My indoor rowing tips after 15M meters
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I was running, but living in an area with seasons, there were just too many excuses (its too hot, its too cold, its too rainy, its still dark outside, its snowing, my BT headphones aren't charged, etc....) and I found myself skipping runs too often. I bought myself the rower as a no-excuses aerobic workout. No matter what the weather, its always there.
I now row 15km at a 15km/hr pace 3-4 days a week (alternate with other exercise) and I have totally stopped running. Some knee and hip issues that were aggravated by running have ceased to bother me.
I have a water rower. I highly recommend it, as draining it makes moving it quiet easy (its pretty light when drained). I never setup a tablet; I just listen to podcasts when I row, the same as I used to when I ran.
Which one did you buy?
I think that corresponds to the "natural" on Waterrower's own site.
With each stroke, I began with my knees bent, arms straight in front of me, with the row handle almost fully retracted, and ended with knees straight, leaning back, handle pulled completely to my chest.
My resting heart rate is about 90 bpm, and on the rower, it was only getting to ~130 bpm. I felt like I wasn't accomplishing much and used the stair machine for my cardio instead. There, my heartrate would be 160-180 bpm, and I'd usually climb for ~10 minutes, doing 20-30 floors, though I did hit 100 floors twice.
Sadly, since COVID made me go remote, I haven't been to a gym. I miss that feeling of pride and accomplishment I'd get from setting the 100-floor goal on the stairs and hitting it. I plan on going back once Oregon lifts the mask mandates. Exercising with a mask is absolutely awful.
FWIW, my resting heart rate is now in the 50s, and I get my heart rate up to between 150bpm and 170bpm, depending on how hard I push.
EDIT: My ex wife had a hard time getting her heart rate up on a rower. She'd be miserable and out of breath, but her HR never got up above 120 or so.. I never figured out what the problem was. I always thought it was too much resistance, but changing the resistance is a pain, so she just moved on to other exercises..
I tried googling "water rower" to find the model, and I couldn't find it. I can say that it was different from most water rowers I'm finding though. Most of them have the water tank horizontal, while the one I used had it vertical. It looked very similar to this: https://sunnyhealthfitness.com/products/water-rowing-machine...
EDIT: Actually, it more closely resembled this one: https://firstdegreefitness.com/shop/fluidrower/vx-2/
I have a Concept2 rowing machine at home, and even at the middle resistance setting, blacking out from going too hard is just a matter of willpower, so to speak. The resistance increases with speed.
Based on a sibling comment, there probably wasn't enough water in it, but I seem to remember a fill line being on it, and it was up to that line, but it's also been two years, so shrug.
I started rowing about 6 months ago, and some chronic problems with my right knee completely disappeared within 3-4 weeks of daily rowing. It was kind of incredible. That knee had been bothering me for 15 years.
I can only assume it was something about the precise repetitive movement.
I do about 5km/day but this post is motivating me to increase that.
And, protip: If there are clothes hanging on it, you've failed.
Anyone can attempt Dwayne Johnson's workout and diet, it's published all over the place. The reason we aren't swamped with ridiculously swole people isn't because it's a secret, it's because it take extreme dedication (and moderately good genetics, but nothing special).
And if you're all about optimization and time, you could get a VersaClimber cross crawl club model and spend 8 minutes (2 mins warm up, 4 mins HIIT, 2 mins cooldown) for better (clinically proven more effective at causing a metabolic shift) results.
Why doesn't everyone do this? For one, the intensity makes people ill when not used to it. That's why it's not in many clubs. For another, unlike rowers or cycles, you can't just sit on your butt or coast.
(In addition to road cycles, I own water rower, versa climber, and hydrow. The VersaClimber kicks your ass.)
Are you able to actually look forward to an "ass-kicking" workout on daily basis ?
If someone did bring up setting a fitness challenge, I'd say buy a rower over treadmill or bike. Rowing does add more of a full body workout over bike.
I don't think they even have a sensor for the seat.
Anyway, doing something on the flywheel might make an interesting Raspberry Pi project one day I suppose, although calibrating it to any meaningful distance travelled might be a problem. Suppose I'd have to get a professional rower in to estimate what it felt like!
“Between each stroke, the PM measures how much your flywheel is slowing down to determine how sleek or slow your “boat” is. This rate of deceleration is called the drag factor. On your next stroke, the PM uses the drag factor to determine from the speed of the flywheel how much work you are doing. In this way, your true effort is calculated regardless of damper setting. This self-calibration is what allows us to compare scores from different indoor rowers, making things like indoor racing and the online world rankings possible.“
~$1,500, and it calculates via the flywheel, not seat movement.
Not sure how much distance I have on it, it doesn't hold stats after a power reset. I'd guess around 1M meters after several years, but I usually only get to use it about once a week on average. Rowing is usually Tuesdays on my M-F workout circuit.
It is the most consistent I have ever been with at-home exercise and it has been perfect for managing stress and getting good sleep.
When I started I was doing around 2:05/500m. Now I am down to around 1:56/1:57, but some days I will go slower if I didn't sleep great or something. It is more about the consistency than the pace.
It is less than 8 mins total so it is enough to wake me up and get my heart pumping, but also allow me to recover quickly and feel ready to start the day.
It may seem expensive at first but if you decide you don't like it, you'll easily sell it for the price you paid. With any other rowers, you may have a hard time finding a buyer.
Concept 2 is pretty much the gold standard for every rower around the world so you'll always find someone looking to buy one.
A downside is that an Apple Watch doesn't talk directly to a PM5. So your heart rate isn't displayed up on the PM5. Annoying. There are kluges but then they are kluges.
