Finding time to exercise can be difficult. Statistics from the National Sleep Foundation suggest that most adults work upwards of 46 hours weekly, pushing free time out the door and physical fitness into a tight spot.

But exercise doesn’t always require a two-hour free block. From ten-minute sprinting sessions to home rowing machine efforts, it’s possible to gain a near-complete workout in as little as fifteen minutes daily.

Our three recommendations can help you exercise faster, get fitter, and feel more productive during the day. All that’s required is a rowing machine – so let’s cut out those excuses and get to work!

Move in 50 meter steps

We’ve seen tremendous progress amongst casual athletes that take an always-upwards approach to fitness. By progressively increasing rowing distance on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, novice rowers and previously unfit exercisers can increase their endurance without timed rowing sessions.

Add fifty meters to your rowing distance weekly and you’ll see a profound increase in your personal fitness levels and endurance power. As time goes by, the increase in distance won’t be accompanied by an increase in time – that’s your body adjusting to the test and becoming more able.

Fifteen minutes is all it takes

There’s no excuse not to get on the rowing machine, especially when a quick row is all it takes to see real results. We recommend dividing your fifteen minute rowing sessions into thirds – the first should be a light warmup; the second a combination of sprints and cruising, and the third a relaxed warm-down period.

Resistance isn’t a substitute for time

Almost all rowing machines include a variable resistance control – a small sliding dial which can shift through the various levels of resistance on offer. Despite high-resistance settings offering a more challenging experience than low-resistance options, they’re no substitute for a long-distance rowing session.

Muscular development works on two levels: the aerobic and anaerobic. Increase resistance and your rowing machine will become an anaerobic exercise tool, increasing strength and challenging the body’s major muscle groups. Increase time and your rowing machine will target your respiratory system, increasing anaerobic fitness and shedding excess weight.

There’s no shortage of tracking features on today’s top rowing machines. From built-in heart rate monitors to distance and speed computers, the average ergometer is home to more technology than last year’s hottest car.

But putting that technology to use isn’t always simple. We’ve put together a basic guide to tracking and measuring your rowing efforts – from tracking your energy output to recording your heart rate; monitoring effort to measuring exactly how many calories you’re burning.

Measure intensity with your heart rate:

Speed, distance, and resistance aren’t great measures of intensity for cardiovascular fitness. While strength trainers and athletes depend upon their mile times and pulling power, rowers aiming for weight loss are best off tracking their workout intensity with a heart rate monitor.

Work out your target heart rate using a basic calculation sheet. (Most gyms will have one, and home rowers can easily find one online.) With your target heart rate planned, use a heart rate monitor and ensure that your circulatory system is operating within +/- 10% of your target while rowing.

Novice rowers should aim for consistency:

One of the latest trends to hit the fitness industry is high-impact interval training – a discipline that’s often abbreviated to HIIT. Unlike, other fitness industry fads, it’s a proven and scientifically backed training method, and when used properly it can be very effective for weight loss and aerobic fitness.

But despite its effectiveness, high-intensity training isn’t the best option for novice rowers. It’s best to start out slow and focus on consistency, tracking your heart rate and ensuring that your workout is at a constant intensity level. We recommend building basic fitness with consistent training before working HIIT and other sprint methods into your rowing schedule.

Working out isn’t just about increasing aerobic fitness levels and boosting your strength – it’s about ensuring that your body remains strong enough to fight illness and eliminate injuries. Whether on a rowing machine or a stair climber, endurance fitness activities always have the potential to hurt and damage your body’s muscle structure and ligaments.

But with the right combination of technique and discipline, you’ll be able to prevent all but the least hurtful injuries. We’ve pieced together a three-step system for eliminating rowing machine injuries – and it’s one you can apply right now for your next workout.

Always warm up

Warming up has its own set of distinct cardiovascular benefits, but what we’re most interested in is its ability to prevent muscular tearing, pulled muscles, and joint-related injuries. With a ten-minute warmup, you’ll be able to prevent the vast majority of rowing-related injuries simply by being more prepared, alert, and physically ready for exercise.

Keep your wrists straight

Beginner rowers often end up putting their wrists in an unnatural position, particularly when subject to high levels of resistance or taking part in high-speed rows. It’s a technique issue that’s particularly common amongst overworked novices, and it’s one that can result in major injuries and joint pain.

