Shorter Duration Programme

[TommyT]

Hi guys, just discovered this forum as i'm getting back into a bit of rowing.

I was after some advice on shorter duration programmes for improving 2k times, I've previously followed the Wolverine & Pete Plans but with a couple of kids now and a busy full time job I don't get the time to follow them properly.

I'm currently doing the 5k Pete Plan as with the shorter rests I can do some of the sessions but i've read it's not ideal for improving 2k time.

Any assistance much appreciated.

[Paul Victory]

Hi Tommy. Welcome to Free Spirits.

If tied for time, I think I'd be inclined to follow the Pete Plan, but with only 4 or 5 sessions a week (depending on how much time I have available). I'd do the sprint intervals, the endurance intervals and the steady distance plus one or two recovery rows. If only able to do 3 sessions a week, I'd drop the steady distance session.

Paul V

[Paul Victory]

Hi Tommy

Just to follow up on that, if the issue is trying to fit in sessions to a short time slot (e.g. lunch hour), I'd do the intervals with shorter rest periods (maybe 2 minutes or less instead of 3:30, 2 to 3 minutes instead of 5 minutes, etc.) or else do fewer intervals (e.g. 6 x 500 instead of 8 x 500). I'd also shorten the warm up and/or cool down.

[plummy]

Hi Tommy - welcome to the forum!

I would just tailor the intervals (lengths, reps and rests) to suit your time availability. There's no hard and fast rule that says you have to follow the Pete Plan verbatim. As long as you are doing regular hard intervals it will help you towards your 2k time. That said, I would try and factor in some time to do some 1250m/1500m time trials just to get the mental feel for how fast you can go for how long before a proper 2000m test.

Good luck
Plummy

[gregsmith01748]

Hi,

This is an intriguing topic. I think that a tailored version of the PP would work great. I would suggest that changing the number of reps versus shortening the rests would be a better choice. If you shorten the rests, it is almost inevitable that you will not be able to maintain the intensity.

If the "normal" 8x500/3'30", you could change the session in two different ways.
1. 6x500/3'30" rest at 1 second faster pace .
2. 8x500/2' rest at maybe 1 second slower pace.

I think that the first choice is better.

Another think is that you should avoid skewing the balance of your training too far towards intense sessions. I would stick to hard sessions 3x per week and easy sessions 3x per week. Here is an excerpt from a 2009 paper by Seiler.

Intervals, Thresholds, and Long Slow Distance: the Role of Intensity and Duration in Endurance Training
Stephen Seiler1 and Espen Tønnessen2
Sportscience 13, 32-53, 2009 (sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm)

Intensity for Recreational Athletes

Elite endurance athletes train 10-12 sessions and 15-30 h each week. Is the pattern of 80 % below and 20 % above lactate threshold appropriate for recreational athletes training 4-5 times and 6-10 hours per week? There are almost no published data addressing this question.

Recently Esteve-Lanao (personal communication) completed an interesting study on recreational runners comparing a program that was designed to reproduce the polarized training of successful endurance athletes and com- pare it with a program built around much more threshold training in keeping with the ACSM exercise guidelines. The intended intensity distribution for the two groups was: Polarized 77-3-20 % and ACSM 46-35-19 % for Zones 1, 2, and 3. However, heart-rate monitoring revealed that the actual distribution was: Polarized 65-21-14 % and ACSM 31-56-13 %.

Comparing the intended and achieved distri- butions highlights a typical training error committed by recreational athletes. We can call it falling into a training intensity “black hole.” It is hard to keep recreational people training 45- 60 min a day 3-5 days a week from accumulating a lot of training time at their lactate threshold. Training intended to be longer and slower becomes too fast and shorter in duration, and interval training fails to reach the desired intensity. The result is that most training sessions end up being performed at the same threshold intensity.

Foster et al. (2001b) also found that athletes tend to run harder on easy days and easier on hard days, compared to coaches' training plans. Esteve Lanao did succeed in getting two groups to distribute intensity very differ- ently. The group that trained more polarized, with more training time at lower intensity, improved their 10-km performance significantly more at 7 and 11 wk. So, recreational athletes could also benefit from keeping low- and high- intensity sessions at the intended intensity.

Interval training can be performed effectively with numerous combinations of work duration, rest duration, and intensity. We have found that when subjects self-select running speed based on a standard prescription, 4-min work duration and 2-min recovery duration combine to give the highest physiological response and maintained speed (Seiler and Sjursen, 2004; Seiler and Hetlelid, 2005). However, perceptual and physiological response differences across the typical work and recovery spectrum are fairly small and performance enhancement differences are unclear at best. Some researchers have proposed that specific interval regimes (e.g., 4 × 4 min at 95 %VO2max) may be superior for achieving adaptive gains (Helgerud et al., 2007; Wisloff et al., 2007), but other research studies and our observations of athlete practice suggest that a variety of combinations of work and rest duration are effective for long-term development.

[TommyT]

Hi guys, thanks for your replies, much appreciated. I think i'll go with cutting the reps as I need to, I also only get to train 3 times at week generally so i've been doing a Level 1, 2 and then a 3 or 4 so will try mixing it up a bit more on the back of Gregs post.