On Youtube there are excellent channels for indoor rowing.
Training Tall
Dark Horse Rowing
If you need to choose, it comes down to your goals. If you want to build stronger muscles, choose the weights. If you're interested in a stronger heart and/or weight loss, go with the rowing.
I'd personally get the squat rack because cardio is easily performed outside (running/cycling), whereas lifting very heavy but precise amounts of weight can really only be done with a rack, bars, and plates.
If you want to get lean then I'd recommend a bike (Zwift/Peloton) setup over the rowing machine. The ability to do workouts along with the mild gamification makes a big difference in motivation. There are similar programs for rowing but they are drastically less mature.
Lately i've been playing a game called "can you negative split a piece"; usually, the answer's yes!
If my goals were just general cardio though, I’d 100% recommend rowing. Just make sure you really work on your form in order to get the most out of it. You should be using you’re core most, if not the entire time.
For me the key difference is feeling more thoroughly drained, legs mostly, core, arms, back.
To run fast, you need to do about 180 steps/minute (each leg moves back and forth 90 times/minute (https://blog.squadeasy.com/en/blog2020/running-pace-why-work...). Also, 5k runners tend to be not that muscular.
When rowing, you train your leg muscles at, at best (and only in sprint), half that frequency, and you get more muscles than you need for doing 5k well, so when running you have to carry extra weight.
You should look at your 5k times on the beach, running up sand dunes, or on a sandy horse trail :-)
For me, it felt more like the balance of muscles. My hams were way to strong compared to my quads and my running felt more like bouncing up than pushing forward.
I never tried measuring specific inclines or on sand though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMZSwYf7jxQ
Or, for some more challenge:
> It is the result of a feasibility study and a commercial implementation of the ROWCYCLE will not be pursued further.
Is a rowing machine a good way to go? (Like so many people, I have temporal, spatial, and monetary constraints -- I can't imagine spending $1500 USD on a piece of exercise equipment, doubly so given that I don't know whether I'd stick with using it.)
I really, really wish something like BlackBox VR (https://www.blackbox-vr.com) was available to me. It looks phenomenal.
I've done Ring Fit Adventure, and I like it. I've tried some of the VR fitness games, and, well, they're okay. I had a running buddy (who has moved away), and that was good, but we're now entering the long season of cold, short days, and it was always hard to get enough umph to go out in frigid weather before dawn, but I need to do something again.
Lithium (primaries non-rechargables, not Lithium-ion) batteries don't leak (or freeze, fwiw) and store a similar amount of energy as Alkaline batteries. They are considerably more expensive, but IMO a better overall choice for important applications.
Rowing itself is good but not enough. For those looking for low-impact cardio, I can suggest you to try battle ropes in gym.
My WFH workout (which I haven't been sticking to) is dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags. And also walking outside.
(0) I've rowed a lot on Concept2 machines, even on professional competitions, I was expecting bigger differences.
Hopefully a couple tips that may be helpful for beginners:
- If you can set up a mirror or some other way to watch yourself row, do it. It's not a natural motion for beginners and what it feels like you're doing can be very different than how it actually looks. Good rowing vs beginning rowing can be like watching a professional golfer or baseball player swing vs someone who has picked up a club or bat for the first time. It's fluid, controlled, and powerful vs awkward, jerky, and underpowered. It takes time, patience and persistence.
- Rowing is mostly legs and it's an endurance sport. If you're doing longer workouts at lower strokes per minute, it might not feel like you're doing a whole lot until deeper into a workout. Your legs are effectively your strongest muscles. Guys especially have a tendency to try to use their upper body more, and frequently break their arms right away at the catch. Breaking the arms early is counterproductive because it weakens the leg drive. Let those arms hang on the handle and let the legs do most of the pressing. Think deadlift / hang cling. Legs do most of the work, upper body and arms finish what the legs started.
- Don't squeeze the handle. You can even put your thumbs on top like a pull-up to help you get used to hanging on the handle with the upper body.
- There should be an approximately 2:1 ratio between the recovery (the time you're moving up the slide to the catch and compressing your body) and the drive (when you're pressing with your legs and then opening up with your body - the part where you're doing the hard work). So at 20 strokes per minute that's a 2 second recovery, 1 second drive. That ratio is important whether you're rowing at 20 SPM or 40+ SPM. There's a tendency for newer rowers to go at more of a 1:1 ratio, which is inefficient. It's similar to being in the right gear on a bike.
- On the recovery, the handle should come into the catch at roughly the same height it comes out during the drive. When coaching, we would sometimes put water bottles between a rower's feet on the erg so that they wouldn't let the handle/chain drop too far and knock the water bottle over. You'll get a stronger, more effective drive with a good catch.
- On the recovery, don't break your legs until after the handle gets over your knees. So really let yourself stretch out of the finish. This is especially important as you get tired. If you break your knees before the handle clears, you tend to have to lift the handle and then it will drop after it's over the knees and you'll likely have a bad catch.
- If you're on a Concept 2, don't set the fan at a 10. I've trained with Olympic rowers and have never heard of anyone going over 6. In the 3-5 range is perfectly fine. There is no glory saying you row at a 7+.
- When I erg now, I watch soccer (45 mins with no commercial interruptions) or train POV videos on Youtube, and I use Airpods to listen to music.
- And for what it's worth, I don't think I've ever heard of any HS or collegiate program using anything other than Concept 2 ergs. I've hopped on other rowing machines at gyms, but found they felt awkward and less fluid. I don't know what some of the newer, higher-end machines feel like. They could be great.