Row with your wrists in a natural position – lined up with your forearms, under limited stress, and able to move upwards and downwards freely. Wrist injuries are quite common and very painful, but with basic precautions they can be completely eliminated.

Keep your weight on the seat, not on your knees

Rowing machines are renowned as a low-impact form of exercise, but they do have their own small set of potential risks. One injury zone that’s particularly vulnerable is the lower back, an area that’s often injured due to poor hip placement.

Keep your hips tucked forward and your weight grounded on the seat. Novice rowers often force their weight forwards onto their knees, leaving their backs unnaturally bent and their posterior chain prone to stress and potential muscular injuries.

Walk into any fitness center office and you’ll hear a few interesting statistics tossed around. The first is the ‘quit rate’ – a measure that fitness centers and local gyms use to gauge just how effective and motivated their members are. Most appear for the first four weeks, putting in the hours and working hard at shared machinery.

But then they fail. Over eighty percent of gym members drastically cut down on their exercise time at some point after the first thirty days. Increase the time span to ninety days and you’ll see an average ninety percent drop, an alarming statistic given the expensive price of an annual fitness center membership.

The most common reason for this massive drop isn’t a lack of dedication or a misguided sense that fitness isn’t important, but a lack of time to make it to the gym in the first place. With busy office schedules and dedicated workloads to deal to, the vast majority of would-be exercisers simply can’t find time to hike down to the local weight room.

But there’s an alternative; home fitness, and it’s growing more popular every year. From Nautilus fitness sets to effective air-powered rowing machines, it’s becoming significantly more popular to dedicate a section of your home to personal fitness. These six tips, tricks, and tactics will help you do the same without falling into the same old fitness equipment traps and potential errors.

So take a look over our list, and keep it in mind before you commit to that ‘ten-easy-payments’ purchase. From celebrity endorsed equipment to old fashioned rowing machines, owning a home gym can be a pleasure if you apply the right strategy to it.

1. Will you use it? Buy machinery that’s simple to operate, yet simultaneously effective.

Switch on daytime television and you’ll be bombarded with home fitness products. Some claim to work miracles on your body, promising tight abdominals and pumped biceps within days. Others are slightly more realistic, promoting healthy living and exercise through a series of very specific workouts and motions.

The problem with these ‘miracle’ fitness machines isn’t that they’re not effective – many of them are, given the right circumstances – but that they’re too specific for reasonable use. Most people need variation and mix in their exercises, and relying on a machine with just one purpose isn’t likely to provide that. Multi-purpose machines are worthwhile, but it’s best to ask yourself if you’ll really use it enough to justify the purchase before buying.

2. Is it safe? Auto-spotters and supported machines are best.

American inventor Arthur Jones took a different approach to fitness than those before him. Tired of the ultra-specific training methods seen in athletics and equally sick of the intense reputation weight training had gained, he founded his company Nautilus with a single intention: showing the world that fitness needn’t be unsafe, difficult, or require extensive research.

And in many ways, he succeeded. Jones’ innovation replaced the notion of fitness as dangerous and risky, offering exercisers a safe and failure-friendly method of exercising. His Nautilus machines are just one example of safe and injury-free exercise; rowing machines, weightlifting cages, and specific exercise machines all offer greater safety than traditional resistance exercises, while at the same time offering extensive fitness and strength benefits.

3. Is it effective? Home gyms and ultra-complex machines aren’t always the best option.

Strength training experts are often heard speaking about the difference between measurable strength and functional strength. The former is one that’s built in the gym – strength that’s almost completely impractical in the outside world and can only be measured on fitness equipment. The second, functional strength, is different – strength that can be applied to real activities and sporting pursuits.

Your health efforts may be cosmetic, but they should also aim to achieve the second type of strength. Building functional strength is something that’s most effectively achieved on equipment that simulated real movements. Rowing machines, unsupported weights, and compound resistance exercises offer both cosmetic advantages and real, measurable, and useful strength gains.

4. Is it storable? Micro-gyms often aren’t effective, while giant equipment is impractical.

Hydraulic piston rowing machines are immensely popular, but not for their effective muscle stimulation or natural rowing position. In an effort to save space, people often opt for the least effective pieces of exercise equipment. It’s something we see in almost every sector of fitness, from compact and convenient As-Seen-On-TV equipment to microscopic home workout aides.

