Combining Weight Training With Rowing Machine

[Gammmmo]

want to get down to 82kg maintaining muscle.

Keep protein high esp around your workouts and start off with a low volume of erging and build up to multiple sessions of 5K/30mins absolute max duration if body composition is heading in the right direction. You will lose some muscle mass no doubt but fat too. You may find shorter ergo efforts and intervals work better to offset muscle mass loss and may even find those more enjoyable once good safe technique is dialled.

I'm thinking that rowing is puhing with the legs, pulling with the arms.
So do I really need to keep squatting - won't my legs be getting a good workout anyway?

Not the same thing. If you want to help keep your leg muscle and keep your ability at that near where it is, keep squatting. Specificity.

I'm thinking of doing 6x 30-minute rowing sessions a week, and doing weights 3x a week straight after (upper body pushes like bench and overhead press, some arm work).

Too much erging too soon IMO (see above). You will see changes quite rapidly at you're introducing a new stimulus with the erg, but if you want to combine weights/cardio and put your propeller-hat on you may want to experiment with workout timing given adaptions are during a much smaller window with cardio after the session than weights (MTOR?). What you want is to prevent as much adapation interference as possible IDEALLY. Obviously remember unless you are training really badly becoming a jack-of-all trades makes you a master of none (for your potential).

And only eating noon-8pm.
Bit of burpees and chinups too perhaps.
I have done some searching, but I've not found any posts about people combining rower with some weights. Is it common?
I fear if I did just rowing, my weight would drop and I'd go too thin.
Thank you (and please join me in in willing the waiting list to move along quicker

Don't change too many things at once re: diet. Also, you might want to think about workout scheduling from the point of view of push/pull/legs e.g. I don't erg the day after I do a weights upper body pull session so as not to interfere with too much with protein re-synthesis.

That all said, you can geek out with all this as much as you want but you need to have a plan, stick to it, see what happens, and then maybe change something. See what works for YOU.

[KeithT]

I have done this with just 2 days of weightlifting and/or CrossFit a week and 4 days of Erging.

That's just the sort of thing! I think I'd find that tough initially, so I can build up the Erg Days. How long are your erg workouts, Keith?

I currently do one really long row on Sundays (usually a HM - 21,097M). Then two moderately long rows (10K) two days a week and then one day for some type of interval work - can be really short like 250M intervals or longer intervals depending on my what test I am focusing on. Now obviously you want to steadily increase rowing time/meters - gradual build. I also went well over year making good rowing gains with just 3 days of rowing a week and did more weightlifting/CF. Just need to start incorporating more row time and find the best balance for you and for your goals.

[ant_in_wales]

Don't change too many things at once re: diet.

Thank you for the interesting reply.

The point about not changing too much at once chimes with my other Lockdown Hobbies of sourdough and espresso - to improve on both of those you need to change one parameter at a time.
So I'm starting IF (16/8) this week and will run that 2 months (hopefully) before gently introducing the rower.
190kg deadlift is good - I ran out of weights at 115kg and lockdown has made further investment uneconomic.
So my squat now has a better 1RM than my deadlift!

[ant_in_wales]

Just need to start incorporating more row time and find the best balance for you and for your goals.

Indeed. Sensible addition of erg, a little less lifting, but not cutting out squats seems the plan.
Thank you for helping me think this through.