Science and Secrets of Winter Training: How to stop leaving speed on the table
- Aodhán Ridenour
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By Danielle Farinella
Part 1. Workout Session Secrets
Have you ever sat on an erg in January while your coach wrote an overly complicated workout on the whiteboard and wondered: what are we actually achieving here? And why do they think doing the workout exactly that way is so important?
Well, today you can stop wondering.
In this article, I’m going to walk us through the different types of workouts, what they achieve, and how better understanding the goal of the workout can increase its effectiveness.
What does a workout even do?
Workouts are all about creating stimulus to get your body to adapt in certain ways (Coffey, 2007). For example, if you did 1,000 jump squats every day, your body might adapt by generating more muscle cells in your quads. However, unlike giant quads, the adaptations we get from rowing/endurance workouts are sometimes harder to see.
When we are rowing, our cells need a molecule called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) to power our muscle cells (Hargreaves, 2020). There are largely two ways to produce ATP. One is the aerobic system, which uses oxygen, and the other is the anaerobic system, which does not require oxygen but produces byproducts like lactate, which cause muscle fatigue (De Feo, 2003). Our goal in training is to create adaptations that improve the efficiency of these two systems.
Repeatedly taxing these systems can make them adapt by changing our underlying biology. For example, if you tax your aerobic system, your body will maintain higher levels of the enzymes your aerobic system uses to create ATP, and your cells will produce more mitochondria (the pockets in your cells where aerobic respiration takes place) (Egan, 2023).
Workout types to target different systems/adaptations
Different workouts will cause different adaptations. Most programs will categorize workouts similarly to what I’ve outlined below. Each of these zones tries to target the aerobic system, anaerobic system, or general physiology.
Refer to The GB Rowing Team Training Matrix for a visual representation of these zones.
UT2 (Oxygen Utilization 2): This is a traditional steady state. Often written as something like 3x20’, 1’R, these workouts are supposed to be done slow and easy, targeting only the aerobic system. These workouts also produce very little fatigue, which is helpful for those doing lots of rowing volume.
UT1 (Oxygen Utilization 1): This is a “hard steady state”. Often written as something like 6x10’ with 2’ rest or 7x6’ with 1.5’ rest. This is also mainly targeting the aerobic system. Improving your aerobic system using UT1 or UT2 raises the floor of your fitness, since you can then do more work before needing to turn on your anaerobic system, which causes fatigue.
AT (Anaerobic Threshold): Anaerobic Threshold (also called LT2) is the point at which lactate production by the anaerobic system exceeds lactate clearance, making the workload unsustainable. The higher this threshold is, the faster you can go before it is unsustainable. Doing work near your Anaerobic Threshold trains your body to be capable of more work before it becomes unsustainable, essentially pushing the threshold higher (Skiba, 2022). It is important not to go all out on these pieces. If you do, you will bypass your Anaerobic Threshold, and the session will become a TR workout.
TR (Oxygen Transport): During transport workouts, we are primarily taxing the anaerobic system. Additionally, we are improving the aerobic system by trying to force the heart and circulatory systems to adapt, grow, and shuttle more oxygen to the muscle more quickly (Mier, 1996). So, these workouts improve both systems. To get these adaptations, we must get the heart rate near max (>85% of max heart rate) and try to keep it there for a substantial amount of total time (10-30 minutes). These workouts can look like 20’ of 30” TR / 30” active recovery or 8x500m with 2’ rest.
AC (Anaerobic Capacity): These workouts will improve the maximum amount of ATP that your anaerobic system can produce. However, many of the adaptations we get from AC work we can also get from TR work, thus, it is generally used sparingly in endurance sports. It can be helpful for neuromuscular adaptations close to races. These are usually written with a 1:2-3 work:rest ratio, something like 4x250m with 2’R or 10x10 strokes on 30 strokes off. The longer rest ratio helps us fully recover before the next interval, so we can execute these at the intensities needed to create adaptations in anaerobic capacity.
(Bonus) Race Prep: Outside of physiologically focused work, coaches will often also program “Race Prep” workouts. These, of course, do still provide stimulus needed for adaptation, but the main purpose is to get athletes used to doing work at race pace. These might be in TR, AC, or a mix of the two, and are written as things like 6x500m with 1’R or 2x1k with 3’R, completed at race goal pace.
It is worth noting that you can combine zones in workouts, but be mindful of whether you are spending enough time in any given zone for it to be taxing.
How do I know if I’m executing the workout correctly?
Great question! Next time, in Part 2 of the Science and Secrets series, we’ll discuss how to estimate your zones from a 20’ test, how to use heart rate as a check to keep you in-zone, and how to determine which parts of your physiology are holding you back. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Boathouse Blog to know when that comes out!
The “free speed” check
For any workout you do, ask yourself: “what is the adaptation I am trying to achieve?” Then look at the structure of the workout and ask “will the structure of the workout create the stimulus needed to create that adaptation?” Remember, it takes just as long to do a workout effectively as it does to do it ineffectively. By checking to make sure our workout aligns with our goal, we can make our training much more efficient.
Works cited:
Coffey, V.G., Hawley, J.A. The Molecular Bases of Training Adaptation. Sports Med 37, 737–763 (2007). https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200737090-00001
Hargreaves, Mark, and Lawrence L. Spriet. 2020. “Skeletal Muscle Energy Metabolism during Exercise.” Nature Metabolism 2 (9): 817–28.
De Feo, P., Di Loreto, C., Lucidi, P. et al. Metabolic response to exercise. J Endocrinol Invest 26, 851–854 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03345235
Egan, B., & Sharples, A. P. (2023). Molecular responses to acute exercise and their relevance for adaptations in skeletal muscle to exercise training. Physiological Reviews. https://doi.org/PRV-00054-2021
Skiba, P. F. (2022). Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes. PhysFarm Training Systems LLC. ISBN 978-0979463624.
Mier CM, Domenick MA, Turner NS, Wilmore JH. Changes in stroke volume and maximal aerobic capacity with increased blood volume in men women. J Appl Physiol (1985). 1996 Apr;80(4):1180-6. doi: 10.1152/jappl.1996.80.4.1180. PMID: 8926244.
Danielle Farinella is an assistant coach for the TRRA AA-Masters team and a 5th-year Molecular Biology PhD student at Pitt. In her free time, you can find her training with the TRRA Open Racing team or reading about exercise physiology.