But there’s a trade-off between compactness and effectiveness, one that’s particularly visible when you test the two types of equipment side by side. Despite offering less in the way of storability, it’s often worth spending slightly more to purchase a better piece of home fitness equipment.

5. Will it last? Cheap fitness equipment can fall apart, leaving you out of pocket and frustrated.

There’s nothing more frustrating than an inflexible, weak, and utterly frustrating piece of home workout gear. Cheap ‘home gyms’ and ‘miracle’ exercise equipment can plague would-be exercisers, forcing them to waste time and put up with gear that simply isn’t what they originally expected.

Before you purchase any piece of fitness equipment, take the time to check its durability and longevity online. A great way of testing the reputation and strength of fitness equipment is to look for it inside a local gym or training center; if it’s used by hundreds of people daily without fail it’s much more likely to last inside your garage or living room.

6. Is it flexible? Specialized machines often fail when relied on for complete fitness.

Specialized fitness equipment comes with a trade-off; it’s immensely effective for isolated muscle groups and certain movements, but sometimes utterly worthless as a piece of full-body training gear. Specialized abdominal training machines are particularly guilty of needless specialization, forcing users to spend almost all of their time on a single muscle group while neglecting the rest of their body.

As a beginner, it’s unwise to look at fitness equipment which caters to specific muscle groups or strength-based movements. Look for complete home gyms and flexible training equipment; weight training cages and full-body cardiovascular equipment such as rowing machines are generally worth picking up, while specific arm or abdominal training tools may not be.

For most of us, fitness is a relatively small part of a balanced lifestyle. We spend time keeping fit, eating reasonably well, and ensuring that we stay healthy enough to enjoy life. Weight loss and strength are issues, albeit relatively secondary to other pursuits and activities.

But for some, fitness is more than an activity or a small sliver of their lifestyles; it’s a passion and a calling. From enthusiast athletes to competitive rowers, a surprisingly large sector of the population takes part in exercise not just for the health benefits, but for the competitive advantage it can provide.

These five techniques aren’t just for the casual rower; they’re unlikely to increase your fitness gains, and they’re equally unlikely to dramatically increase your rate of weight loss. They are, however, ideal for the enthusiasts and athletes of the rowing world – people who aim to increase their rowing speed, significantly decrease their mile time, and become more competitive athletes in the process.

So if the thought of a timed row or ergometer endurance race puts you off, it may be best to keep these techniques out of your exercise regime. However, if you want to significantly improve your rowing performance and potentially improve your technique, these strategies, tactics, and training methods could prove to be quite worthwhile.

Are you training alone? Use a camera to catch mistakes and technique errors:

Tango champion Tim Ferriss took a unique approach to mastering the dance. Despite having less than six months of formal tango training experience behind him, he managed to master the complex technique and compete at a world level. How did he do it? By videotaping his practice sessions, gaining an understanding of his mistakes, and working hard to correct them.

The same strategy can be applied to rowing technique. Rather than aimlessly focusing on improving lap times and pulling power, taking an introspective and analytical approach to rowing can improve all aspects of your exercise. Sit down weekly with a video camera and tape your rowing sessions. A once-weekly analysis session will help you recognize your faults and work to correct them.

Test different exercise periods and work to your strengths:

Psychologists have studied the human attention span relentlessly, aiming to recognize the exact point where human concentration hits its peak. They’ve studied hundreds of people in thousands of situations, and come to very few complete conclusions.

The reason for the distinct lack of conclusive data isn’t poor scientific analysis or faulty recording, it’s a result of our natural variations in alertness. We’ve all heard the ‘early bird’ and ‘night owl’ terms, but very few people have thought to consider them in the realm of fitness. Simply put, we’re not all athletic and energetic at the same time periods.

If you want to substantially improve your rowing performance without making any changes to your personal strength or well being, move your training session to a more productive and focused part of the day. Test yourself for concentration and focus across multiple different times; some people find that they’re more athletically able at night, while others are most focussed early in the morning.

Use supplementary exercises to boost speed and pulling power:

Fitness experts are torn over where to place rowing on the anaerobic-aerobic continuum. Some suggest that it’s a cardiovascular discipline; an activity which stimulates the body’s respiratory system and encourages human endurance. Others suggest that it’s an anaerobic activity, one that stimulates the body’s muscle groups and encourages people to gain strength, not just stamina.

