Adventagious Weights

Question
Al - I have been trying to cover all fronts in order to get my 2K time down.  Recently I've been trying to lift every other day, but I always feel like I have no organization in my lifting regiment.  Do you know of a specific lifting regiment that is beneficial to rowing?  If so I would greatly appreciate it!

Answer
Hi Lou: While every crew coach will tell you to supplement your rowing workouts with weights, if you pick the wrong routine, you will not do much to improve your rowing.

Rowing is a high-endurance exercise which involves many repetitions of pulling an oar with maximum pressure.  A bodybuilder's routine or powerlifters regimen of heavy weights and few reps may help you blast a very strong start of a race but is not going to help you when you hit the 1000 meter mark.

You need to emphasize workout routines that are lighter weighta and higher reps in nature.  So instead of benching 185 pounds 10 times, a rower want to maybe bench 135 pounds 20 times to build muscle endurance.  Rowing workouts also need to be very focused on the big leg muscles like the quads and gluteus maximus.  Do light squats (135 - 185 X 20-30 reps) and the leg machine for a one minute using a load of 100 pounds or so.

Another approach is to do circuit training with machines.  You move from machine to machine with little rest in between and do each one for a minute using a light weight.  This is where systems like Cybex and Nautilus come in handy.  But a Universal Gym and pre-set free weights will work okay to.

Lifts you might want to consider are: Bench Press, Squats, Leg press, Power Cleans, Bench Rowing (where you lay on your stomach and pull a weight up to your chest), lat pulldowns.

Hope this helps/AP