The MyNextRow library
Learn indoor rowing.
A practical, research-aware agenda for setting up your rower, moving well, training with purpose, and staying in the sport for the long run.
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A complete agenda for the erg.
Fundamentals & Setup
1Start safely, fit the machine to your body, and understand the monitor before the first stroke.
Technique & Biomechanics
11Build an efficient stroke by understanding sequence, posture, force, rhythm, and common faults.
Technique Drills
5Use focused drills to isolate each phase of the stroke and turn feedback into durable skill.
Workouts & Programming
16Choose sessions, assemble training weeks, and progress from a first row to ambitious goals.
Physiology & Performance
10Learn what the body is adapting to, how intensity works, and why performance changes.
Mobility & Strength
1Support the rowing stroke with practical mobility, stretching, and strength work.
Recovery & Nutrition
10Fuel training, recover between sessions, and make sustainable progress beyond the machine.
Injury Prevention & Safety
1Recognize warning signs, manage load, and create a safer indoor-rowing practice.
Racing & Testing
7Prepare for benchmark rows, pace race distances, and interpret results without guesswork.
Adaptive Rowing & Every Body
1Adapt indoor rowing for different bodies, abilities, ages, life stages, and access needs.
Coaching, Community & Culture
1Coach thoughtfully, speak rowing fluently, and explore the sport’s people, platforms, and history.
AI Coaching & Personalization
6How MyNextRow reads your Logbook, explains its choices, and earns your trust before, during, and after every session.
All briefs
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A Glossary of Indoor Rowing Metrics: Three Questions, One Screen
Every number on an erg monitor answers one of three questions: how much, how hard, or how it went. Here is what each reading actually measures.
Adaptive Indoor Rowing: Start With the Person
How to build an indoor rowing session around the person in front of you: the history worth taking, what a constraint is, what must never change, and how to read a logbook.
How Long Should a Beginner Row?
Ten to fifteen minutes on most days of the week, at an effort you could talk at, building up by about ten per cent a week — and a stroke that repeats from the first stroke to the fiftieth.
How Repetition Can Become Overuse
Why repetition is not the mechanism, what the evidence says about demand and tissue remodelling, and the workload ratio that failed a randomised trial.
How to Connect MyNextRow to Claude Desktop and Cursor
Point Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client at your own rowing logbook: what the connection is, how to configure it, how to prove it works, and what to do when it breaks.
How to Set Up an Indoor Rower for Your First Session
Set up an indoor rower for your first session: where it stands, footrests and straps, seat height, the damper lever, and the numbers to ignore on the monitor.
Load Governors: What CTL, ATL, TSB and ACWR Actually Tell a Rower
A load governor is a number that stands in for how hard your training has been, so a plan can be adjusted before something breaks. What CTL, ATL, TSB and ACWR measure, and what they cannot.
Polarized vs Pyramidal Training: What 80/20 Means for Your Rowing Week
Where the 80/20 rule came from, what it actually measures, and how to read the intensity distribution your own logbook has already produced.
Rate Caps: Holding Rhythm So Pace Can Drift
A rate cap fixes stroke rate so the pace tracks physiology rather than rhythm drift. What capping actually changes, and what it does not.
Rate Ladders: Finding a Pace You Can Repeat
A rate ladder holds the power and changes the stroke rate, which makes it a diagnostic rather than a workout. Here is what changes as rate climbs — and what does not.
Reading the Force Curve: What Repeatability Actually Means
A force curve is one sample, not a verdict. What makes it worth reading is whether the shape comes back, and what the ergometer can and cannot tell you about the boat.
Seven Questions to Ask Any Coach or App (Including Us)
Seven questions to ask any coach, app, or AI before you trust it with your training: what to ask, what a good answer sounds like, and what a bad one sounds like.
Video Feedback: Filming One Question at a Time
How to film yourself rowing so the footage answers one question: what to capture, from what angle, at what rate, and how to review it honestly.
What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
What MCP actually is: the client, the server and the tools between them - and what a local MCP server gives a rower who wants their training data inside the assistant they already use.
What MyNextRow's Coach Actually Reads From Your Logbook
What MyNextRow's coach reads from your logbook, what it cannot see, and the two things to write in your next note that change what it knows about you.
When AI Feedback Gets It Wrong — and What To Do
How to tell whether AI coaching feedback is wrong for you, which of five failure modes produced it, and a five-step protocol for correcting it.
Why a Fixed Plan Stops Working, and What Reading Your Logbook Changes
Training response is not a constant. A fixed plan controls the dose and cannot see the state it lands on — here are the three things it cannot know.
Negative Splits: What the Pacing Evidence Actually Says
What the pacing research actually supports about fast starts, even splits and negative splits, and why most of it comes from other sports and small samples.
Post-Test Recovery and Debrief: The Hours After the Piece
What to do in the hours after a hard erg test: replace the fluid and carbohydrate you spent, protect the night, let the soreness arrive, and write a debrief worth reading.
