The Rower is an awesome workout, especially when time poor

Written Mon 29th March

It’s been an interesting week- We’ve had friends visiting from Greece with their new baby (I'm Uncle James!), I’ve had a lot of work on, and we spent four days at our niece’s place in Biloela in Central Queensland. Normally this would mean I would have missed a lot of training but not so this week. I’ve been for a run every day and on some days, twice a day. I am now running more than walking, with some fast running sections. Still too slow to reach my 5km and 10km target but I’m not due to reach these targets until the End of April and End of May respectively so all’s good- Be patient James! The fitness level is improving as planned. Yes, it’s frustrating but it’s the best this old body can do! Slow and Steady Always- see training principles #1.

Today was interesting. We left Biloela early and had a great drive back in convoy with a damsel in distress - the load kept moving on her trailer so we fixed it then followed her back to Brisbane. This meant we got back later than expected and I did not have time to complete my planned exercise session.

With only 40 or so minutes available I went to the gym and did a hard 30 minute workout on the rowing machine at maximum level (Level 20). What a surprise. This is a truly AWESOME workout, I recommend it to everyone. The rower is totally under-rated. It’s a total body workout that hammers the core, the upper body, the quads and the lungs. A fantastic aerobic workout that also pushes the Lactic Threshold.

It also occurs to me the rower is a great way to get ready for swim training later in the year- it’s a pull motion which sort of imitates half of the swim stroke (swimming is essentially a combination of pull/ push).

So there’s a heap of benefits to a hard rowing session – It builds aerobic fitness, its works the whole body, it pushes LTHR and it’s a way to build a base fitness for future swim training. I’m going to start including hard rowing into my gym sessions, and I will also keep it in mind as a good ‘default’ session when I find myself time poor.

Today’s lesson- Don’t underestimate the short, sharp full-body workout of the rowing machine. The Rower rocks! Go on- try it!

More later, journey on
James




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