Steady State

Improving at anything can be thought of as a combination of intensity and volume. This makes sense—if we train hard (high intensity) and often (high volume), we should see significant improvement in whatever skill we apply ourselves to.

Unfortunately, in practice, it’s hard to maximize both intensity and volume at the same time because we simply can’t handle it. In athletic terms, continuously maximizing both will lead to overtraining.

Overtraining can lead to both physical and mental issues. Physical overtraining causes increased risks of injury, sickness, and general fatigue. Mental overtraining, or burning out, causes drops in motivation and general happiness. All of those things increase the chance that someone takes a long break to reset and recover, which is bad for progress, or even quit altogether, which is terrible for progress.

So, how do we maximize progress without pushing ourselves into the danger zone?

The answer lies in steady state. In rowing, steady state is defined as the training zone in which athletes can sustainably generate power for long periods of time. Steady state is relatively slow ¹ and relatively easy to recover from. This is hugely important because even a high volume of steady state training can be tolerated without overtraining.

However, we can’t completely forget about high intensity work. Modern rowing training plans combine these two ideas into a polarized approach. In the past, rowers would do a roughly even split of low, medium, and high intensity workouts. Nowadays, rowers do a ton of low intensity steady state and a smaller amount (roughly 20-30%) of sessions at race pace with very few sessions in between.

The effectiveness of this polarized training was perhaps most apparent in the East German crews of the 1970s. They were the first to go all in on the new training philosophy and were rewarded with a slew of gold medals in the 1972, 1976, and 1980 olympics. Even though they trained at race pace for less time, their top-end speed improved drastically because the steady state had given them such strong aerobic capabilities. By going slower, they became faster.

I found success with polarization in other places as well. As a kid, I naturally took a polarized approach with my reading. I mostly read books that were below my “reading level,” but I enjoyed reading them so much that I ended up reading far more than if I had picked harder, less enjoyable books. Every once in a while, I still read books that really challenged my vocabulary and comprehension, but the majority of my reading was “low intensity.” ²

That approach helped me stay interested in books for much longer than my classmates. I remember many of my friends stopped reading outside of class in middle school. And when I recently started getting back into reading again (I also stopped reading in my free time for a while), I started by rereading the entire Harry Potter series.

I’ve heard people say that reading fiction is a waste of time, and I couldn’t disagree more. The most underappreciated benefit of reading fiction is that it improves your overall reading ability. It builds your vocabulary, tests your comprehension skills, and increases your reading speed. Burning through all of those “easy” fantasy novels prepared me for reading more complex pieces.

The ideas behind polarized training—maximize volume at low intensity with a bit of high intensity—are applicable for almost anything. Make the bulk of your work easy and enjoyable, and spend as much time doing it as you can without burning yourself out. There won’t be any shocking improvements in the short term, but if you stick with it, you might surprise yourself.

Thanks to Liam Kronman and Ryan Tjoa for reading versions of this.

Footnotes

1. Steady state is technically defined as the pace where rowers’ blood lactate concentration stays below 2 mmol/liter. Rowers often approximate this by working at a pace that keeps their heart rate between 70% and 80% of their max heart rate. ↩

2. Low intensity is always relative to current ability. As my reading ability improved, books that used to feel challenging became easier, since I didn't need to look up nearly as many words. Similarly, a rower’s steady state pace should improve as their overall fitness improves. ↩