I turned some frequent flyer miles into a rowing machine a year or so back… I like my exercise in ‘full body’ mode rather than being too specific about focus on muscle groups… mind you a bit more attention to the chicken legs wouldn’t go astray!
Rowing provides a good cardio workout during times that the pool is harder to get to (for whatever reason). Good form – beginning with the leg push, pressing through the abs and finishing with the arms – works everything progressively. I understand anything that activates the hip flexors can’t be too bad for you and your metabolism.
I have to watch that I don’t overdo cardio, generally… it’s a killer for us “hard gainers”, so I favour high intensity interval training. in the pool this means a 500m warmup, then sets of a sprint lap freestyle followed by a steady breaststroke.
Before settling into familiarity on the rower, I started with 1min rowing and 30secs rest, increasing intensity each set, but now I just mess around with intensity during a straight 6mins/1500m usually in 250m blocks.
Swimming is still better engendering fewer memories of the childhood asthma, but at least with the ‘water rower’ I get a comforting slosh of liquid with each stroke.
As I reflect, I’m happy enough that the bod is generally still holding shape now well into the 58th year and surprisingly responds quickly to a bit of this discipline. Keeping the skin elastic seems increasingly important.
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