With rowing you should be looking at a strong and sharp catch which should seriously activate the hamstrings. Through the drive you’ll have the force transfer more to the quads and glutes. At the end of the stroke you should be using arms and back (provided you are rowing with proper form)

I hate running and always have. I do a lot of rowing though. Most of my races are somewhere around the 9km-12km with some races 20km+. If you want to increase your cardio through rowing my suggestion would be to drop the stroke rate down to 24 or below. Personally I will race at about 30 strokes per minute for a 10km race or longer. Learn to row with proper form and try maintain a constant speed.

I’ve often sat on the machine and been rowing 1:55/500m @20spm and the guy next to me jumps on and tries to match my speed by going off at 30spm. It won’t do much to help cardio as you’ll be using the wrong muscle groups because of poor form and working more anaerobically.

There is a lot more info I can offer but don’t want to overwhelm people so I’ll be happy to answer any other questions you have.

As another commenter stated, it will increase overall endurance, but won't necessarily translate to running endurance. The muscles primarily used while rowing are lats, biceps, glutes, and hamstrings so they will be great at endurance in those motions, but running heavily utilizes quads (edit: quads are also used in rowing, but not in the same way as running) and calves, so they will be underdeveloped and what hold you back on the runs.

Sitting down often has the effect of stretching the hamstrings. This takes tension off of the pelvis and allows the quads to tilt it forward. This is called anterior pelvic tilt. It can be a cause of lower back pain because it causes an arch in the lower back.

Any exercise that works the hamstrings effectively should help to offset the stretching caused by sitting. Proper rowing form should work hamstrings but I’d argue that the average person on a rowing machine won’t activate hamstrings like they are meant to.

Exercises like hamstring curls, stiff leg deadlift and hip thrusts that work the posterior chain should help bring the pelvis back where it is meant to be.

I think people are mistaken in this thread.

While there is a large and required component of specific muscle specialization involved in becoming "trained" in a certain aerobic activity (for example, you benefit from endurance-trained leg muscles if you are a distance runner), the even larger component of the endurance equation is system-wide adaptation by the body to transport and utilize O2 for aerobic metabolism.

This generalized, central adaptation takes place in the pulmonary, cardiac and vasculature body systems - not in the muscles specifically being used by the activity - and benefits directly from any kind of intense aerobic activity.

A great breakdown of central vs. peripheral limitations can be found here: https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/limitations.html

I'm not saying you don't need trained muscles to be a runner, rower, etc... an elite athlete absolutely will develop and benefit from highly-adapted musculatures based on their training.

But for the OP who gets into a "tizzy" (maximal or near maximal exertion) after 1KM of rowing, this highly suggests that their limitation is one of systemic O2 uptake, distribution and utilization, and not a lacking in the specific musculature required for rowing. So yes, any form of intense cardio work will produce some really good results for OP. And in the exact same measure, running will likely not contribute much for an elite rower.

Mendurance

S

yes steady state, but you might want to think about doing more TR, UT1 / hard&low steady state on top of UT2. Read this, https://www.reddit.com/r/Rowing/comments/8cygtl/theory_slightly_different_approach_to_erg_fitness/, on top of that, eat a shit ton of meat and gain some weight; big guys pull harder.

Some people with a condition called POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) have similar problems, and there is a protocol developed to help them. Because they have problems standing, horizontal exercises, including rowing, are often suggested. One variant of the program is in the link below, it's worth looking at and discussing with your doctor

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/pdf/CHOP_Modified_Dallas_POTS_Exercise_Program.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj9gOqZ47X7AhVAEFkFHcTCBe4QFnoECBEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2nB1DmdtlYVgZXY_-iFu0p

Two other thoughts... Consider a heart rate monitor to help you track where you are

Consider breaking up whatever you can do into short intervals, even if you don't increase pace, the rests will let you increase overall distance

I am not an MD, please talk with your clinician... Good luck

If you are this fatigued after about 5 minutes of rowing, then you are rowing too hard, you need to slow down.

