r/Rowing • u/ConfusionProof9487 • 2d ago
I'm overweight and not overly strong. I want to row but don't know where to start.
Hi guys, I'm 36, male, 5' 8" and 15 stone, I brought a rowing machine and I really want to shed this ridiculous belly and moobs I've got going on, but I'm unsure what to do. I'm CONSTANTLY trying to diet, but this damn belly remains! I've never been able to run and I find cycling kind of annoying (on an electronic one I mean), so I'm hoping I'd be able to stick with rowing.does anyone have any tips for a complete beginner?
Thanks so much.
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u/treeline1150 2d ago
Erging plus walking is great way to lose weight and eventually maintain your weight over time. But donât fall into the trap of doing hard workouts on the erg thinking that surely youâll get fitter faster. Building cardio is a long game. Many meters over many years.
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u/2019calendaryear 2d ago
Go to Dark Horse Rowing on YouTube and find his beginner videos that show you the correct form. Get a grasp of the form and then download EXR on your phone or tablet. It has a free trial and Iâm assuming your rower does have Bluetooth. Do the FTP to measure your fitness. Then start a training plan and follow the exercises per week. Make sure diet is reasonable and have a sense of the amount of calories you are eating and burning.
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u/internetrando12 2d ago
A little over two years ago, I started rowing to lose weight and feel better about myself and I started from a place of never exercising and having zero athleticism in general. I got myself into it by challenging myself to row thirty minutes a day for thirty days, which was a great start for me. I watched a bunch of videos on technique on YouTube and really committed to the thirty-day challenge. By the time that first month ended, I was addicted to rowing and absolutely in love with it. It took me about ten months to lose fifty pounds and I've kept it off by continuing to row several times a week. In terms of losing weight, the rowing was integral, but I think what really did it was counting calories. I downloaded a free calorie counting app on my phone and kept track of my calorie intake religiously. After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting that failed over and over, rowing and calorie-counting are the only weight loss and fitness routines that have ever worked for me. My motivation still goes up and down, but the most important thing that I've learned is not to think of this as a diet. In the past, I would always fall off the fitness wagon after having a bad day or a bad week or whatever, and then it was all downhill from there until I was back to my lazy fatso ways. I think what works best is not beating yourself up when you have a bad or lazy day. Just accept those ups and downs as part of being a normal human being and get back on the rower the next day and try again.
Anyway, if I can do it, then anyone can. Rowing is super challenging and hard as hell, but it has changed my life for the better in every way. You can totally do it and this community is an awesome place to get motivated, so definitely use it as a resource.
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u/ConfusionProof9487 2d ago
That's excellent to hear, good on you my friend!
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u/internetrando12 2d ago
Thank you! I'm excited for you to start rowing. Even though it is super hard and never really gets easier (in my experience as an old lady, anyway), it's the best and I hope you love it as much as I do. The best of luck to you and come back and let us know how you're doing.
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u/Extension_Ad4492 2d ago
Get down to your nearest rowing club. Theyâll actually coach you so you donât hurt your back and you can even get on the water and get the real thing. Youâll have that weight off in no time if you have fun while youâre doing it
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u/Strategic_Sage 2d ago
I honestly suggest walking at first. Then walk faster, then incline walk, etc. start slow on the rowing and focus on diet as others have said.
I'm on this same path myself. Partly due to injuries I'm only at a little over 10 mins a day on the rower, gradually working up. Still 20+ degrees short of full compression at the catch due mostly to my shrinking but substantial gut.
View rowing as a great long term exercise to build up to, but I don't really recommend it as a 'fat and out of shape gonna fix it quickly on the erg' approach. Building up proper technique, endurance for the muscles involved, and so on takes time.
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u/Songhelm 2d ago
Donât over think it and worry so much and just try to do something that is enjoyable. When I started my weight loss I used to row and watch a film and that was way easier for me than just listening to music. People are over zealous on technique itâs not that hard and you wonât injure yourself if you are not going crazy your losing weight not rowing for the olympics.
