How to Do the Rowing

How to do it

1. Sit on the seat and secure both feet in the footplates with the strap running across the widest part of your foot, just below the toe knuckles, so your heels stay grounded throughout the stroke.
2. Slide forward until your shins are roughly vertical and your knees are fully compressed toward your chest, then grip the handle with an overhand grip at shoulder width, keeping your wrists flat rather than curled.
3. Before you pull, establish your starting posture: hinge slightly forward at the hips with a tall, neutral spine, arms extended fully toward the flywheel, and shoulders relaxed down away from your ears.
4. Begin the drive by pressing hard through both feet simultaneously, just as you would the floor on a leg press, letting the legs extend while your torso stays in that slight forward lean momentarily.
5. As your legs reach about three-quarters of the way to straight, begin leaning your torso back to roughly 11 o'clock, using the momentum created by the leg drive rather than yanking your upper body backward.
6. Complete the stroke by drawing the handle into your lower ribcage with your elbows traveling back and slightly flaring out, finishing with the handle just below your chest and your legs fully extended.
7. Reverse the sequence on the recovery: arms extend first toward the flywheel, then your body hinges forward at the hips, and finally your knees bend to let the seat slide smoothly back to the catch position.
8. Maintain a controlled recovery that is roughly twice as long as your drive, which protects the stroke rhythm, keeps your heart rate from spiking unnecessarily, and sets you up for a powerful next pull.

Form cues

• Legs, body, arms on the drive. Arms, body, legs on the recovery.
• Push the floor away, don't pull the handle first.
• Tall chest at the finish, not a lean-back collapse.
• Keep the handle path flat, no swooping arc.
• Relax your grip between strokes, your forearms will thank you.

Common mistakes

• Pulling with the arms before the legs have driven: this robs the stroke of its power source and turns rowing into a glorified bicep curl; fix it by consciously pausing mentally at the catch and thinking 'push' before anything else moves.
• Rounding the lower back at the catch: compressed lumbar flexion under load puts the spine in a vulnerable position over hundreds of strokes; the fix is to engage the lats and think about keeping a long spine rather than collapsing forward to reach further.
• Shooting the hips back without the torso following: sometimes called 'bum shooting,' this breaks the chain between legs and back so the torso arrives late and the power transfer is wasted; practice slow strokes focusing on keeping hips and shoulders rising together off the catch.
• Setting the damper too high and rowing too slow: a damper set at 10 feels like rowing a barge and encourages short, choppy strokes with poor rhythm; most experienced rowers train between 3 and 5 on the damper, which rewards technique and cardiovascular output over brute force.
• Letting the heels rise off the footplate during the drive: when the heel lifts, force leaks out of the push and puts shear stress on the knee; tighten the footstrap and consciously drive through the full foot until the leg is nearly straight.

Why do the Rowing?

• Because the stroke cycles through hip hinge, knee extension, and a horizontal pull in under two seconds, rowing builds functional pulling endurance in the back and posterior chain that isolation machines cannot replicate efficiently.
• The cardiovascular demand is extremely high relative to joint stress, making it a strong option for building aerobic capacity without the repetitive impact loading that running accumulates over high weekly mileage.
• Rowing reinforces the sequencing pattern of generating force from the hips and transmitting it through a braced midline to the upper body, a pattern directly transferable to barbell deadlifts and loaded carries.
• Because both the legs and the upper body are active simultaneously, caloric expenditure per unit of time tends to be higher than single-limb or single-system cardio modalities, which is relevant for body composition goals.
• The seated, foot-secured position allows people with ankle or hip mobility limitations to get a challenging workout that a squat or lunge pattern might currently restrict.

Rowing variations

Slow Technique Row (20 strokes per minute or below)

Used during warm-ups or when learning the stroke, this pace forces the rower to feel each phase distinctly rather than rushing the sequence together.

Steady-State Aerobic Row (18 to 24 strokes per minute, conversational pace)

The foundation of rowing training, this format builds aerobic base and is typically programmed for 20 to 60 minutes for people developing cardiovascular endurance.

Interval Sprints (500m or timed efforts)

Short hard efforts with full rest periods in between spike intensity well above what steady rowing achieves and are used when the goal is cardiovascular power or conditioning under fatigue.

Arms-Only or Legs-Only Drill

Isolating one segment of the stroke is a corrective drill coaches use when a rower is consistently mistiming their sequencing, not a standalone workout format.

How to program it

On the machine, rowing shows up across a wide intensity spectrum: some people use it at an easy pace for 20 to 45 minutes as a primary aerobic session, while others slot short rowing intervals into circuit or CrossFit-style conditioning blocks. In strength-focused programs, a 500 to 1000 meter row is common as a warm-up to elevate heart rate and prime the posterior chain before barbell work. Interval formats typically involve efforts ranging from 250 meters to 2000 meters with rest ratios that vary by goal, and many coaches place high-intensity rowing at the beginning of the conditioning portion of a session rather than after heavy compound lifting. Split time (pace per 500 meters) is the primary metric rowers track, and improvements in that number over weeks tend to be a reliable indicator of both cardiovascular and technical progress.