Monostructural

JT Scott | 09/15/2019 | 5

Monostructural workouts aren’t sexy. I said it. They don’t get as many instagram likes or high fives, generally, as something with muscle-ups and power cleans. It’s easy to view them as a slog, or to decide you’re not interested in showing up to the gym that day. Succumbing to that thinking would be a mistake. What are they, then, if not sexy?

1) Variable. Running isn’t just running – we can mix up distances, durations, and intensity a dozen different ways to make the simple act of “Run” work our fitness goals in different ways.

2) Useful. They both increase our work capacity and give us a simple metric with which to test and measure it. One of my favorite old chestnuts about monostructural work is that it “turns your little engine that could into a bigger engine that can”.

3) Thoughtful. You will be well rewarded for a little forethought in how you approach the workout today, and the experience you gain by forming a plan and finding where that plan falls apart will help you target future training and make a better plan for next time.

What do I mean by that last point? Well, today’s task is simple: ROW 5000 METERS. But if you just grab your best 2k pace and try to hold on to it for 2.5x that distance, you’re in for a painful and potentially disappointing experience.

(Side note: if you grab your best 2k pace and ARE able to hold it for 2.5x that distance, then you need to adjust your perception of what your “best 2k pace” is. You’ve gotten fitter than you realize. Time to level up.)

So what are we doing instead of that? Well, we’ll play around at the start of class with our mechanics, and move on to our stroke rate. We’ll get a feel for how our stroke rate relates to effort in the pull and pace on the rower. We’ll make a plan of attack.

One suggestion for today from your coaches: break this big 5k challenge into segments that allow you to go harder as the workout progresses. Pick a plan for each segment. There’s a ton of different strategies you can pursue, but a fun one to try might be:

• Segment 1: 2k
• Segment 2: 1.5k
• Segment 3: 1k
• Segment 4: 500m

Pick a different pace and a different plan for each segment and do your best to hold on to it. You’ll get experience in how to control the workout (instead of it controlling you) and turn what could be a slog into something much more useful, thoughtful and rewarding.