The Benefits of Rowing

Why rowing is worth your time

With so many in the HWPO Training community working on their 5K row, it can make someone less familiar with rowing and rowing intervals wonder what the benefits are. For CrossFit® and HYROX athletes especially, gaining capacity on the row erg can translate positively to sport and fitness. The machine can be used to recover in a relaxing, meditative rhythm, or it can ruin your day with the devastating effects of some workouts you can do. There are massive benefits from rowing for many reasons, so if you have a row erg available, it is worth working into your fitness routine.

Form first: the power of proper technique

You must learn how to use the machine correctly to get the most out of it. There is certainly a proper technique on the row erg, ideally featuring athletes using all their legs, then applying a torso lean from approximately ten to two o’clock, and following through with their arms. The return to the furthest forward position on the machine – i.e. “the catch position” – should happen in the exact opposite order as the stroke back. This timing is essential, as it allows athletes to find efficiency, driving through their legs and using the strongest parts of their body to their advantage. Improper rowing technique can tank an athlete’s output on the machine, making what can already be hard feel much harder. 

If done well, rowing can be a great way to work on generating more power from the legs and hips.

Transferable benefits across all of your training

This timing featured in the ideal row technique can translate positively to the Olympic lifts, the snatch, and the clean and jerk, as it mirrors the positioning needed to properly pull weight from the ground in the efficiently explosive manner required to do the Olympic lifts. If you train with CrossFit® or just someone who enjoys making progress on the Olympic lifts, maintaining an excellent row technique can allow you to engrain great habits into your movement as an athlete, allowing you to lift better. The proprioception (your body's ability to sense its own position and movements) needed to dial in your rowing technique can also translate well to other movements requiring body awareness, such as many high-skill gymnastics movements seen in CrossFit® on the bars or rings. 

As much as the row erg can allow an athlete to express power, it is also a great tool to get more aerobically fit. If you have ever rowed an all-out effort at a distance higher than 500m, you already know this is true. Because of how quickly rowing strokes cycle and how sustainable the movement can be, the only limiter can sometimes be how hard an athlete can breathe. 

Getting better at rowing, especially on longer distances, can help develop an athlete’s aerobic capacity and cardiovascular endurance. 

This can help prepare athletes for any aerobic efforts they might need to do, regardless of whether or not that effort is using a row erg at all. 

A cardio tool with real-time feedback

One of the most underrated aspects of the row erg is that the machine gives you data in live time. The monitor on the erg typically shows all sorts of metrics, including power, speed, stroke rate, and average pace. Together, these data points can help deliver feedback to athletes about how well they are moving, how consistent that movement is, and how powerful they are. 

One simple takeaway many can have regarding power outputs on the row erg is to row at a moderate pace, then try to row at a ten-second faster pace over a 500m interval. This may seem like only a marginal difference in speed in theory, but in reality, the effort required to achieve and sustain this speed can feel exponentially harder. Thus, athletes can see and feel the difference between higher and lower power outputs, giving them better awareness of how to pace other exercises or forms of cardio training properly. 

Rowing promotes the usage of muscles over the entire body. The legs, trunk, core, and arms are all used when rowing. 

Supporting strength, recovery, and performance

There are pronounced benefits for core and postural muscle strengthening, especially when rowing for extended periods. Because rowing uses so many different muscle groups within the body, it can be an excellent tool for recovery, helping to push blood through areas that may be sore from other activities, like the back and posterior chain. If you have ever been sore in your back or glutes from training, light rowing at a Zone 2 heart rate can be a great way to train endurance and help flush out this soreness.

Finally, for CrossFit® athletes specifically, rowing is a staple in the sport. When the row erg was introduced to the CrossFit Open in 2014, this was only a natural progression of the sport, as it had already been featured in original benchmark CrossFit® workouts and the Regional, Sectional, and Games competitions. The row erg has remained a staple of CrossFit® competitions and training since and is also an integral part of the HYROX race sequence. If you already train or aspire to compete in either of these sports, you are improving an element of your chosen sport by getting better at rowing.

The row erg is a versatile machine with a minimal risk of injury for those who use it, so it can improve the training of anyone from elite athletes to those just beginning their fitness journey. 

If you use the machine already, you can see its varied benefits to your workouts. If you have never explicitly focused on improving your rowing capacity, the machine might be worth checking out to level up your time in the gym. 

As HARD WORKERS all over the globe already know, rowing can be an exercise that makes a great workout or training plan even better. 

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