If you are also quite weak, then setting the erg at 3 or 4 (though this is the normal recommendation) is too high for you. Lowering this could help you achieve longer rows and thus gain more endurance. I would recommend taking your drag factor down to 100 and maybe even as low as 90, and see if that helps.

What is your stroke rating? You mention you have good form so I’m wondering if maybe your rating is too fast so you can’t breathe on the recovery. Still keep the focus on using your legs, but try rowing for 5 minutes at no faster than 22 spm and see if at the end of the 5 minutes you can keep going.

Long slow distance work

more steady state

What does your training plan look like?

1. more steady state
2. does it matter? Championship races aren’t longer than 2k

This is literally what steady state fixes

M O R E S T E A D Y S T A T E

The generally accepted wisdom is to do more endurance pieces (at sufficiently slow paces).

That said, there are some athletes who need those UT2 workouts (usually at even slower paces) BUT won't develop their 2k potential without long, hard intervals (Transport). Not sure if this is you or not but this type of athlete physiology has a much larger anaerobic reserve and does a 2k with a larger proportion of anaerobic metabolism. Athletes will this will have significantly bigger max watts on Wingate test and likely to be visibly stronger doing deadlifts than peer group.

Examples of best interval sessions are: 4 x 8'/ 3' and even building up to 4 or 5 x 10'/ 3' done at 88-92% of HR max. Ideally, do these sessions when well rested and aim for a little bit of descending by rep and aim for best possible average pace across the reps. And, the average pace (assuming you set up as time intervals in PM5) can be indicator of progress if you keep effort consistent. If your current program completely lacks this type of workout, you may see a result from one or two such sessions. For some athletes, the 4 x 8'/ 3' are predictive for 2ks and can be used to set target pacing.

There is no need to up the resistance every km or something. Nobody does that. You need to figure out better technique so you can push more and make it harder.

What was your 500m split time for both workouts ? If you really haven’t felt anything at 4.2k compared to that 2k then your split time(ie effort you have put in is much lower) must be much higher. It could also be related to technique

I’m also relatively new to rowing but I’ve had similar experiences. For me I’ve noticed it is based on a few things: how tired I am before working out, how much I did or didn’t eat before, how hard I worked out the day before, or what SPM(strokes per minute) I am aiming for. I tend to switch up my routine a little every day but if I go for 30 minutes straight at 24-26 spm I’m usually ok and I’m not completely beat at the end of it. If I go for 28-30 spm then I have to do that in 3 intervals of 10 minutes because that is pretty rough. If I were you I would just keep at it. I also fell in love with the row machine and it has been a massive game changer for me.

Depends on how you measure intensity, but yes, trying to go all out for longer distances is disproportionately difficult. You're also trying to draw from both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems in your body, and how you time your sprint etc will play into how much gas you have in the tank.

Are you tracking your intensity? I ask because if you aren't, then you may be unintentionally going at a much higher intensity than you expect.

If you can, track your average time per 500m, and track your heart rate

New rowers shouldn’t be doing 2k / max effort stuff. It’s a good way to injure yourself. Medium effort under the supervision of a competent coach is the recipe for success.

Just row for 30+ minutes, steady state, zone 2 heart rate. Build a base first, trust me, you’ll get a lot faster and prevent injuries that way. Learn the technique as well. Erging is a great way to get low stress impact zone 2 goodness. But unless your a rower/ have the technique, avoid doing zone 4 or zone 5 stuff on it.

I would try to get the stroke rate down. Also try to get the force curve to be more symmetric. Somehow you lose steam at the end of the stroke.
Best to go at a slower SPM at the beginning and focus on your form

Just want to say good work! Dropping 30 seconds off your 2k in two months is great work and you're coming up on sub 7 minutes which is a good benchmark for having some speed as a male.

