After taking up machine rowing for its obvious health and fitness benefits, a number of ‘converted’ rowers take the next step and join their local recreational or competitive rowing club. It’s a process that’s fairly common – so much so that a growing number of rowing clubs are aiming to bring new members to their club for the sole purpose of fitness-driven rowing, without any competition.

Most rowing clubs have a reasonable degree of history behind them – the majority have competed in regional or local competitions, often for several decades. Given the popularity of rowing in high schools and colleges, many urban or regional rowing clubs are linked to a school or university that operates in the area.

There are reasons to join beyond the obvious fitness gains. If you’re found that you’re particularly good at rowing on a stationary machine, getting on the water could help you find a new sport and increase your participation with a team. Most rowing clubs have a social rowing calendar, inviting new members to participate in group rows and attend competitive meetings or fun getaways.

For fitness, it’s tough to beat. For community, it’s even tougher. If you want to take your rowing to the next level and get on the water, joining a local rowing club is often the best way to do so.

Some people exercise out of vanity. Others exercise because of its potential to extend their lives and improve their alertness. Others do it for the physical benefits, aiming to improve their sporting skills and physical prowess. For most, it’s a combination of the above and a simple desire to improve their cardiovascular endurance levels.

We’re going to share two tips for improving your endurance. Neither require any special skills, and neither require anything more than the most basic workout. If you’re ready to boost your endurance level without changing your workout, consider giving them both a go.

Incorporating HIIT techniques into your cardio

One of the easiest ways to quickly increase your endurance is to switch between high-intensity and low-intensity actions during exercise. For rowers, this could mean dividing your thirty-minute ergo session between low-speed rowing and sprints, with low-speed rowing taking up the most time.

Switch between the two and your heart will experience an additional burst of activity, powering up your respiratory system and improving your ability to sustain changes in activity level.

Pyramid-style rowing, cycling, or running sessions

Athletes love pyramid-style training. It’s the process of progressively extending and contracting your fitness sessions according to a schedule. For rowers, it could mean using a monthly schedule or ten-minute, twenty-minute, and thirty-minute rowing sessions which are switched between on a daily or weekly basis.

Successful pyramid training can help you increase endurance and all-round fitness fairly quickly, particularly if its followed closely. What’s there to lose? Give it a try in place of your regular fitness routine today and you’ll notice a significant increase in your breathing power.

There’s a commonly held belief amongst casual exercisers that stimulants are, to put it simply, a recipe for severe health problems when paired with physical exertion. Thanks to shock news stories and a laundry list of worst-case tales, the thought of combining exercise with so much as a cup of coffee is thought of as a major personal risk.

But most of the time, it isn’t. Most research suggests that minor stimulant intake – the amount of caffeine found in a cup of coffee, for example – has little to no effect on the heart during exercise.

Of course, that’s not an invitation to load up on caffeine before you jump on the rowing machine, but it is a suggestion that it’s unlikely to spell the end of the world. The risk of long-term injury from minor stimulant intake is very low, particularly for stimulants developed for athletic intake.

However, there’s a second dilemma to stimulant intake – many are completely ineffective for all but the most dedicated athletes. While beginners often long for the results promised by miracle exercise drugs, few will get them without a complex diet and carefully planned training routine.

As with all exercise experiments, tread carefully. For those with limited fitness experience, it’s always a better choice to exercise free of stimulants or alertness supplements than to use them.

Rowing is a dynamic form of exercise – one that involves both the body’s respiratory system and its major muscle groups. As such, it’s often approached with confusion by strength trainers and cardio experts alike, each treating it as if it were a foreign discipline. The nutritional side of things can be especially confusing – should you eat for muscle gain or maximum weight loss?

The simple answer is to eat depending on your goals. There’s a common saying that weight loss is almost entirely dependent on diet, with goal-driven exercise only playing a minor part. When you exert energy on a rowing machine, it’s your diet that will dictate how it’s recovered and processed by your body.