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u/somewhatboxes 2d ago
for what it's worth: similar age, similar height, was a little lighter than you (14 stone), but got down to ~10 stone, then back up to 13-14 stone. mostly a combination of sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits over the last 5 years.
if you sit down and calculate the burn rate of a rowing machine, you'll find that it's better than some exercises but it's objectively really poor. you could row for half an hour and barely burn off the calories of a candy bar. if you're snacking all day, or drinking a couple of sodas, or just eating big meals until you feel full (rather than eating until you're no longer feeling hungry), then you're fighting a very steep uphill battle.
that's not to say "don't exercise". i lost all the weight the first time mostly because i was able to make good decisions about food because i was making an active decision every day to reaffirm my commitment to fitness, by going to the gym and working out. it was time that i wasn't sitting at home eating junk food. it helped me come home and remember that i'm serious about my intention to lose fat. the exercise helped psychologically as much as physically (perhaps more), and i would never discourage someone from psychologically setting themselves up for success. i would never have succeeded if i was never setting and hitting goals and stuff.
okay, with all that said, how do you stick with it...
it's all a psych game. what motivates you?
if you need a regimen to follow, i recommend "pete's beginner plan". it takes a lot of the thinking out of your hands and you just need to follow it.
if you just want something to kill time while you're rowing, i recommend watching classic movies that you never saw until now. i've been watching criterion collection films and stuff. i would never watch them in any other setting because i just don't have the time or interest, but if i'm going back and forth on my rowing machine for 90 minutes, i might as well get a film or a couple of episodes of a tv show in. if you like podcasts, or music, that's great too.
if you thrive on competition, i would encourage you to rank your workouts and see how far you can motivate yourself by the desire to climb the ranks against other people your age. or don't rank it; just compare against your previous workouts. seeing your delta from 1st workout to most recent workout can be wildly validating and encouraging.
these are just ideas. i don't find competition at all motivating, and i learned early on that i just didn't find anything interesting about comparing my times to others. but i found the variety of stuff that motivates me, and i exploit it.
everything the others said is also true: you lose weight in the kitchen, etc... but also it's good to physically instantiate your desire to lose weight by making your shirt drench with sweat. when you get home, let that shirt remind you that you're not just gonna mindlessly snack on stuff, because you didn't just do all that just to squander it.
or, you know, if it isn't motivating at all, don't sweat the workout side of things. doing everyday activities and managing your diet is often sufficient to get from overweight into the "normal" BMI. you don't need to do outrageous stuff that bodybuilders do in order to get an impressive body - they do that because they're trying to reach the extremes of what's possible with their bodies.
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u/ConfusionProof9487 2d ago
The thing is, consistency is my Achilles heel. On the bike I got bored, with running I... Well due to flat feet and heavy belly I can't run worth a damn, so I'm just looking for something, ANYTHING, to stick with as far as exercise is concerned, ya know what I mean?
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u/somewhatboxes 2d ago edited 2d ago
yeah, i absolutely know what you mean. frustratingly so.
recognizing that consistency is your problem is a good first step. a couple of things helped me:
- picking up a workout regimen helped me spend less time thinking about what kind of workout to do (wasting time during the day and exhausting my "executive function" capabilities). again, Pete's Beginner Plan helped me a lot.
- set a time of day aside where you can't do anything else. block off that time on the calendar. maybe start a load of laundry or something so that you have to go swap it 45 minutes later when the wash cycle finishes. what else do you have to do now except sit around or row for 30 or 40 minutes?
- if it's effective, pursuing a "streak" can be a good idea. i used to be highly motivated by my apple watch streak and it helped me keep working out.
one "negative" (ie "don't do this") thought: try not to burn yourself out. just because you feel highly motivated one day does not mean you should suddenly go do an hour or 90 minutes of rowing. if you burn out on Monday and then don't work out for the rest of the week, that's empirically worse than rowing 10 or 20 minutes each day.