I normally like to spread my 2k efforts out a little more as they're really hard efforts and they take a whole lot out of you especially as you approach 6:50, 6:40, 6:30, 6:20, etc. I was able to go from 7:20 to under 6:30 in around 8 months by progressively overloading doing an anaerobic piece on monday (6x500m 1'r, 4x1000m 5'r, 3x750m 1'r) at 2k race pace, a slightly longer endurance piece on Friday (5x1500m 5'r, 4x2000m 5'r) at 5k race pace, and around 100k of steady state every week. Steady state being long, slower pieces done at a low rate in a zone 2 heart rate. I'm not fast at all in the grand scheme but by doing this setup I was able to go from pretty bad to average. Also I don't think weight training has helped me too much as I just use machines to keep a base level of strength but I read you want to focus on strengthening your posterior chain. Good luck at whatever your goal is

Start with learning how to measure and adjust your drag factor on the damper.

For comparison - I’m a 40yo woman rower of mid-fitness (off peak, recovering from injury), but I’ve been rowing for nearly 30 years.

I can sustain 2.30/500 fairly easily for two hours with short water breaks.

For you, it’s almost certainly a form issue, and building capacity in the specific muscles used for rowing.

My advice for you is to go slower, base your effort off heart rate rather than pace (aiming for UT2/Zone 2), watch some tech videos, and just put in time on the machine. You’ll get there, there’s no shortcut.

A few questions:

Do you consider yourself to be fairly fit doing other aerobic activities?

What brand of machine are you using?

What resistance setting are you using?

If the answers are: yes, Concept 2, and above 5, then it is definitely a form issue. Even if those aren’t the answers, it’s still probably a form issue.

Coaching yourself from video doesn’t really work all that well. It’s hard to sort out the big score-killing problems from the small able-to-live-with-for-erging problems.

I always suggest people wanting to get a better workout on the machine find a local club and go through their learn-to-row program. If that’s not an option, contact a Crossfit gym and see if they can bring you up to speed. The Crossfit gym is the worse option, but they’ll get you rowing well enough for the erg.

one thing i did wrong for a long time was going too far forward on the catch, so my legs were basically vertical, and the angle my ankles were making was severely acute.

even if you have good aerobic health and you're in good shape (and rowing is kind of a full-body assault, so i was still caught off guard with all my cycling, running, and weightlifting experience), you're going to discover that you have practically no power when you're that far forward. knees shouldn't be over or past the ankles.

if you're short (well, if your legs are short), your catch is potentially going to be punishingly, frustratingly short. but it's not going to help to go further on the catch and have your knees closer to the flywheel than your ankles. that's just going to make the drive anemic, and that's where you should be getting most of your power. it'd be like getting on a starting line on a track and sitting in a squat/crouch position. like yeah that's visually very approximately what people do when they line up for a sprint, but you can see how their legs are not bent that acutely and they're positioned so that they can get power immediately as soon as they launch off the starting blocks.

edit to add: agree 100% with /u/chemical_can_2019. if you can row in front of someone who knows good form, you'll skip weeks or months of goofing around on your own. you can do it solo, but an outside perspective won't cut you slack when you're sloppy, will notice things you've just gotten inured to, and will help tighten up your form. if you have the money for it, paying a coach for just a couple of sessions of guidance is genuinely really good and worth it. expertise is worth paying for. but also, i know people post videos of themselves rowing and they sometimes get good feedback (though someone once replied to me about this point that they were a coach and the advice they've seen has been questionable sometimes, so take free advice from reddit with a grain of salt)

For breathing a common pattern is to exhale quickly at the finish of the stroke and to inhale while you are in the relaxed state on the recovery. Keep your chest up and open during the recovery to let the air in.

Once per stroke should be enough. For a sprint at maximum effort breathing twice is sometimes necessary. Exhaling at each end of your stroke.

