Rowing for calories: Should I change my technique?

It is obvious that the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take or take fewer calories than you burn. It is possible that losing weight was the main factor or one of the major factors that made you start rowing. If this is the case, then you are not alone as there are many people who also started rowing for the same reason. The good news is that most of these people were able to lose weight.

How fast this is achieved varies from one person to another. Perhaps you have been rowing for some time now. And you are feeling that the calories or meters do not move as fast for you, as it does for them. There is also the probability that you feel you are not losing enough calories from your rowing. If this is the case, you should read further to know the technicalities behind losing calories. And how you can maximize this information.

Technicalities of losing calories through rowing

Losing calorie while rowing, is majorly based on split, watts, time and meters. The table below shows how many calories you will be burning if you row for an hour, based on your split time for 500 meters.

The more split time you have, the fewer calories you will burn in an hour. Yet while rowing the issue is not just that you burn fewer calories in an hour when you row slower. The major problem is that when you row slower, you will have to cover more meters while rowing. For instance, if you row for 37 seconds on a 1:20 split, you will have lost 27 calories and rowed for 229 meters.

To get this, you can divide the calories per hour by 3,600 to convert it to seconds. Then multiply by the number of seconds you have rowed and you will get how much calories you have lost.

To get how many meters you have rowed, you divide 500 meters by the split time. Then multiply it by the number of seconds you have rowed.

When you do this for the rest of the split time, you will find out that for every increment in your split time, you will have to cover more distance to achieve the same calorie burn. So it means the faster your split time, the more time and distance you gain at the same time.

What you should do/conclusion

While it is obvious that Usain Bolt is the fastest runner for short distance races (100 meters), it does not automatically mean he will win a 5000 meters race. Likewise, the fact that an individual wins a 5000-meter race does not automatically translate to the fact that he will win a 100 meters race. Thus you should not bother to change your technique to lose calories. All you have to do is to know what works best for you. Row faster to save time and distance and lose a particular amount of calories. Or row slower, lose time and distance, but still lose the same amount of calorie at the end of the day. If you are the slow and steady type of rower, you might end up being able to go longer (thereby losing more calories), or ending stronger than if you had gone the faster way. Just find the technique you are most comfortable with and stick to it.