Protein supplements are worthwhile for rowers aiming to gain muscle mass, as an intense rowing workout is likely to provide enough muscular stress to promote growth and development. However, it’s obviously a part of dieting that’s largely unnecessary (and potentially a hindrance to progress) for those aiming to lose weight through low-resistance usage of a rowing machine.

Eat according to your goals and you’ll see accelerated results from your exercise. With both your diet and your results-driven exercise routine complementing one another, you may see a dramatic change in your body’s composition within weeks.

The CTA Digital Rowing Machine is the latest in a string of unorthodox controllers for the Nintendo Wii, a gaming machine with considerable fitness pedigree and a rather unusual approach to control. Gaming titles such as Wii Fit have been praised by fitness experts, albeit with some reservations – most physical fitness gurus suggest that the Wii offers limited health and fitness potential.

So is the CTA Rower a reasonable substitute for the rowing machines we’re used to seeing at the gym or in the home? Not quite. While the unit’s promotional video stresses its potential to burn calories, it’s far from the full-body workout on offer with a complete rowing machine. There’s no resistance to speak of – only ‘pulling’ sounds from the television’s speaker set.

Great fun? Yes. A complete workout? No. The CTA Digital Rowing Machine certainly catches the eye, but it’s little more than a cute fitness gimmick. However, the Wii itself offers some reasonable health and fitness advantages to users, particularly those looking to increase flexibility. While we’re hesitant to endorse the Wii rower, we are sure it’s a lot of fun before a real rowing machine session.

There’s nothing more frustrating than a workout on poorly configured equipment. From height-unfriendly rowing machines to aging and unadjusted power cages, the standard assortment of exercise machines can be distinctly bad for your health when treated without the proper degree of care and attention.

Today we’ll be looking at the adjustments required for comfortable and safe use of a home rowing machine. With the average rowing workout involving several hundred strokes, a sustained period of intense aerobic activity, and strength training, it’s essential that we can configure our ergometers for safe and effective use.

Foot height adjustment

Foot placement may not seem like an important element of rowing, but it’s actually one of the most important variable for preventing injuries and converting your pulling motions into movement and speed.

Start by adjusting your rowing machine’s foot platforms – moving them upwards or downwards so that your feet are in a comfortable position without stress on your ankles. Test the footing position by performing a few test rows – if you’re comfortable, leave it where it is and move on to the next step.

Adjusting resistance

Beginner rowers may wish to exercise with a low level of resistance – something that’s both easy and relatively effective for cardiovascular development. Set the resistance slider to between three and five and you’ll run into the same level of natural resistance as you’d find on water.

Serious rowers might prefer greater levels of resistance, aiming to increase their muscular strength or boost endurance for long distance races. We recommend setting the resistance slider no higher than seven for standard training, as higher settings can heighten the risk of injuries.

Are you comfortable?

More than anything else, it’s important that you’re comfortable on your rowing machine. Everyone is different, and while our recommended settings aim to keep anyone comfortable, they may not be suitable for everyone.

If you feel pain while exercising, it could be your rowing machine’s configuration that’s causing the problem. Speak with an expert or have a friend watch you while rowing – their observations could help you find problem settings and revise your technique.

There’s little doubt that a combination of exercise and intelligent dieting is the best way to lose weight. It’s a theory that’s backed up by scientific evidence, reinforced through anecdotal examples, and accepted by almost every would-be exerciser out there. While the occasional ‘miracle’ weight loss product occasionally pops up and tries to buck the trend, the fitness community as a whole has grown quite precise at knocking deceptive products from their thrones.

But there’s another truth about weight loss, one that’s not explored quite so often. It is possible to lose weight without extensive exercise, instead relying on specific dieting and strict calorie control. These seven strategies a designed to help you achieve just that – weight loss without extensive training, endless rowing machine hours, or cardiovascular exercise.

