Finding "Your" Drag Factor

[Draggon]

Okay team, so I posted this on the Concept 2 forums a couple of days ago, but have had no bites yet...

I ended up taking a week off rowing, but have been back at it for the last two with no bicep pain. I feel like I've improved my technique based on the feedback here though I haven't done a new video to prove it yet...

One thing I did was took jamesg's suggestion to drop the DF to 0. It's been interesting in that as I got used to it, it became my new norm. However, the last few rows, I've been toying around with bumping up the DF, and it seems to make me faster (measured by average pace over the piece). I typically limit my upper heartrate, but at a higher DF, it seems I'm able to do more work at the same HR. That tells me I may have some fine-tuning to do.

My question is - is there an accepted method of experimenting with DF to find your "best" setting? I don't want to just bounce around searching for the imaginary utopia DF if there's a proven way to get kind of close. I'm just a little unclear what to look for. I know DF is a pretty personal preference, but I'm wondering what that preference is predicated on.

The lack of response tells me I either asked a really dumb question that's been answered 100 times, or a very complicated question that has no good answer. To be clear, I'm not looking for "the" answer (42!), I'm just trying to get a feel on how one goes about finding a compatible DF for themselves within the range of 0 to 10 available on the C2. I realize 0-10 is different on each erg (I've even checked the numbers on my own erg, but forget the details), so hopefully that doesn't cloud the discussion...

[hewitt]

http://www.concept2.co.uk/indoor-rowers ... etting-101

[sander]

For OTW rowers, I recommend a damper setting that "feels" like your boat type. This is different for faster boats than for slower boats.

For erg only rowers, I have no idea. I guess it boils down to trying a few settings.

[gregsmith01748]

I'm with Sander on this one. Now, I do almost all of my rowing with the drag around 130-140 because it feels most similar to rowing my boat.

Before I started rowing on the water, I went through the normal phases. Started with the drag factor pretty high, then started reading the forums and found out that the cool kids used lower drag, so I moved my handle down to drags in the 140s.

Then I read the Wolverine plan and it instructed me to use a drag factor of 115 for all my "L4" workouts. I did and it felt weirdly light at first, but it did wonders for my drive speed. I would still up the drag for time trials. Up to about 130 or so for 2Ks and much higher, like 160 or so for 500s. In interval workouts I would generally set it around 130.

If you want to get a bit more scientific about it. You might want to set up a series of experiments. If I cared enough about this, here is what I would do.

- Whole trial lasts about 10 days.
- You will need a pen, paper and hopefully a way to measure HR
- Start after a rest day
- Clean your erg so you can really max out the drag factor.
- Day #1: Set lever to 0, measure and record drag factor
- Setup the PM for a 2K piece and row it as hard as you can, but restrict your rate to 25 spm. This is so that you can do one every other day without having a fatigue related drop off in the later sessions.
- At the end of the piece, record your end HR, time, and drag factor
- Day #2: low intensity steady state workout
- Day #3: set lever to 5, repeat the day #1 procedure.
- Day #4: LIT steady state
- Day #5: set lever to 10, repeat
- Day #6: LIT steady state
- Day #7: set level to 2.5, repeat
- Day #8: LIT steady state
- Day #9: set level to 7.5, repeat
- Day #10: drink many beers, collect all your data, make some pretty charts of pace and HR versus drag factor and share them with your friends.

On the 2K days, you could probably take about a 5 minute break and go on with a normal HIT session, but expect that you'll be a bit slower and more tired-er.

[sander]

- Whole trial lasts about 10 days.
- You will need a pen, paper and hopefully a way to measure HR
- Start after a rest day
- Clean your erg so you can really max out the drag factor.
- Day #1: Set lever to 0, measure and record drag factor
- Setup the PM for a 2K piece and row it as hard as you can, but restrict your rate to 25 spm. This is so that you can do one every other day without having a fatigue related drop off in the later sessions.
- At the end of the piece, record your end HR, time, and drag factor
- Day #2: low intensity steady state workout
- Day #3: set lever to 5, repeat the day #1 procedure.
- Day #4: LIT steady state
- Day #5: set lever to 10, repeat
- Day #6: LIT steady state
- Day #7: set level to 2.5, repeat
- Day #8: LIT steady state
- Day #9: set level to 7.5, repeat
- Day #10: drink many beers, collect all your data, make some pretty charts of pace and HR versus drag factor and share them with your friends.

I suggest you do the drags in the following order 5 - 0 - 10 - 2.5 - 7.5. Also, we will help you and fit a curve through the 5 data points, which will reveal to you that your real drag optimum is at damper setting 4.34522. Then you try that and find that it is worse than 5. Then we will have endless forum discussions on the mathematical function that should be fit to the data.

Greg and i are data junkies. Be very careful or you will get a full scientific analysis on this.

Just making fun.

[gregsmith01748]

Yep. That order drags is better than my suggestion.

I can't wait for the data! I wonder if we can get other people to do the same thing? This could be a cool crowd sourced research project.

Sander: Do you agree with the rate limited 2K as a good test piece? I wasn't sure about the right rate or distance. It seemed like a good compromise to minimize fade through the experiment.

[Draggon]

http://www.concept2.co.uk/indoor-rowers ... etting-101

I've read that before some time ago and remember the bit about sleek fast boats vs big slow boats, but I just reread it and I don't see a lot of specific detail. I have a feeling I'm missing something basic. This part got close, but didn't quite close the gap for me:

On your next stroke, the PM uses the drag factor to determine from the speed of the flywheel how much work you are doing. In this way, your true effort is calculated regardless of damper setting.

and this part is the part I feel like I'm missing... what does that feedback look like? What am I looking for?

The Performance Monitor will give you immediate accurate feedback on each stroke so that you can monitor your performance and determine where you get your best results.

Yes, I feel like an idiot....

[Draggon]

Before I started rowing on the water, I went through the normal phases. Started with the drag factor pretty high, then started reading the forums and found out that the cool kids used lower drag, so I moved my handle down to drags in the 140s.

Then I read the Wolverine plan and it instructed me to use a drag factor of 115 for all my "L4" workouts. I did and it felt weirdly light at first, but it did wonders for my drive speed.

That all sounds pretty familiar!

If you want to get a bit more scientific about it. You might want to set up a series of experiments.

Interesting plan. I suppose this is sort of what I was after, but I'm surprised there isn't an accepted methodology already in place... will have to give this some thought to see if I really care enough to try it...

As opposed to just toying around with different settings and trying to interpret results. I guess that's what it boils down to - I don't know how to study my results to make adjustments.

[Draggon]

And by the way - thanks everyone for chiming in. I'm grateful even if my engineer-tinted brain influences a dry writing style...

[hewitt]

http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/assets ... et_all.pdf

[Draggon]

http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/assets ... et_all.pdf

That looks like it will make some good reading - thanks hewitt!

[Paul Victory]

http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/assets ... et_all.pdf

Very interesting reading. We should have that pinned somewhere as a reference document.