Do More With is a series highlighting equipment around the Club that can help you reach your fitness goals. In this installment, we highlight the rowing machine, available on the Club floor and in group fitness classes.
At my Equinox Club in downtown London, the rower is a hot commodity. Some Coaches use it in sessions with clients, and I often see members building the equipment into their solo warm-ups, finishers, and circuit-based workouts.
The machine’s popularity is no surprise: The tool can be used for cardio conditioning, power training, and hitting muscles throughout the posterior chain, all without stressing your joints. Here’s why you should hop on the bandwagon, too.
Why Train with the Rowing Machine
Depending on the type of rower, the resistance is either generated by a paddle pushing against water in a tank or a fanned flywheel (which can be adjusted with a damper, like gears on a bike).
Regardless of the resistance mechanism, the main perk of the rower is that it can be used for cardiovascular work without the impact you’d get from running. Many people don’t realize that even a gentle recovery jog on the treadmill or road can be hard on your joints due to the heavy eccentric loading when your foot strikes the ground. Since your feet largely stay glued to the machine, you just don’t get that impact on the rower. This benefit applies whether you’re doing a long aerobic workout — training your endurance, focusing on continuous work output — or a quick-hitting anaerobic power session.
Regular aerobic workouts strengthen your heart, improving its ability to pump oxygen-rich blood throughout your body, and, among other benefits, can lower your risk for coronary heart disease. But anaerobic power is just as important to train, especially as you get older; recent research suggests that power is one of the first elements of muscle function to decline with aging, and it has a greater association with impairments in functional, everyday activities than other muscle parameters. That means, for longevity, everyone should be including power in their routine.
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You don’t need a ton of volume to reap the benefits of power training on the rower, either. Research suggests that performing high-intensity interval training (brief periods of vigorous activity broken up with recovery periods) can induce comparable or greater physiological adaptations as moderate-intensity continuous training (30 to 60 minutes at a steady, challenging but doable state). If you were to focus some of your rowing intervals on power, you might be able to tap into those perks.
Cardio aside, the rower targets the posterior chain — specifically the hamstrings, glutes, back, and some of the core muscles. These muscles on the backside of your body tend to become stretched and weak due to sedentary lifestyles, while the muscles on the front side of the body often shorten. The rowing machine’s ability to train these posterior muscles is what makes it my preferred form of cardio for my clients.
How to Use the Rowing Machine
Before you take your first pull on a fan-based rower, set your resistance. Despite common belief, you don’t really need to bump the resistance all the way up to 10. You can take it up to intensify your workout, sure, but if you want a rowing experience that’s similar to being out on the water, six and a half or seven is where you want to be. It’s like setting the treadmill to a one percent incline, which mimics a real road setting. (If you’re on a water rower, there’s no way to change the resistance.) Alternatively, you can dig deep into the settings to find the drag factor, which sets the airflow in and out of the flywheel. Make sure that’s set to roughly 140, and the rower will automatically find the best resistance for you.
Once all the admin is said and done, plan your workout around your goals. To train your aerobic endurance, your rowing blocks need to be no less than 10 minutes. As you progress, you can make your way up to 20- or even 40-minute sessions — but that style of workout can be as mentally exhausting as it is physically exhausting. My advice: Break up your rowing into 10- or 15-minute blocks, finding a comfortable pace and using your strokes per minute as a way to keep your intensity in check. With these longer blocks, aim to keep your stroke rate lower while maintaining a decent power output. Focus on your breath; as soon as you lose that ability to sync your breath with your stroke, that’s a sign to dial back your intensity.
When power is the priority, set a timer for one minute and try to create and maintain as much power (measured in watts) as possible for all 60 seconds of work. You can incorporate those one-minute drills into a HIIT workout or circuit with a handful of your favorite moves. Or, shorten those intervals and try to maintain a higher power output; if your max power during that one-minute effort is 300 watts, challenge yourself to hold onto 350 watts for 30-second intervals.
Along with metrics like stroke rate and watts, you can craft a workout around calories burned, which is popular in CrossFit spaces. During a strength or conditioning circuit that includes the rower as one of the stations, set a calorie target for your intervals or blocks. That’s a fun way to introduce the rower into your workout, especially if you’re short on time for cardio and still want to hit multiple muscle groups.
Outside your usual workout regimen, the rower can be used to benchmark your fitness — specifically your V̇O₂ max. The standard procedure for measuring this indicator of cardiovascular fitness is to exercise at an increasing intensity on a treadmill or bike with a face mask, which measures the volume and concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air you’re breathing. But that test can be uncomfortable for some members. One alternative: Power through 2,000 meters on the rower as quickly as possible. The shorter the time to completion, the higher your V̇O₂ max. (Generally, the baseline goal is less than eight minutes for women and sub-seven minutes for men.) People often try to ease into those first 500 meters before picking up their stroke rate, but you’re best off going as hard as you can starting with the first pull and, as one of my members says, holding on for dear life.
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Compared to other pieces of equipment, the rower is pretty safe; your technique can slip a little bit and you won’t be at risk of seriously harming yourself. Still, the best rowers know that if they let their form go during a session, they’ll start to lose efficiency. It’s a lot like powerlifting: It’s just as much about lifting as heavy as you can with your brute strength as it is moving the weight from point A to point B in the most efficient way.
Good breathing is essential to that; make sure you forcefully exhale as you press into the footplates and inhale as you slide back to the starting position. As you row, visualize your deadlift technique. They’re surprisingly similar movements: You pull from the floor as the handle (or barbell) clears your knees, then you extend through your hips. At the end range of motion, you reverse the movement. Oftentimes, I see members' knees bending before the handle clears, causing their hands to move up and down in a wave pattern and leaking energy from their arms and back. This little slip-up in form can snowball, causing them to lose their breath and rhythm and ultimately making the workout less efficient.
As you return to the starting position, think about driving your heels down into the footplates. I often see members pull their toes back against the foot strap, which puts more of the workload on the tight, overworked hip flexors. This cue will help you pull yourself forward with the hamstrings. And loading them effectively ensures you’re able to create the most power with them when you go into your next stroke.
When you’re new to the machine, don’t be afraid to slow down your strokes and hone in on your technique. It’ll only make you a more efficient rower — and a stronger one at that — in the long run.
Jonathan Dick is a COACH X at E by Equinox E St. James Street in London, U.K. He has been with Equinox for 10 years and has certifications from Precision Nutrition (Pn1 and Pn2) and the Institute of Performance Nutrition. He’s also a MNU-Certified Nutritionist (Level 5 Diploma in Advanced Nutrition Science), Pain-Free Performance Specialist, and Pre & Post-Natal Performance Coach. Nutrition is his speciality, and he has worked with elite and amateur athletes, CEOs, and stay-at-home parents. With his expertise as a registered nutritionist, he dispels the misinformation and myths for his clients and facilitates the growth and development of Equinox Coaches as a EFTI Master Instructor.