Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts
The Concept 2 indoor rower as been used by Olympic rowers, including Matthew Pinsent, Sire Steve Redgrave, James Cracknell as well as a whole host of Olympic rowing teams, including Britain, the USA team, Australia and many more during their training sessions. The reason these world class rowers use the Concept 2 indoor rower is that it is one of the best pieces of fitness equipment available to develop high levels of rowing fitness, stamina and upper body strength.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: The basics
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts will challenge your stamina and allow you to build up high levels of overall fitness as it works all the major muscle groups of the body, including the legs, back, arms and core muscles. This makes Concept 2 indoor rowers one of the most popular aerobic exercise machines in any local health club or gym.
The action required to row using the Concept 2 indoor rower requires the user to push with their legs first whilst maintaining a straight back and straight arms. Once the legs has been fully extended the rower should then pull the handle of the rower forcefully to their abs, then reversing the action by straightening the arms then bending the knees.
In order to work harder the Concept 2 indoor rower has a built in fan which acts as the rower's resistance. The more open the fan the higher the resistance felt when pulling the handle.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: Aerobic fitness
In order to improve aerobic fitness, Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts should include some form of continuous exercise for between 20 to 60 minutes. I use the word 'continuous' loosely as research has shown that one of the best ways to improving fitness is to perform short, sharp high intensity sprints of between 10 - 30 seconds separated by periods of 'active' recovery (say 45 - 90 seconds of lower level exercise). But more about this later.
Exercise and fitness guidelines, written by the ACSM and endorsed by governments around the world, suggest that to improve their aerobic fitness levels, people should aim to perform 2 to 5 aerobic workouts per week, with each session varying in intensity - some performed at a lower intensity and others performed at higher, harder levels.
In order to improve aerobic fitness, Concept 2 indoor rowers users should aim to work as between 70 and 85 percent of their Age Predicted Maximal Heart Rate (APMHR) or use the self-assessment Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale to find a comfortable to challenging level of exercise.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: Using APMHR
All Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts should, ideally, take the Age Predicted Maximal Heart Rate (APMHR), or some other form of intensity grading method (i.e. RPE - see below) into consideration. The APMHR looks at the age of an exerciser and predicts their maximal heart rate based on this figure. The APMHR then suggests the target heart rate needed to improve aerobic fitness using an Concept 2 indoor rower.
The APMHR suggests that the maximal heart rate is 220. Thus, someone aged 40 years old would have a predicted maximal heart rate of 180 beats per minute. Therefore to work at between 70 and 80 percent of their APMHR a 40 year old exerciser should exercise at 126 to 153 beats per minute for 20 - 60 minutes.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: Using RPE
Instead of using the APMHR, Concept 2 indoor rowers could use a self-assessment exercise intensity scale called the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) when looking to increase fitness using a indoor rower. The RPE asks exercisers to plot their perceived exertion against certain statements, outlined below:
- 0 - Nothing at all
- 1 - Very light
- 2 - Fairly light
- 3 - Moderate
- 4 - Some what hard
- 5 - Hard
- 6
- 7 - Very hard
- 8
- 9
- 10 - Very, very hard
To increase fitness using a Concept 2 indoor rower people should normally work between levels 3 - 7 on the RPE scale.
Concept 2 indoor rowing: High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
Traditionally people looking to increase fitness and lose weight were once encouraged to exercise at a steady state / continuous level during their workouts. However, these days exercise scientists suggest the very best way to increase fitness quickly and burn more calories within the 24 hours after exercise is to complete a high intensity interval training (HIIT) session.
This will see exercisers working at near maximal levels for short periods of time during an exercise session. For example, when using a Concept 2 indoor rower a workout may look something like this
- 0 - 5 minutes: Warm up
- 5 - 25 minutes: Pull as hard and fast as possible for 15 seconds at Level 10 followed by 45 seconds of a slower pulling action for 45 seconds. Repeat for the desired time.
- 25 - 30 minutes: Cool down
During such a workout exercisers would work maximally for a total of 5 minutes. Also, as they change between active rest and maximal sprints, their heart rate would jump and spike throughout the session. Varying the heart rate in this way during exercise means exercisers would be pushing the boundaries of their current fitness levels to such an extent that their body would be forced to improve their stamina in order to cope in future.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: Steady state exercise
Steady state workouts should still feature in people's aerobic fitness programming. Steady state Concept 2indoor rowing workouts (say working at level 3 -4 on the RPE scale) is useful to separate high intensity interval training sessions (intervals working at levels 7 to 10 on the RPE scale).
Steady state indoor rowing workouts allow exercisers to develop fitness without experiencing overtraining, something which could happen if they performed more than two HIIT indoor rowing workouts per week.
Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts: Training programs
The following Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts have been planned to help improve not only overall fitness but also speed, running power and 'race pace'.
|
| Time |
Workout 1
|
RPE
|
| 5 minutes |
Row at resistance level 7 at a constant level to raise your heart rate and increase your RPE to 3.
|
Level 3
|
| 5 minutes |
Perform 30 seconds rowing sprints at close to your maximal rate followed by 30 seconds active rest working at your warm up pace. Repeat 5 times.
|
Level 7 - 8
|
| 5 minutes |
Cool down - Reduce your speed to a little less than your warm up pace.
|
Level 2 - 3
|
|
|
| Time |
Workout 2
|
Heart rate
|
| 5 minutes |
Row at resistance level 10 at a constant level to raise your heart rate and increase your RPE to 3 - 4.
|
Level 3 - 4
|
| 20 minutes |
Perform 15 seconds maximal rowing sprints followed by 45 seconds active rest working at your warm up pace.
|
Level 7 - 9
|
| 5 minutes |
Cool down - Reduce your speed to a little less than your warm up pace.
|
Level 2- 3
|
|
|
| Time |
Workout 3
|
Heart rate
|
| 5 minutes |
Row at resistance level 10 at a constant level to raise your heart rate and increase your RPE to 3 - 4..
|
Level 3 - 4
|
| 30 minutes |
Perform 1 minute intervals of fast rowing followed by a 1 minute slower row. Repeat for 30 minutes.
|
Level 5 - 7
|
| 5 minutes |
Cool down - Reduce your speed to a little less than your warm up pace.
|
Level 2 - 3
|
|
|
| Time |
Workout 4
|
Heart rate
|
| 5 minutes |
Row at resistance level 10 at a constant level to raise your heart rate and increase your RPE to 3 - 4.
|
Level 3 - 4
|
| 30 minutes |
Row at a constant pace for the desired time.
|
Level 5 - 6
|
| 5 minutes |
Cool down - Reduce your speed to a little less than your warm up pace.
|
Level 2 - 3
|
|
|
| Time |
Fartlek workout
|
Heart rate
|
| 5 minutes |
Row at resistance level 10 at a constant level to raise your heart rate and increase your RPE to 3 - 4.
|
Level 3 - 4
|
| 20 minutes |
Change the rowing pace as and when you like. However, make sure you perform a good number of short sprints and fast paced rows as well as lower level recovery exercise during the following 20 minutes.
|
Level 3 - 10
|
| 5 minutes |
Cool down - Reduce your speed to a little less than your warm up pace.
|
Level 2 - 3
|
|
These Concept 2 indoor rowing workouts are by no means the only indoor rowing workouts available. These ideas have been written to give you a flavour of the type of idoor rowing workouts that can be created. By all means create your own rowing workouts based on the suggestions above.
Latest health and fitness news
All news stories
Latest quizzes and tests
All quizzes &
tests
|
Home
