CrossFit Rowing – First Refine Technique, Then Add Volume, & Intenity
As with any movement, the more I investigate it, and try to improve it, the more I learn about it. For a while now rowing has been one of those movements. For the longest time I found it boring and was uninterested in improving it, but as with many other things, as soon as I started to work on it, and learn more about it, it immediately became more interesting! And since my whole purpose of even having a gym is to teach and help others, I can’t help but to share whatever useful info I come across. This first video I like because it addresses common issues in a clear concise way without being long-winded. Even if you aren’t looking to make it to the CrossFit Games, if you are going to be rowing for exercise, you might as well try and do it as efficiently as possible. As with anything else that is technical in nature, to see the best improvements, the first thing to do is to work on the technique, in a non-fatigued state. So if you’re looking to get better at rowing, try and get a few minutes in as a warmup with a light damper and your only focus being on the technique of each stroke, rather than what your pace is, or how many meters you’ve rowed. As your technique improves, you’ll get much more benefit from the time you put in on the rower during a workouts.
If you’re looking for a drill to help ingrain proper movement pattern, check this one out. It’s the same drill that an Olympic rower showed us a few years back when he came to CrossFit Sweat Shop and put on a row clinic. It teaches the proper timing of each portion of the stroke.
Great read. I think rowing is easily one of the most overlooked things we do in CrossFit. Just because it conceptually is not very tough doesn’t mean we can’t aim to have great technique. Also like that drill I think Ill start utilizing it!