Rowing Muscle gain

[chris5150]

Keen cyclist, usually bike rides would be 1 hr 45 mins to 3 hrs. I exercise in the morning pre work, as I have a young son, so evenings are taken up , hence what works for me Is getting up 4 - 5 am and doing my exercise then, work starts at 8 so I am limted in that I don't want to get up any earlier to do bigger distances. Typical distances on the bike would be 30 - 50 miles , hilly Yorkshire roads at a good pace.
Continue cycling throughout most of winter, only thing that stops me is wet roads overnight that turn to ice.Dark cycling not much fun but keeps the fitness up.

Anyway that's the bit of history. I am 6'5" tall and back on 25th Oct 2013, my garmin & tanita scale told me I weighed in at 212lbs, 10.8% body fat,180.3lbs muscle mass.
I really started rowing a bit more seriously around this time, to date since then just gone over the 1m metres, don't really bother much with shorter distances, typically rowing 10k at 40 mins and 15k sub hour regularly. Wanted to put in a good half marathon time, so really focused on good times, good pace & getting the metres in. Rowed whilst on holiday etc, kept it going well.
No real change in diet, I have a wattbike as well so typically my non out of the road days consist of rowing for an 40 mins to an hour or wattbiking for an hour, try to get close to 1k calories per session.
Since Nov 13 I have spent very little time out on the road, most of my sessions have been rowing or wattbiking, pretty religious 5 - 6 days a week.
Just weighed myself last week, Now I am 228 lbs, 11.9% body fat and 190.8 lbs muscle, so really over the 6 months or so I have put on 16 lbs, but 10.5 of that is muscle.
Interesting to see how doing shorter ie 40 - 1hr vs 2 - 3hrs workouts has done this, I presume rowing has built me up more, rather than the longer distance cycling.
It will be interesting to see how I vary in summer now I expect to be back on the bike for the bulk of the excericse...will still row 2 - 3 times a week I think as I think its an excellent foil for cycling for the upper body.
Anyone else notice similar weight changes etc?

[jamesg]

I've often wondered about our weight percentages of water, innards, bone, muscle, fat etc. Water is about 60% to start with; no idea either whether fat %s are calculated with respect to dry or total.

Certainly if you have 190 lb of muscle you could try swimming, should be as fast as a dolphin. They can do 100m in about 15s; landlubbers take 50s if very very fast.

Whatever, you won't want that extra weight when in the Dales, and whether you lose it by starving or pedaling, or even both, have fun.

[chris5150]

Yes, my water content doesn't vary much at all 56 -57% each time I have weighed myself, bones account for 9.5lbs. Problem as I see it is the correct amount & right things to eat, ie protein to sustain my muscle mass whilst going back to cycling. Would still like to burn off the excess fat, but keep the muscle, don't want to sweat it out over the dales to find all I am doing is burning muscle.
But as you say James weight is weight & carrying less upper body muscle on bike rides has got to be beneficial I suppose

[ArmandoChavezUNC]

bones account for 9.5lbs.

I can say, with a high amount of confidence (though not 100%), that your bones certainly account for more than 9.5 lbs of your body weight. If you weigh over 200 lbs, your skeleton probably weights at least 30 lbs.

[hjs]

bones account for 9.5lbs.

I can say, with a high amount of confidence (though not 100%), that your bones certainly account for more than 9.5 lbs of your body weight. If you weigh over 200 lbs, your skeleton probably weights at least 30 lbs.

14/20% roughly of bodyweight. The more work we have done the thicker/ denser the bones get.

[chris5150]

That's not what the Garmin weight breakdown says ...see pic,bone mass is a lot less than 20% according to them, works out at 4% 8.1lbs on 209plus bodyweight, must admit this does seems low. To be honest I do not take the measurements to seriously,but its good to see the movement with previous readings on a like for like basis

weight3.jpg (48.01 KiB) Viewed 9433 times

[ArmandoChavezUNC]

Again, I'm almost 100% certain that is incorrect.

Have you ever held a bone in your hand? A scull? They're heavy. If your entire skeleton only weighed 8 lbs, that would mean your scull probably weighs under 1 lb.... I think you can easily see how that's not possible. It would shatter so easily.

You're probably closer to 30+ lbs of bone weight.

[chris5150]

I agree, bit odd that the tanita/garmin guides show this...just googling 'persons weight of bones' shows that 30 -40% of a persons mass is bone weight, wonder why they show this strange 4% number on the connect website ..very odd. My bone mass has remained constant over all the measurements I have taken, so not really an issue for me as I can clearly see changes in muscle mass & fat, and that is what I judge on