My generic breathing advice is to sit up straighter, hold your head high, and don't droop over at the catch like grass in the wind. This keeps the path between your nose and mouth and your lungs more open and gives your lungs plenty of room to expand compared to being all hunched over, which is the preferred position of lots of new rowers who are still developing their rowing muscles.

If you are enjoying rowing, my next bit of advice would be to at least find a spot where you can use a Concept2 or a WaterRower. The magnetic versions, in my experience, just don't feel right. I've tried the low-end ones and the high-end ones and there's just something wrong about how they feel.

Steady state would be 20+ minute rowing at a level that keeps you working moderately throughout. If you are doing 2:15 as your hard efforts, you might do 2:30-2:35 for your steady state if you can sustain that for 20+ minutes.

I like 40-60 minute steady state efforts. Work towards it. Add 5 minutes every few workouts see if you can complete it. If you have to rest for a couple minutes every 10-15, do it, then complete the effort.

This is aerobic endurance training. The adaptation or improvement from this steady state work can take a few weeks to notice. Volume and recovery play a big role in progress. Work out 3-4 days a week. Recover 1 day off between efforts. You should see some minor improvements as a newbie after a week but it's really after 2-3 weeks that it will be obvious.

More steady state

More steady state

More steady state

You could row for longer if you row slower, the same as you can jog or even walk for longer than you can sprint. You're doing 2:15 for 2 minutes, say. You could probably do around 2:20 for 5 minutes, or 2:25 for 10 minutes, or 2:30 for 20 minutes. (Something like that, it's not an exact science.)

And if might seem paradoxical, but long relatively slow/easy sessions build your cardio endurance. As others have said, more steady state - which basically means rowing at a rate you can maintain indefinitely. You should be breathing a bit heavily and able to hold a short conversation. Aim for that level of perceived effort and don't worry too much about your pace; that will come.

Depends on what you are focusing on. While performance outcomes are reasonably similar between sprint interval work like Ronnestad, the actual physiologic changes in Vo2max seem to favor longer work intervals like 3-8 minutes by the items I've read. Leads me to believe there is room for both and it's just a matter of how you program it. I definitely have done both styles in rowing as an athlete and as a coach. I think it also depends on the athlete in front of you. Some people will respond better to one style than the other, be it due to mental approach to the workout or actual physical differences in response.

The first one is just a standard VO2max interval construction, not sure what’s “clever” about it.

The second one as you said is better suited to disciplines with surges of speed/intensity, but sounds like it could be a fun (in a painful way) workout.

Dig around on here for a good response: Empirical Cycling Podcast “Why Not Rønnestad 30/15 Intervals” aka Brasted - Training - TrainerRoad

The user 'empircalcycling' sums up their critique well:

>

>My critique of the Ronnestad 2020 paper comes from the interval comparison where 4x5min at about tempo/sweetspot/ftp (depending on the athlete) is not enough to qualify as vo2max training, and definitely insufficient to even qualify as effective FTP intervals. u/iMatt66 does a good job summarizing the salient points, and I’ll add one more he missed, which is that higher power intervals will use and train larger motor units as well. So overall, what Ronnestad did was put Thor Bjornsson in a wrestling match against a crash test dummy, whether he knew it or not.

>Overall, yes, the 30/15s group did increase vo2max. But let’s also put a short term improvement in vo2max in context of the preceding 5 podcasts, where we show there are different mechanisms of improvement in the short, medium, and long term. My interval suggestions are entirely focused on the long term. One of the FTP training studies we used showed an increase in vo2max from FTP intervals. That would be a short/medium term adaptation that obviously does not last forever. Exploring what’s “under the hood” of a measurement like vo2 is the point of the last five episodes. It’s something that most exercise physiologists (except a few of the modern day greats like Montero and Lundby) don’t try to do in their studies. It’s like saying “this car has X more horsepower”, we don’t know if it got forced induction, maybe it revs higher, did it get a cat delete, more cam lift, electric motors, who knows.