Race-Day Warm-Up for Indoor Rowing: The Dose, Not the List
A warm-up is a dose of heat, priming and rehearsal, not a checklist. Here is what the rowing-specific trials actually found, and how much of each is worth taking.
Ranking Scores and Percentiles: A Calm Interpretation
What a rank and a percentile actually measure: the list behind them, the gap they hide, and why one number is a snapshot of a pool that is rebuilt every May.
The 5K Erg Test: Why the Fast Start Is a Habit, Not a Finding
The go-out-hard opening is rowing's most copied habit and its least examined. Here is where it comes from, what it costs when it is measured, and how to test your own.
What Your 2K Actually Measures, and What It Does Not
A 2K measures the power you can hold for seven minutes. It does not tell you your boat speed, and reading anything else into it is where seasons get wasted.
A Published Plan Is a Draft: Six Conditions That Decide Whether It Fits
A published plan encodes assumptions about training age, weekly hours and what you already know. Six conditions tell you when one fits your problem, and when it will not.
Fueling a Long Indoor Rowing Session
What actually limits a two-hour erg piece, how much carbohydrate and fluid to take in, when the session outruns your glycogen, and where fuelling stops being a coaching decision.
Hydration for Indoor Rowing: A Plan You Test, Not a Rule You Follow
What the hydration evidence actually supports for the indoor rower: when thirst is a sufficient guide, when it is not, the one number worth measuring, and why the room matters more than the weather.
Losing Weight Without Wrecking Your Rowing
Weight loss while rowing indoors is an energy-balance question, not a training one: what happens to your sessions before the scale moves, and where a coach's job ends.
Rate-Capped Sessions: Cap the Rate, Not the Effort
What a stroke-rate cap actually does, why a rate is not an intensity, and what the rowing research can and cannot tell you about holding one.
Recovery Meals After Hard Intervals: What to Eat and When
What the evidence actually says about the post-session recovery meal: which parts of the thirty-minute window survive scrutiny, which parts do not, and what to eat when the next session is tomorrow.
Rest Days Are Training Days Too: A Guide for Club Rowers
Why the rest day is the hardest session to keep, what a heavy week actually feels like in the legs, and how to tell a day off from a light row.
Short Intervals for Busy Days: Keep the Ratio, Cut the Pieces
A compressed-day interval session has one built-in check: the recovery. Fix the work-to-recovery ratio first, cut the number of pieces to fit, and read the recovery to see whether you got it right.
Sleep and Indoor Rowing: What the Evidence Actually Says
How short and poor sleep affect exercise performance and your recovery, why you cannot feel your own sleep debt, and what to change tonight without wrecking tomorrow's session.
Soreness After a New Rowing Block: What to Do About It
Why the first week of a new rowing block leaves you stiff and sore, what actually helps the soreness settle, and the signs that mean it is not soreness at all.
Supplements and Indoor Rowing: A Sceptical Guide
What the supplement evidence actually supports for indoor rowers, where the real risk sits, and how to read a label before you pay for a tub.
The 10-Minute Starter Row: A Practice Session, Not a Smaller Workout
Ten minutes is too short to be a dose of training and long enough to practise a stroke. What a ten-minute row can actually build, and how to stop it turning into a sprint.
The 20-Minute Steady Row: Small Enough to Repeat, Not Enough on Its Own
Twenty minutes is the smallest block of aerobic work most people can repeat. It is a session, not a week, and the intensity is a decision rather than a threshold.
The 4 x 500 Metre Workout: A Training Session, Not a Test
The 4 x 500 is a training session, not a validated test. The consistency you are told to read is often smaller than the error in the number you read it from, and the rest interval is the real dose.
The First Sessions Are Setup, Not Training: What They Should Teach You
Your first sessions are setup, not training. The three lessons they should leave you with, and where the evidence behind them is thinner than it looks.
Three Times a Week: A Practice Schedule, Not a Prescription
Where the three-session week comes from, why the beginner plans disagree about it, and what the evidence does and does not settle about how often to row.
Training in Heat and Humidity on the Rowing Machine
What heat and humidity do to an erg session: why a still, warm room costs more than the thermometer shows, and how airflow, hydration, acclimation and pacing keep a hot-day piece a session.
Using the Pete Plan Responsibly: Take the Shape, Write Your Own Numbers
The Pete Plan is one rower's training, published for others to use. Its weekly arrangement is the durable part; its splits are numbers each rower generates for themselves.
What Makes a Test Repeatable
What a repeatable rowing test actually controls, how much of a 2k is measurement error, and what to do when the number moves.
What to Eat Before a Row: A Practical Guide for Indoor Sessions
How much to eat before a session, how far ahead to eat it, what to carry to the boat, and which of the usual pre-session rules the evidence actually supports.
Why Short Intervals Repeat Across Plans: Same Shape, Different Session
Two plans can both prescribe four by five hundred and mean two different sessions. The shape is a container: the target, what you hold constant, and what the rest is doing decide what it trains.
A 5K Result: What Twenty Minutes of Rowing Actually Measures
A 5K is twenty minutes of aerobic-dominant rowing. The energy split, the pacing profile and the polarized-training claim each came apart under their own sources.
