevitable. I used to own one but I gave it to a friend who has a dangerous heart rate abnormality but insists on training hard anyway.

It would annoy me to do so because I got a fitbit for Christmas and so to buy something else so soon seems extravagant. But yep, the expense isn't an issue, it would just annoy me.

we'll see re the UT1 and UT2 pacing. It's all an education for me and I'm fairly open minded and ego free about how I train. I'm also not super rigid or anal about following rules.

I just want to enjoy it and get faster. So I'll almost certainly be re-appraising the schedule as I go and I do expect that I might have to drop the pace of the UT1 in a few weeks, but it's also the case that I haven't been looking after myself recently and that I think my engine has suffered a little as a result.

Training

Bench
2x8x20kg
2x5x50
1x5x70
1x3x80
1x2x90
1x97.5
1x102.5
1x105
1x107.5 PR
1x110f

3x5x90kg

3x15 Facepulls

As I'm about to re-jig my lifting program and probably cut down a little on my pressing, I wanted to attempt a 1RM in the bench, which I haven't done yet. Previous PR was 105kg (I'd thought when I wrote the OP that it was 107, but I'd recorded the failure on my excel file and I'd misread it) which had come off the back of me being at my lifetime heaviest and also off the back of two consecutive Smolov Jr cycles (do. not. recommend.)

very happy with the PR, although slight disappointed that I didn't lift 110...I didn't think it was possible before the session, but 107.5 went up very nicely...easier tbh than the 105 went up...but then 110 felt like it was a jump of 20lbs, not just 5lbs

maybe if I attempted it again I'd be a little smarter with the weight jumps?

IDK, but...either way, it's a PR and I'm really happy. I've never been a good bencher/presser and progress has always been very slow, so I'll take whatever I can get.

as above, also happy that my shoulder pain has reduce significantly and I'm embarrassed I didn't realise far earlier why this was happening

re pacing

so I've gone through the last two months of Monte's log and looked at his UT1-UT3 rows and it appears his pacing is...

UT1 in the 1.54/500-1.55/500 region, mainly in the 20 and 25 minute ranges
UT2 in the 2.05-2.06/500m range

given we are close enough in likely pace for a comparison to be useful, this encourages me to stick to the UT1 pace guidance I'm using .. at least for the next few weeks, but I might drop my UT2 pace back a little, as I know that eg a 40 min 10k would be a UT1 row not a UT2 row.

As per my response from yesterday, yes, that's about right - UT2 at 2:04-2:05 is pretty comfortable for me these days, and within the confines of correctly rating up, ~1:54 feels ok enough for UT1 at this point in time. Whether someone tends towards anaerobic or aerobic dominance wrt their energy systems probably matters in terms of what your actual splits look like in comparison to what's on the idealized chart, so as loco said, it's mostly a soft target as opposed to rigid guide. That aerobic base building apparently takes years and my UT2 relatively sucks seems reasonable.

Congrats on the bench PR! Did you get any videos of the heavy benching? Form is of the utmost importance in benching and I can be of great help with that.

sorry, I missed this post yesterday.

that's really interesting about doing the negative split for the UT2 and UT1...like you used to, I just set a pace target and try to stay on it the entire time.

in your post I can really see the advantage of having a coach - linking pace plus stroke rate to technique cues. I'm not aware of any differences in my stroke for the different pace/stroke rates..apart from doing a longer stroke when my stroke rate is lower. SO all I'm doing as I attempt the different sessions is to 'row at xx pace for yy minutes', as opposed to approaching each session with specific technique goals in mind. Probably makes sense given how young I am in this

and yes, agree with the point about not getting wedded to the prescribed pace...albeit despite my age, I still have the alpha tendency to think 'harder/more intense effort = better', so I'm ok with learning the hard way for a few weeks that this pacing is too challenging for me, because I still assume that a few weeks of overly intense work won't kill me.

I'll definitely be attempting the negative split and looking to ramp up the stroke rate across the sessions though.

thank you for taking the time to post

this makes perfect sense but is a paradigm shift for me.

thank you. tbh, the locations of the benches in my gym makes filming difficult, so I'll have to ask someone to film me, which I always get a little embarrassed about.

I won't be going close to 1rm again for a while, but I'll film a set when I'm doing a 5x3 in the next few days