Now this is coming from a ‘post athlete’ point of view in terms of what I do now which is fun and enjoyable, but also testing. I use the Concept2 Rowing machine and also the Concept2 Bike Erg a lot as part of my health and fitness regime. 

When training, it’s good to mix things up, with not only variety or exercises and machines, but also the type of workout you are doing.

When I was a full-time athlete, 80% of the time we were just doing the long hard miles to increase aerobic endurance. I still believe now that we have a to spend a bit of time doing the same, but nowhere near the time of the former athlete life. 

This is why my new favourite workouts come in a couple of forms. 

First is my aerobic session, which is; 

The Countdown:
This is a session which you are basically trying to do some good continuous time of the rowing machine at 20-22rating to build that aerobic fitness, but you use the functionality of the Concept2 Performance Monitor, PM5 in my case, to input a “Variable Time” workout, and you just put the time in as, 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with Zero rest period. So, by the time you’ve finished, you’ve completed 36minutes of continuous rowing but you never see a hue number on the screen. So, it gives you a focus for a specific time and an average split which you try to hit and then you do it for the next segment and so forth. If you want, add more time to the front and you can do a 45 or a 55minute workout with a 9 or a 10minute starting point.

1minute on, 1minute off:
Who doesn’t love fast repeats!!??? 1/1 are great. There is a huge variety of the way you can do them and I like to build into them over time. So have a good warmup and then figure out how many you are going to do and then build into them. If you want to nail the lot, then do them all at a specific rate or intensity.

Rate Steps:
Because we can do sooooo many different workouts on the machine, one of my go-to’s is either 15 or 10 minute pieces. I'll do 3-4 depending on the time. And you just count down the time, 5,4,3,2,1 and increase the rating. 20,22,24,26,28. And you can increase it each time on the repeats or else hold steady and see if you can even split your numbers from set to set. It’s a great way to break the time, touch on some mid speed ratings and figure out what sort of numbers you can pull at different ratings on your way through to race pace.

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