Realistically, rowing fits somewhere in the middle. It’s a discipline that has some serious endurance benefits, though it’s also worthwhile from a strength training perspective. Due to its unique position, it’s also an endurance exercise that benefits hugely from added physical strength and pulling power. Off-the-line acceleration, rowing speed, and endurance all benefit from boosted physical strength.

Combine your rowing with weight training, plyometrics training, and resistance exercise and you’ll see an instant change in your rowing speeds, lap times, and for those that row on the water, craft stability. For a simple rowing-based weight training routine, check out our Best Exercises for Rowing guide.

Find what works, recognize what doesn’t, and ruthlessly eliminate wasted time:

As convenient as a home rowing machine can be, it’s difficult to improve technique and ability without a human perspective. Those of us that row at the gym have the added advantage of access to a qualified training team; gym instructors are often available to guide rowers through motions, ensure that proper technique is used, and cut out bad habits before they become an issue.

But it’s not completely impossible to see the same improvements at home. With our videotaping tip, you can acknowledge, isolate, and repair technique issues before they become a major problem. But why not do the same for other rowing-related fitness goals? Analyze your performance during timed rowing sessions and specific training exercises, and use it to gain an understanding of where and how you excel.

Create goals for yourself and work hard to meet them:

David Allen, creator of Getting Things Done and legendary productivity guru, has often illustrated the pitfalls of entering a new job, project, or discipline without creating clear goals. Be it business or sport, the risks of dedicating a huge amount of time to something without a clear idea of results can be huge, and often quite personally damaging.

Apply the same principles to your rowing, fitness, and weight loss efforts as you would a business venture or personal project. Enter with clear goals in mind – target weights, fitness milestones, and rowing lap times – and you’ll likely succeed. Meeting fitness milestones doesn’t signal an end to your journey or indicate that you’ll revert back to poor health; it’s a sign that can guide you forward and foster ambition and motivation.

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.

Twenty years ago, the fitness industry was divided on the concept of there being ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of cardiovascular exercise. The dogma amongst exercise scientists was that all exercise was good for the body, be it running, cycling, swimming, or any other one of hundreds of activities. What mattered wasn’t the platform which we exercised on or even the type of exercise that happened, but the action involved with increasing blood flow and working our hearts.

Now, modern exercise scientists are often overheard claiming the exact opposite. High impact exercises are touted as activities to avoid, causing undue stress to the ankles, knees, and hips and lining athletes up for potentially serious injuries and long-term problems. It’s become increasingly common to hear of athletes in sports such as rugby or football ending up with lifelong injuries, all because of the nature of their sport.

Rowing, however, tends to avoid most of the injuries associated with high-impact sports and exercises. One of the least full-body-intensive activities available to cardiovascular exercisers, rowing is as much a low-impact exercise as cycling and swimming – two forms of fitness often touted as the best out there for people concerned about the potential side effects of their personal fitness regimes.

Unlike running and climbing, two activities with high injury frequencies and the potential to seriously damage the knees and ankles, rowing is almost completely free of long-term lower body injury spots. With knee, ankle, and shin damage often appearing as the most physically prohibitive and potentially expensive injuries, a rowing machine (often called an ergometer) can prove a worthwhile investment for athletes looking to minimize the risk of long-term injury while still remaining active and fit.

Why rowing machines help minimize injuries to the thighs and knees:

Rowing machines use a fixed point of resistance to ensure that every motion, no matter how sudden or smooth, carries the same level of resistance and weight. The flywheel of a modern rowing machine is often customizable, giving rowers varied degrees of resistance and power depending on their own strength and endurance levels. Unlike running or swimming – two activities devoid of variable resistance – there’s little to rowing that isn’t customizable.

This means that injuries to the knees and ankles – two of the most frequent injury spots for runners – are almost completely non-existent when using a rowing machine. The ankles are relatively fixed during proper rowing technique, giving users the ability to exert maximum force without having to worry about intense pressure on potentially weak joints, broken or rolled ankles, or even slight injuries to the lower leg such as shin splits.

Alongside the lack of impact on the ankles, rowing results in almost no impact to the knees – another frequent injury site. Long-term injuries to the knees are common in distance runners and high-impact athletes, often severe to the point where surgery is the only true solution. While running puts the knees in a position of near constant impact, rowing does the exact opposite, using the knees as little more than a pivot point for upper body action.
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