A Gentle 5K Progression: What It Can Lean On, and What It Cannot
A gentle 5K progression is sensible practice assembled from findings that hold, not a protocol with a trial behind it. Here is which is which, and how to tell when the plan is actually working.
Aerobic and Anaerobic Effort: Your 2K Is More Aerobic Than You Think
Measured rowing-specific numbers put the aerobic share of a 2K at 82–87%, and show that how hard a piece feels and how anaerobic it is are not the same question.
Breathing With the Stroke on the Indoor Rower
Breathing on the rower is a timing problem, not a depth problem. When you breathe changes what the drive can produce, and the recovery is the only part of the stroke built for it.
Building a Three-Day Rowing Week: What the Evidence Decides
A three-day rowing week is a sensible shape, but the research sets the volume in minutes rather than in sessions. Here is what the evidence does decide, and what it leaves to you.
Catch Position: You Start the Stroke in Your Weakest Position
At full compression the legs are flexed and near maximum length — the least favourable moment of the stroke to produce force from. That is why the catch has to be fast.
Common Technique Faults and Their First Fix
Most faults a rower can see are not faults in the stroke. They are setup, rate, machine shape or fatigue. Check those four before changing technique.
Drive Phase: Peak Force Arrives at the Middle of the Stroke
The drive is not a pull to the finish. Peak handle force lands around the middle of the stroke, so the stroke is a race to produce force early and a decision about how much to keep after that.
Finish Position: the Handle Arrives After the Force Does
Peak handle force lands near the middle of the stroke, so the finish is a braking and positioning event rather than a producing one. That changes what a good finish is actually for.
Heart Rate Zones: A Useful Guide, Not a Verdict
Heart-rate zones are arithmetic on a predicted maximum, and the prediction carries real error. HR is excellent for comparing you to yourself and poor for placing you on a scale.
Posture on the Rower: Tall, Supported, and Mobile
Posture on the rower is not a shape to hold but a variable that drifts with fatigue. What the spine literature actually measured, and what to do about it.
Power Intervals Without Losing Technique: What the Ergometer Can Actually Tell You
The ergometer reports force, rate and per-stroke timing, not catch timing or finish shape. The technique cues belong to a coach; the stop signal belongs to the power trace.
Progress Without Going Harder: The One-Variable Rule
The one-variable rule is sound. The two-week window usually bolted onto it is not: no source establishes that number, and your ergometer has a measurable error you can look up instead.
The Feeling of a Hard Sustainable Pace — and Why "Lactate Threshold" Is Not One Number
Four different things are all called lactate threshold, and how you define it moves the watts. What a rower feels maps better to a power ceiling than to a blood test.
The Indoor Rowing Stroke in Four Simple Phases
The four phases are four moments in one continuous exchange, not four shapes. And two machines built for the same training produce measurably different finishes.
Understanding VO2max on a Rowing Machine: What the Erg Can and Cannot Tell You
An erg cannot measure your VO2max, and even when you predict it, power predicts your 2K better than oxygen uptake does.
When a Drill Fix Should Wait Until Tomorrow
A technique correction lands tonight or in six weeks, and the deciding variable is whether consolidation has already begun. Here is what determines which.
Why a New Training Block Can Feel Worse Before It Feels Better
Training that feels worse before it feels better is the model's prediction, not a fault — but the ratio most coaches use to measure it does not hold up.
Why Short Intervals Keep Appearing in Plans: The Format Is the Template
Short intervals recur because they are an easy template to hand someone. The format is not what makes them work, and three numbers usually quoted for them are not in the papers they are credited to.
A First 1K Benchmark: Reading the Result, Not the Verdict
Your first 1K is a starting line, not a scoreboard. Here is what it measures, what it is dominated by, and how to read it against yourself rather than others.
Strength Circuits, Lower Impact, Higher Purpose
A strength circuit earns its place in a rowing plan by moving variables the ergometer cannot. Here is what it should train, and what evidence says it will actually buy you.
The Recovery Sequence: Why Patience on the Slide Makes You Faster
The recovery is the variable that sets your stroke rate, not the pause between strokes. What the rowing biomechanics actually measure, and what the PM5 can and cannot tell you about it.
Choosing a Rowing Drill: Start From What the Drill Changes
Every rowing drill changes one of three things - the constraints, the feedback, or who decides. Choosing well means knowing which one you are buying.
Handle Path on the Rowing Machine: The Line Is Geometry, Not Technique
The handle travels in a straight line because the chain pulling it is under tension. What you control is the angle of that line, and the angle is set at the catch.
Stroke Rate and Power: The Trade-Off Is Not About Efficiency
Why raising your stroke rate buys power without making you more efficient, what it quietly costs you in technique quality, and how to choose a rate that fits the piece you are rowing.
What the Ergometer Actually Trains, and What It Does Not
The erg is a leg-driven respiratory machine with a weak relationship to boat speed. Here is what it trains, what it measures, and where the two come apart.