VBT Series Part 3: Transitioning to Velocity Based Training

How to begin training with VBT from Percent-1RM or Rate of Perceived Exertion systems

In Part 1 we covered velocity based training for rowing research and resources, how VBT works to guide strength training, and pros and cons of using VBT in your strength training. 

In Part 2, we went deeper into the pros and cons to discuss unintended consequences of surveillance technology, initial athlete reactions, and how I try to minimize or mitigate these problems.

A final limitation of VBT is that, like any form of technology, it’s not perfect and cannot completely capture every individual human experience. We need to remain humble in our use of technology and open-minded to the possibility that the data is not perfectly predictive of each athlete’s experience, and allow for opportunities for athletes to discuss or dispute a decision made with technological guidance. For example, the commonly accepted VBT zones may not apply exactly or equally to every single athlete for best training prescription. An athlete may be on the higher side or lower side or outside the zone by some margin and still adapt to the training as well or better than another athlete. Forcing all athletes to align exactly is likely to result in overall worse outcomes and response to training due to over-control.

We should also consider that these sorts of consequences can come along with any form of technology used in training, including erg screens, telemetry oarlocks, heart rate monitors, heart rate variability, and more. I wrote a “use case” for myself to identify pros, cons, and mitigation strategies before using VBT with the teams. For me and my coaching context, the benefits of VBT outweigh the real and potential negatives. I am still mindful of the limitations and alert to additional unintended consequences. This research and implementation framework guided my introduction of VBT with the teams and continues to guide my ongoing use of it. 

We’ll now get into training specifics in the rest of this series.

Starting with Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)

I started coaching the GRP teams in fall of 2022 using Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) strength training. Percent of one-repetition maximum (%1RM) is typically very inaccurate with endurance athletes. Endurance athletes tend to underperform on 1RM tests relative to performance at high-rep tests. The accepted percent-to-reps correlations most often come from field or power sports, or “just sound good.” They usually don’t apply or scale linearly with endurance athletes, who typically do way more reps at lower percentages (50-80%1RM) and way fewer reps at higher percentages (90%+1RM).

RPE is an improvement over %1RM strength training, bu it still has its faults. RPE is subjective based on athlete and/or coach judgment of how many more reps the athlete could have done in that set. This hypothetical introduces the complication of standards for rep performance and how we define proximity to failure. Is “failure” technical failure, ie. the point at which no more reps could be completed with good technique, or muscular failure, ie. the point at which no more reps could be completed with any technique?

In my experience with athletes, especially endurance athletes, it’s about 50/50 on overestimating and underestimating RPE. More stubborn, highly trained, forceful athletes will refuse to stop at technical failure and take every set far past what I would consider RPE10/10 technical failure. These athletes are relatively overtraining by taking each set to such a point, plus adding injury risk from high strain reps under technique breakdown. Athletes may underestimate RPE when they are newer to strength training, not totally comfortable with the exercises, or uncomfortable with the kind of strain that strength training involves versus endurance training. What they think is RPE7-8 with only have 2-3 reps left in reserve actually may be more like RPE4-5 with the ability to do several more reps if we actually continued the set to technical failure. These athletes are relatively undertraining by never achieving the strain intended in the program.

RPE was a good start, and I still believe that it’s way better than %1RM, but it requires a lot of communication and is still hard to consistently get right. My goal of integrating VBT was to improve this and help each athlete strength train more accurately and appropriately for the goals of the strength training program.

Integrating VBT Data

I began using the VBT system with the GRP teams in March of 2023. This was the transition phase for rowers between winter base-building and the first spring races and training camps. The skiers completed their racing season that month and began a new year of off-season training in April and May. This worked well for both teams for different reasons.

The rowers had more experience by that point with RPE strength training through the whole off-season beginning in fall. We were starting to transition from our base off-season 2-to-1 tempo strength training to pre-season alternating one session for strength and one session for peak power with explosive training.

All we did at this point was was add VBT data to help quantify how strength and power training are different with specific targets for the different outputs. Remember, VBT is just a monitoring tool, not a training method. I simply wrote a velocity target range for our main work squat and deadlift exercises instead of an RPE range. You could make the same swap from a %1RM system.

We started the ski teams with VBT as they began their new off-season. We’re now beginning to transition to pre-season training, and they have lots of experience with the technology to be able to get the most out of it. Our off-season strength training has focused on movement quality across sets and reps as the primary goal, using VBT to gradually introduce the data feedback over multiple months.

I think starting something new in the off-season is always the better option when we have the choice. Even in the pre-season phase with the rowers, we still experienced some challenges (see Part 2). We have more time and less pressure in the off-season to work these things out and make adjustments before we have to bring it together for performance.

To mitigate some of the surveillance problems detailed in Part 2, we only used VBT on the squat and deadlift main work exercises. We focus on force or power output with these big, compound exercises, and then work muscles and movements with assistance exercises. This also gives the athletes time and clear differentiation within a training session between focusing on VBT feedback and training based on internal feedback. We continued to use RPE for the simpler assistance work exercises, usually training within 0-3 reps of technical failure on each set (RPE7-10).

In Part 4, we’ll go into details of the velocity zones, with support and findings from rowing research and erging data.