A question we hear a lot from our masters rowers: is there really a best time of day to train, or is that just something we tell ourselves to feel better about fitting workouts around a full life?
I wondered if he had any views on WHEN (ie what time of day) is more effective for training and making desired adaptations, particularly when it comes to Masters rowers?
At our club, winter Ergs and Summer water training for crew boats is typically done in the evening (2 x evenings pre week). Personally I feel evening training negatively impacts the quality of my sleep and my HRV (evidenced through data tracking), and a couple of evening sessions during the week, depending on intensity, can sometimes build up and mean I don’t feel as fresh as I could for a Saturday race day.
However I understand evenings are often the only time to realistically get a crew/squad together and squad togetherness is also important. Given the trade offs I’d be interested in your view of the pros and cons of the timing of training sessions, and any advice if there is no alternative to evening.
We put this one to Alex Wolf, who writes our Strength Training Program and recently led our "It's Not What You Do" webinar. One of our members explained her situation: her club runs winter ergs and summer water sessions for crew boats in the evenings, twice a week. She'd noticed something concerning in her own data, evening sessions were hurting her sleep quality and HRV, and a couple of them stacking up through the week sometimes left her flat for Saturday racing. But she also knew evenings were often the only realistic window to get a whole crew together, and squad togetherness matters too. So which wins?
Alex Wolf writes: The textbook answer versus the real one
Rebecca shared your question around when is more effective for training and making desired adaptations.
There are two answers, the textbook and the real world!
Textbook will suggest training during the latter part of the day (i.e. lunchtime to early evening) is better. However, the reality of this is not so easily delivered. When training sits around the rest of our commitments, then the simple answer is training is better than no training and proper recovery is better than no recovery. So reality is organising training and recovery around our commitments is probably how I would reframe this.
Training is stress so it does not surprise me that HRV alters with it nor the quality of sleep when training in the evening. If training cannot be moved, the question becomes is no training better than training. In terms of not feeling fresh for the Saturday racing, my first thought is again organisation of training into the racing. If you don’t feel fresh and your performance suffers, that is less about evening training and more about the training load and its impact of it on you being carrying into racing. Depending what is possible, maybe drop a session either entirely or significantly reduce volume/intensity the session before racing and see how you respond. This is probably less about adaptation and more about tapering.
From a true adaptation position, feeling fatigued/not fresh is normal and expected. If you didn’t, training is unlikely to be having an impact. One of the biggest challenges I (and many other coaches!) wrestle with is athletes perception of fatigue versus training load required to perform later. Removing it too early reduces training adaptation but athletes feel fresher, leave too long, training adaptation increases but athletes never get to realise it during competition, or the tricky bit of holding long enough and recovering enough for athletes to express during competition.
Not sure that really answers the question so succinctly below:
1. Train around the constraints of life - you will adapt regardless
2. Training organisation into racing may reduce the not fresh feeling
3. Training should feel fatiguing but not overwhelming - if it does, remove training and track in a training diary.
Training as a crew
Rebecca Caroe offers her point of view on crew training for a future big event.
What I know is you’ll never find a time that works for everyone. My advice to you is to agree on three “Core” sessions each week which everyone guarantees they will attend… This could be one weekday evening and two weekend sessions. That means that diary adjustments can be made by everyone. And for the other sessions you can split into a morning or evening where you have part of the crew at each, or train alone.
One thing that we found worked well was transparency on your training results so we always screenshotted erg scores or Strava workout results so people can see you are doing the work and not slacking off when they aren’t at the same time as your group workout. Caveat - we are an ultra competitive group, not a friendship row crew.
