How to Use a Rowing Machine

Rowing looks like an arm exercise and is not. About 60% of the power in a stroke comes from your legs, roughly 20% from your back and core, and roughly 20% from your arms. Almost everything that goes wrong for beginners comes from getting that order backwards.

The four positions

1. The catch

You are at the front of the rail. Shins vertical — not past vertical, which overcompresses your ankles and shortens your drive. Arms straight. Shoulders in front of your hips. Back straight but not rigid.

This is a loaded position, not a relaxed one. It should feel like the moment before you stand up out of a low chair.

2. The drive

Push with your legs. Only your legs. Arms stay straight, back angle stays fixed, and the handle moves because you are pushing the footplates away, not because you are pulling.

This is the phase people rush past, and it is the one that produces most of the power.

3. The finish

Legs flat. Now swing your body back to about 11 o’clock. Then — and only then — pull the handle into the bottom of your ribs, elbows going past your body rather than out to the sides.

Legs, then body, then arms. If you say it to yourself for the first hundred strokes, it will stick.

4. The recovery

Reverse it exactly. Arms straight first. Then body forward. Then bend the knees and let the seat slide to the catch.

Bending your knees before your hands have cleared them is the single most common beginner error, and on an air rower you will physically hit the handle on your knees, which is a useful teacher.

The ratio

The drive should be quick and the recovery should be roughly twice as long. Not slow — controlled. The recovery is where you breathe and set up the next catch.

If your stroke rate is climbing above about 30 strokes per minute and you are not doing intervals, you are almost certainly rushing the recovery. Fewer, harder strokes beat more, weaker ones at nearly every level of this sport.

Four mistakes worth fixing early

Bending the arms too early. Covered above. It robs the stroke of power and puts the load on the smallest muscles in the chain.

Leaning too far back at the finish.About 11 o’clock, not horizontal. Lying back loads your lower back and adds nothing.

Hunching. The back should be straight throughout, hinging at the hips. Rounding under load is where rowing gets its reputation for back trouble, and it is a technique problem, not an inherent one.

Cranking the damper to 10. The lever on the flywheel is not a difficulty dial. Here is what it actually does.

A first month that works

Three sessions a week, twenty minutes each, at a pace where you could still hold a conversation. Spend the first five minutes of each one deliberately thinking about the sequence rather than the numbers on the monitor.

Rowing is unusually good at letting you work hard before your technique can support it, because the machine does not care how you produce the force. That is why new rowers get sore backs. Build the stroke first; intensity is easy to add and hard to undo.

This is general information rather than medical advice. If you have an existing back, knee or heart condition, talk to a doctor before starting.

Which machine helps you learn

One with a rail long enough for your legs to reach full extension. That is the specification that most affects whether you can row properly, and it is the one most often omitted from listings. Our beginner picks are ranked on exactly that.