You may not think about getting a pair of gym gloves for rowing but professional rowing athletes wouldn’t think twice about NOT wearing them.  Aside from maybe pull ups, I can’t think of another exercise that has the potential to tear apart your hands more than rowing. When it comes to a fat burning exercise, a standard indoor rowing machine will make that fat cry!  Here are 2 Rowing Workouts you can try!

Rowing Workouts To Build Muscle

Because rowing requires almost equal part effort from your upper and lower body, it’s one of the few cardiovascular exercises you can do that truly are a full body workout.  With enough resistance you’ll also be building muscle, which few if any other cardio machines can claim as one of their benefits!

Muscles worked during the row include the Glutes, Quads, Hamstrings, Delts, and basically all of the muscles of the upper back.  You can even target different muscle groups by changing up your form such as using a pronated grip (palms facing down) or a supinated grip (palms facing up) or using your legs more to “push off” versus focusing on pulling as much with the upper body.

Rowing Workouts To Burn Fat

Here’s where the indoor rowing machine blasts away the other cardio machines you may be trying.  Not only is it sculpting your muscles, but the energy needed to power all those major muscle groups is burning fat!  A 185lb man can burn over 400 calories in 30 minutes with a tough routine!

2 Killer Rowing Workouts

1. 1,000 Meter Fat Blaster

Wearing your gym gloves for rowing, warm up for 5-10 minutes with the level set to easy.  You’re just getting the blood pumpin here.  Set the level of resistance to medium.  You’ll be doing 3 sets of 1,000 meters.  The distance does not change here, however the SPM (Strokes Per Minute) does.

Shoot for 28 SPM for the first set, 24 SPM for the second, and 26 SPM for the third. In between each set you can recover with a 2 minute easy row.

2. Olympic Row Challenge

To begin you want to make sure you have a good warm up in, and you have your GymPaws workout gloves on.  Shoot for about a 10 minute workout if you are starting cold. This is a common “ladder” or an ascending / descending routine commonly used to condition rowing athletes.

Interval 1:  Sprint as fast as you can for 1,000 meters. Recover for about 3 mins with a easy / steady row.

Interval 2: Sprint for 750 meters, recover for 2.5

Interval 3: Sprint for 500 meters, recover for 2 minutes

Interval 4: Sprint for 250 meters, recover for 2 minutes

Interval 5: Sprint for 750 meters and go to a recovery cool down.

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