2024 🚣 INDOOR ROWING COMPETITION Dec 7th

INDOOR ROWING COMPETITION December 7th AT CROSSFIT KYOTO

Hey everyone, are you interested in trying your hand at a rowing competition on Sat Dec 7th?
https://www.jara.or.jp/vir2024winter/
We'll connect the rowing machines at CrossFit Kyoto to the internet, so you can take part in a live race with other fitness enthusiasts across Japan from the comfort of your own gym!

Events like this are a great way to socialise and for many people outside of CrossFit they provide a focus for their training. Most events are open to both beginner and experienced indoor rowers. 

🚣  LOGISTICS
We are planning to create a LINE Group INDOOR ROWING for this event so please let us know in person or by LINE if you're interested in joining the fun.
To add you to this group we will need to become 'friends on LINE'. Once we have your LINE address in our private LINE account we can simply add you to the group. (Apparently it is not possible to do this directly with the bizLINE account.)

Let's exchange LINE QR codes before/after classes when you come next time - hopefully soon. Cheers!

🚣  WHEN & WHERE for the EVENT
At CrossFit Kyoto on Saturday DEC 7th:
500m races 12:00-14:30
1000m races 12:30-15:00
2000m races 13:00-15:30
4x500m relay races 13:45-16:15

🚣  WHO CAN JOIN
Anyone who would like to try the challenge is welcome to join in!
There are 3 levels to the competition:
Beginner -  for people who are just starting out with rowing or have never done it before
Experienced - for people who regularly use rowing machines for training (e.g. at CrossFit Kyoto) 
Advanced - for competitive rowers or people who have a lot of experience:
500m: Women 2 min or less, Men 1:40 or less
1000m: Women 4:10 or less, Men 3:40 or less
2000m: Women 8:30 or less, Men 7:30 or less

🚣  FEES
CrossFit Kyoto is providing the space, machines, training time and competition time for free for all members, Enjoy!
The virtual indoor rowing organiser charges as follows:
Advanced: ¥3,000
Everyone else: ¥2,500

The first 500 people to sign up receive a t-shirt, and the top 3 in each category will receive certificates.

🚣  REGISTRATION
Register by Dec 1st through the website below:
https://teket.jp/3223/42533

With the Indoor Rowing coming up a few people have asked me how to train for a race.

What length to train - aerobic efforts

On Dec 7th there are 3 options 500m, 1000m and 2000m. Rowers will mostly be doing 2000m as that’s the standard race distance but I’ll take the 1000m as an example as it’s probably the most popular for our CrossFit members.

1000m is interesting as it’s just on the edge of being an extreme anaerobic effort; meaning that really strong people might be at 3 min or even less. For this example I’ll be using a goal of 4 min: it makes the calculations easy, is closer to most people’s ability and is an aerobic effort which makes a big difference for how to prepare. After reading this I suggest you first try a single 1000m effort, so you know what your target time is and so what pace to use for your own training.

Interval training: length

When training for aerobic efforts the most effective way is through intervals. You may have noticed that in the September and October Endurance focus period we did quite a few work/rest interval WODs, gradually increasing the length of the workout and interval as we went on. Generally we want each interval to be a quarter of the anticipated race time, so in October our intervals peaked at 5 min as the test WOD at the end of the 2 month focus was 20 min. In today’s example the race is 4 min so we’ll do 1 min intervals.

In addition to our interval length we also need to know the pace for each interval. In order to row 1000m in 4 min we need a 500m split time of 2 min. Each 1 min interval we want to keep the pace as close as possible to 2:00 on the display = 2 min. 

Interval training: number of intervals & pace

The next ingredient is the number of intervals. For a 4 min race we don’t just do 4 intervals of 1 min but build up to 7 intervals of 1 min work and 1 min rest in succession. At 7 intervals of work we will end up rowing almost twice as long as the actual race, at race pace! As we build up this volume of work the important thing is to maintain the pace. If in interval 6 we are rowing at 2:05 for 500m, we’ve gone past the aerobic threshold; the body cannot supply enough oxygen to the muscles to maintain the necessary power. Hence if we keep going, all that will do, is teach us to suffer slowly and not learn the right pace 🙁 

This means that if we fall off the pace, even if we haven’t reached the goal number of rounds for the session, then we should quit and come back another day. If we’re consistently failing to maintain the pace then we may need to re-evaluate our goal time 😉

When & where to train

Ideally we want to do this interval training 2-3 times per week, and with only a few weeks before the race we’ll need to increase the volume fairly quickly so that we can then increase intensity!

Mon Wed Sat

5 rounds 6 rounds 7 rounds

Mon Wed Sat

7 rounds 7 rounds 7 rounds

To add intensity to this we increase the pace. In other words, in the final few sessions we row not at 2:00 per 500m but 1:58-1:59, FASTER than race pace! By adding intensity we’re training to make the necessary race pace easier to maintain.

Mon Wed

7 rounds @ 1:59 7 rounds @ 1:58

60 sec on 60 sec off for 7 rounds is a 13 min WOD.

You can do this before or after class in the 20 min window we offer for individual training at CrossFit Kyoto, without even needing to purchase a specific BB session 🙂

Last but not least: A piece of advice for the Competition from 'Russell the Rower'

For the actual race a critical piece of advice is DON’T start too fast.
For the 1st 90 sec - 2 min it will feel like you can go faster, but watch out, this is a trap !

If we go too fast at the beginning, we will soon pass the aerobic threshold over which, as I mentioned above, the body cannot supply enough oxygen to the muscles to maintain the necessary power so the pace will drop off and we’ll end up going too slow to hit our goal time. 

🚣  Let's do this together and have fun training for the event! 🚣 
If you have any other questions feel free to send us a LINE or ask Russell next time you see him.

We're looking forward to 🚣 rowing with you soon!