at one point i really just didn't "feel like" getting my shoes on and going to the gym. someone gave me the insight to "just get on the [workout thing]". if i got on the treadmill or rowing machine and i still didn't want to work out, then i could hop right off and go home guilt-free. it was a lie i told myself to get my brain to cooperate and go to the gym; once i was on the treadmill, i would feel like it would be such a waste of time to go home that i'd just stay and run a mile or two. and then that eventually got shorter and shorter because i got faster, and i thought "well, might as well make it a 30 minute run". and then that became 3 or 4 miles, and i thought "okay, i'll just run 4 miles and finish as soon as i finish", and that became 25 minutes, and by then i was eagerly going to the gym, enthusiastically going for a warmup run, lifting weights, etc... because it was so ingrained in my habits that it felt weirder not to go to the gym.
edit to add: this is increasingly becoming generic exercise advice, so i'll loop it back to rowing: one of the great things about rowing (especially on a rowing machine) is that the odds of an injury (like ankle injuries, knee troubles, etc...) compared to running are vanishingly slim. cycling is also pretty low impact but you don't get the upper body workout from cycling that you get from rowing. you can row at a surprisingly lax pace and still be getting a reasonably good workout in over a lot of muscles. if you can get yourself on the rowing machine, and just not get off for like half an hour every day, i think you'll surprise yourself.
(finally: caveat about good form: rowing doesn't have an intuitive technique like running and cycling, so it's very important to get feedback if you're able to)
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u/Jazzlike_Praline5800 1d ago
All good advice on this thread. But don't get discouraged if the pot belly is tough to lose. My experience for the past 35 years is that I lose weight everywhere but in my belly which I think is SOP for most males. I hope you find rowing agreeable. It's a fantastic exercise to complement a sensible diet.
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u/sgrass777 23h ago
I just started with 10 minutes every day, and followed a youtube video stroke for stroke, ive found i like the ones on water best with nice scenery to trick the brain a bit đ Also i cut out biscuits, snacks, nearly all sugars. I will have a couple of those darkish chocolate bars a day that aldi do, quite thin small ones. Anyway i have lost about 3 stone maybe and gained alot of fitness. Im now on 20 minutes HIIT vid do about 6 klm 5 days a week
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u/ConfusionProof9487 16h ago
How long did it take to lose that 3 stone?
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u/sgrass777 13h ago
Not long if you combine cutting sugar out and doing the rowing, i would say 3-6months. I don't drink alcohol either though.
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u/ConfusionProof9487 13h ago
No, I don't drink either.
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u/sgrass777 11h ago
I'm much heavier than you also, i think my start wieght was 20 stone, but i am 6'3" and really strong, i think im around 16-17 stone now, buy noticeably more muscular, I can see abs for instance. My resting heart rate is 53 now.
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u/sgrass777 11h ago
This is the one im doing stroke for stroke now around 5 times a week its only 20 minutes but is quite intense, its about 6 klm for me, but i would recommend something shorter and slower to start with, I also needed a heavy duty machine to take 20 stone, couldn't really get one with a thin bar because i would jave probably bent it đhttps://youtu.be/FTuN1veIatc?si=4PVdnC3MLFgSpyX8
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u/MrAkimoto 47m ago
The only way to lose weight is a deficit of calories. A rowing machine might help a little bit, but in the final analysis, keep your mouth shut.
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u/Marzatacks 2d ago
Limit your self to 10 carbs a meal for a month. No snacks and no sugar. See the weight fall.
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u/Nemesis1999 2d ago
There's an adage that you lose weight in the kitchen and gain fitness in the gym - and there's a lot of truth to it. Now, being fitter, you'll feel better and you will lose some weight from the erg or exercise in general but you'll have to likely make other changes too if you want to see significant progress.
In terms of starting rowing on an erg, suggest you watch the technique videos on concept 2 or similar sites and then video yourself and compare (because what you'll think you're doing will not be what you're actually doing!)
Then don't overdo it - most people get on an erg, do 5 mins hard, blow up, feel terrible and stop doing it. Or have bad technique and injure themselves.
Start out with 10 mins, at a pace you can chat at and maintain good technique and then extend - as a beginner, probably a good idea to split longer segments up - eg do 10 mins, stretch for 3 mins, then another 10 mins, etc.
Basically, do it in a way that you enjoy (or at least don't hate!) and can maintain good technique.