You might be noticing a trend by now.  I’m looking at it as a rebuilding period.  In this period I have a few goals

• Get competent medical advice about lower back pain and fix any issues with flexibility or imbalances.  This includes stretches and exercises
• Get competent coaching to improve my rowing form for better efficiency and injury prevention.  This includes drills.
• Rebuild my base aerobic fitness by doing lots of easy rowing

Today, I got to work on all three.

I started by doing my normal pre-rowing routine.

• 10 SI exercises on  my left leg
• foam roll my quads
• use a lacrosse ball to get after trigger points around the front of my hips and pelvis
• 2 x 40 sec glute bridges on an exercise ball
• 4 x 10sec torso twists

After that, I did a couple of drills that were recommended to try to improve my posture at the finish.  Here are links to the drills.

Since I wanted to review it after, I taped my attempt at doing it and took a few easy strokes afterward trying to maintain the posture.

I found the drill to be very useful.  I was able to remember what the position felt like and try to hold it during the row.  By sitting the erg next to a mirror and looking at the hands back position, and then a proper finish position, I was get that picture in my mind and then look every once in a while during the row.

After that, I did my 4 x 20.  Today, I started off aiming at 175W, but HR was really high, so I backed off slightly to try to keep it under 150.  Remarkably, just a few watts was enough to do that.  I did a lactate test at the end, and it read 5.3, which I thought had to be a mistake.  I retook it and it was 3.0.  Still much higher than I would have expected, but at least plausible. Rowing while focusing so much on posture was a lot harder and felt very unnatural.  I imagine it will take weeks to start feeling natural.  I think next time I will stick at this 170W-175W range.

         Workout Summary - media/20171114-2005300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|19314|84:00.0|02:10.5|169.2|18.2|145.2|153.0|12.6
W-|18926|80:00.0|02:06.8|171.8|18.2|145.2|153.0|13.0
R-|00392|04:00.0|05:05.7|096.1|19.6|144.4|153.0|02.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04753|20:00.0|02:06.2|174.3|17.8|141.2|148.0|13.3
01|04725|20:00.0|02:07.0|171.3|18.1|145.2|148.0|13.0
02|04730|20:00.0|02:06.8|171.7|18.2|145.7|151.0|13.0
03|04718|20:00.0|02:07.2|169.7|18.6|148.7|153.0|12.7 - 3.0

Lactate Log

Tomorrow:  I’m getting tired of all this base building, I need a little bit of intensity, so I think I will return to an old classic, 8×500.  Pace target around 1:45.