Complementary exercises for rowing

[szalejot]

Little info about myself: 33 yrs, male, 182 cm, 83 kg.
Quite new to rowing but not new to training. I am doing different fitness or gym activities since high school, with little breaks.
My main goal is overall body performance and longevity - I have a sedentary job. I can fit 5 gym workouts, about 1 hour each, into my weekly routine.
I started rowing and I really like it. On one hand, I would like to row as much as possible, on the other I see that rowing is mostly cardio and pulling exercise. So I am a little concerned about my overall body balance and injury prevention.

Currently, I am doing 3 rowing sessions (beginner Pete plan) and 2 gym lifting sessions (shoulders+back+biceps+abs, chest+triceps+legs+abs).

I see, that a lot of rowing plans contain 5 full rowing sessions a week. I would love to hear from more experienced rowers what are your strategies for incorporating complementary exercises, what exercises are crucial, and how to build a long-term workout plan.

[kini62]

Based on "my" experience as I've gotten older, for the best overall health the primary form of exercise should be strength training. Doesn't have to be massively heavy, but a good hard strength session 4-6 days per week plus 2-4 HIIT sessions whether on cardio equipment or sets of burpees etc... is best for the long term.

Watched an interesting video in which the author claimed that your VO2 Max is the most important factor for long term health and getting old. So I switched to what I describe above about 4 months ago after decades of primarily cardio and it's the best I've felt in years. Lower back and shoulder pain pretty much gone, I sleep better and even at 60 I've been able to put on a little mass in the 4 months.

Because you're still young you could do whatever you like and see benefits. It depends on your goals. If you want to be good at indoor rowing then that is what you need to focus on. If you want to be as healthy as possible, strength training first, cardio second. IMO of course. YMMV

[Autoland]

I've only been rowing for a bit more than two years, but when the weather is conducive, I do a combination of 2 or 3 indoor rows a week and another 2 on the water. Once winter arrives, I'll spend more time on the indoor rower.

I find Pilates to be a good complement to the rowing and usually attend classes 8 times a week.

My current workout plan is not very strict, but it seems to be working well. That plan consists of Pilates early and then rowing later in the day and to pay attention to my body, so I don't overdo it.

[gilles13006]

Hi, 35 yo, 1m78 and 85kg here, also sedentary job. Rowing is not mainly cardio. It’s strength work also. Not as hard as a real strength workout, but still. It’s a resistance exercise, so naturally your body will gain strength.

The big plus is that rowing is low impact, which means that even at 60-70 yo you can row.

I think if you have the right form, you won’t get hurt.

But i am ok to say that only rowing at 100% is not the best. I used to only row during 1 year, and i realized i became bad at running, because i was more heavy and my articulations lost the habit to receive « mini shocks ».

I mean shocks are bad, but still you have to find a way to make your body maintain the capacity to develop against those shocks.

So now my training are 80% rowing, 10% running and 10% biking with friends.

[Sakly]

Overall body performance always needs diversity in stimulus, a wide variety of different movement pattern. Rowing alone is very specific even if it uses much muscles of the body.
I have mainly the same goal - high overall body performance and get me moving as I belong to the same group of sedentary worker. I train 3 times a week with many different exercises, bodyweight, weights, jumping - all mixed up, no specific plan, training duration around 2h incl. warmup and skill.
I added rowing beginning of this year to build up the cardiovacular performance and found it very beneficial and fun. And obviously I already had a very good starting point as I could directly enter the 90% percentiles of my age group at 2k upwards. This shows how good the training approach is working also for cv system (if you add metcons to the training and do not stick to strength work "3x8" all the time).

Long story short: do as much different exercises in much variety and add rowing as much as possible and wanted.