Note: We recommend a balanced approach to weight loss, using both exercise and diet to keep your bodyweight steady and healthy. These diet strategies are effective, though most are more effective when paired with regular exercise and a healthy, active lifestyle.

Build a lean meal database.

We’re surrounded by temptations, meals which are nutritionally worthless yet convenient, tasty, and quick enough to catch us off guard. Packaged dinners, processed meats and ‘healthy’ salads, and fast food lunches are ubiquitous to the point that they’re rarely challenged, instead forming the backbone of most people’s diets.

Fighting fast food through convenience is almost impossible; a backed chicken breast and mixed salad will never prove as quick to cook or cheap to prepare. The most effective way to replace fast food isn’t through convenience, but through familiarity. Build a lean meal database and draw from it daily, preparing a healthy snack or nutritionally complete meal as an alternative to store-bought foods and pre-packaged nutritional disasters.

Be consistent. Be boring. Make your diet simple.

Consistency is difficult. When you’re raised on unhealthy foods and accustomed to ‘convenient’ meals, switching to a healthy solution can be an organizational nightmare. Your productivity wanes, your focus drops, and the amount of time dedicated to eating healthily can shoot through the roof.

But eating healthily doesn’t have to be a task. By making your diet consistent – in many regards, making it boring – you’ll be able to cut out the difficulty of preparing healthy foods. Eliminate junk foods from your diet entirely and instead stick to a weekly schedule of five-to-ten meals. While it’s likely you’ll grow bored of your diet, the consistency of your meal plan will make it less tempting to stray towards fast foods out of convenience.

Timing is everything. Organize your meals by activity and macronutrient count.

Almost every mainstream diet pays attention to meal content. Weight Watchers and other product diets have made calorie counting an everyday activity, replacing a distinct public ignorance about nutrition with an acute awareness. Even the least diet-crazy person knows what goes into their food, with many non-dieters able to identify high-protein meals and avoid high-sugar treats.

But despite the progress in meal content, few dieters pay attention to meal timing. Healthy eating goes beyond consuming certain types of foods, and goes towards consuming appropriate food types at different times of the day. Proteins are most important in the morning, allowing your body to repair and maintain starved tissue.

Instead of merely counting calories and cataloguing your macronutrient intake, give your diet a clear sense of macro-nutritional structure. Consumer high-protein foods early in the day, perhaps with some dense carbohydrates and caffeine. By timing your meals and scheduling different nutrients, you’ll allow your body to more efficiently burn calories and produce energy.

Don’t cut out all carbohydrates; replace processed carbs with natural alternatives.

Low-carb diets were once thought of as a fad, a diet trend that was unlikely to last longer than a single season. They’re now a religion for some exercise gurus, with almost every modern diet built around the low-carb principle in one form or another.

But despite their diet appeal, carbohydrates are an essential macronutrient for proper concentration and mental alertness. They’re our number one energy source – a source of vital short-term energy and calories for rebuilding body tissue. It’s best to stick to a diet that doesn’t quite eliminate carbs, bot does eliminate the worst of them.

Start by eliminating any ‘white’ carbohydrates from your diet. Processed and refined rices, breads, and pastas are all best eliminated, along with any other processed foods which are high in carbohydrates. Replace them with natural, unprocessed alternatives; brown rice is a great source of long-term energy, along with potatoes, whole wheat bread, and unprocessed pasta.

Cut down on liquid calories, not nutritionally dense foods.

Some of the biggest fatteners aren’t even thought of as traditionally ‘fatty’ foods. Soft drinks and sugary beverages account for hundreds-of-thousands of calories annually, even when consumed in relative moderation. Even supposedly healthy beverages like sweetened teas and fruit juices can result in unexpected flab, largely because of their huge refined sugar quantities.

Instead of cutting high-fat foods from your diet, aim to replace all of your favorite high-sugar drinks with natural alternatives. Sugarless green tea, black coffee, and unsweetened fruit juices are great options, though few beat the best weight loss formula: water.

Supplements aren’t all bad. Use the basics, but don’t rely on them.

Dietary supplements have a mixed reputation. Serious athletes love them, praising their possibilities for rapid weight loss and short-term strength gains. Many performance-based athletes have grown to use supplements frequently before major events, including thermogenic fat burners and muscle-building protein supplements.

On the other hand, novice dieters and new exercisers take a decidedly cautious view to dietary supplements, particularly high-end supplements and micro-nutritional aides. We recommend a steady and balanced mix of basic, natural supplements such as meal replacement drinks or extra protein sources. When used responsibly and strategically, dietary supplements can play a helping role in your weight loss.

Break the rules. It’ll help you follow them.

Create a strict schedule and you’re bound to slip up once, fall out of sequence, and eventually abandon it altogether. It’s a phenomenon that’s as frequent and probable in training as it is in rigorous dieting; when people set strict, specific, and inflexible routines for themselves, even the slightest disruption can end in total failure.

It’s important to break the rules once in a while, especially when it comes to food. Schedule one day every week where no foods are off limits; chocolate bars, sugary drinks, and extra cheese pizza are all allowed. A day of reckless eating is unlikely to cause any serious weight gain, and it’s a welcome break from the monotony of constant healthy eating.

Every year, over 17 million American adults are plagued by sports injuries. Some are relatively minor and inconsequential, causing limited pain and healing within days. Others are particularly biting and limiting, leaving otherwise able athletes unable to train or exercise. An even smaller amount are completely debilitating, potentially ending careers and causing lifelong problems for their sufferers.

Whether annoying or debilitating, sporting injuries are never good. What’s most troubling about their frequency is that most are easily preventable through dynamic and static stretching, proper warm up exercises, and a greater approach to personal safety while exercising. We’ve seen some nasty injuries occur without real reason; the result of improper stretching and a lack of sports safety.

These six reasons, strategies, and preventative measures can help you significantly reduce the risk of minor injuries while exercising. Using a rowing machine itself is a natural risk preventer; rowers are less dangerous than other cardiovascular exercise machines and tend to attract only minimal injuries. Whether you row, run, swim or cycle, keep these six warm up reasons in mind and you’ll never find yourself unable to participate.

1. Warming up leaves your muscles more responsive to resistance exercise

Warming up isn’t just a buzzword for easing into exercise, it’s the literal definition. During warmup exercises and light cardiovascular exercise, your body rapidly pumps blood to muscle tissue and increases the temperature of your body’s major muscle groups. That means every second you spend lightly warming up on that rowing machine isn’t wasted time, it’s an important part of your exercise routine.

Warm muscles respond more favorably to resistance training, particularly repetitive training with a moderate load (a category which rowing very much fits into). By boosting the temperature of your body’s major muscles, you’ll see an increase in the force with which you can lift weights, a marked gain in your body’s pulling power, and a smaller amount of essential recovery time between exercises.

2. You’ll clear your mind, increase focus, and cut out distractions

Warming up is equal parts mental and physical. Sure, there are plenty of physiological benefits to an extensive warmup; increased body hormones, minimized risk of injury, and greater respiratory response just a few of them, but there are significantly more reasons to warm up than just the purely physical.

Take focus, for instance. A ten-minute warmup is considered wasted time by some gym gurus and exercise nuts, but it’s really the exact opposite. By isolating your focus for ten minutes before hitting the weights, you’ll gain a level of intense, specific focus that few others in the weights room could have. Channel that focus and ambition into energy and you’ll see some immediate fitness gains.

3. Dynamic stretching minimizes the risk of pulling muscles and damaging body tissue

Dynamic stretching is one of the greatest skills in any athletes arsenal. It eliminates the risk of serious injury, dramatically increases the usable range of motion, and makes you a more finely tuned piece of athletic equipment. It’s the fitness world’s equivalent to premium fuel; working out with your flexibility at its peak makes you a more efficient and powerful machine.

So spend ten-to-fifteen minutes on dynamic stretching before any serious physical activity. Gym workouts and rowing machine races definitely do qualify; they’re both as strenuous and potentially dangerous as any other sport. A quick dynamic stretching session can help you minimize the risk of pulled muscles, cut down on potential long-term injuries, and increase your pressing and pulling strength.

4. A ten-minute warmup can boost your usable range of motion

Range of motion may seem like a silly concept for rowers – something reserved for gymnasts and track athletes – but it’s actually one of the most important fitness metrics out there. Flexibility can have major effects on your body’s alignment while exercising, even leading to undeveloped muscle groups and potentially painful joint injuries.

Thankfully, flexibility is easily developed through pre-workout stretches and static holds. The first – dynamic stretches – are focused on improving the movement-based flexibility of your body’s major muscle groups. They require a slow, controlled, and comfortable progression through simple motions, many of which simulate the movements used in rowing.

The second – static holds – increase static passive flexibility. Shift your body into positions you find yourself in while rowing, particularly those which cause minor pain or discomfort. By holding these positions before your workout, you can eliminate the risk of pulled muscles and flexibility related injuries.

5. A full warmup will leave you burning weight more efficiently

There’s more to warming up than preventing injuries and increasing flexibility. Physiologists have found a clear link between slowly warmed muscles and the body’s hormonal system, suggesting that the hormones involved in burning fat, creating muscle, and increasing respiratory power are present in greater levels after an extensive pre-workout warmup.

This makes your body a significantly more powerful muscle-building, fat-burning, and exercising machine after you’ve performed some basic physical tasks. A brief rowing machine session or stationary bike effort appears to be enough to increase hormone levels, though most physicians recommend slowly easing into exercise to preserve hormone levels and keep your body efficient.

6. The warmer you are, the more effective your respiratory system becomes

Take a seat at any track and field event and you’ll witness something interesting. Not only do runners engage in a lengthy stretching session before each race, they spend almost as much time warming up as they do during their competitive events. It’s a result of the human respiratory system’s unique increase of blood temperatures, and it’s one that’s particularly useful to endurance athletes.

As blood warms, the body’s ability to supply fresh blood to muscle groups and major organs increases. Blood flow resistance begins to decrease, muscular stress slows and eventually fades entirely, and the body’s cooling systems paradoxically become more effective. This leaves you able to row faster, with greater intensity, and for significantly longer periods of time.

There’s little consensus amongst exercise scientists and fitness ‘experts.’ In an industry loaded with empty marketing and unproven promises, few methods for quick weight loss and rapid fitness actually end up paying off. It’s difficult to find claims that can be substantiated, even more difficult to find single workout routines that succeed, and near impossible to find a single exercise product that can make you superhuman.

That’s why a growing number of exercisers are ditching the single exercise station in favor of a varied, all-encompassing training program. Using the tactics preached for decades by sports coaches and strength trainers, exercise routines are being put together targeting entire muscle groups over ‘vanity’ muscles and functional strength over beach-body-style ‘fitness.’

Rowing is one of the most popular activities for real fitness and measurable results, and its quickly finding a place as one of the hottest exercises available in mixed routines. These five questions, concerns, and tactics pop up constantly in rowing discussions, which is why we’ve conveniently put them together below, complete with answers and information for you to reference.

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Like most pieces of exercise equipment, rowing machines are available from a wide range of manufacturers and an equally wide range of designers. From utilitarian mechanical rowers to professional rowing machines designed for experience above anything else, the number of different ergometers on the market is staggering, and potentially quite confusing for a beginner.

However, when reduced to their core functions and stress points, the construction style and function of all rowing machines is much the same, regardless of their design. We’ve looked at the four most common types of rowing machine – air, water, magnetic, and hydraulic resistance methods – and laid out what you should look for in each.
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