Rowing alone won't build the rower you could be

Gig rowing looks like a complete sport. Six rowers, a cox, a heavy wooden boat, and a race that's often over in under fifteen minutes. But the training that surrounds it — long club outings, repeated race-pace pieces, the same movement pattern thousands of times over — leaves gaps. Those gaps tend to show up as niggles: a grumbling lower back in February, a sore rib by May, shoulders that ache after a hard head race.

Cross-training fills those gaps. Not by replacing water time, but by building the engine and the supporting structures that let you row harder for longer and stay in the boat all season.

Cycling: endurance that's kind to your back

Gig racing is overwhelmingly aerobic. A one-and-a-half mile race at 30-plus strokes per minute, plus long training outings, demands a big, steady engine. Cycling builds that engine with almost no impact and very little spinal loading — a real bonus if you've spent the winter hunched over an erg.

Two rides a week is plenty. Make one a steady 60–90 minutes at conversational pace. Make the other shorter and sharper: four efforts of eight minutes at threshold with three minutes easy between, or repeated three-minute hill climbs. On the turbo, keep your cadence between 85 and 95 revolutions per minute and stay light on the bars. Grinding a big gear for an hour will simply recreate the backache you're trying to avoid.

Swimming: shoulders, breath and a free pull

Swimming trains the pulling muscles through a longer range than rowing ever will, and it forces you to control your exhale under load — surprisingly useful when you're gasping at rate 34 with a following sea.

Aim for one 30–40 minute session a week. Something like six 100m repeats with 20 seconds rest, or four 200m with 40 seconds, focusing on a long stroke, a high elbow catch and bilateral breathing. A pull buoy takes the pressure off tired legs; fins help if your ankles are stiff from years of the foot stretcher. If your front crawl is rusty, invest in a lesson or two before you build volume — a poor stroke will simply hand you a different shoulder problem.

Circuit training: unglamorous injury insurance

Most gig rowing injuries are overuse injuries, and most of them come from a body that can't quite cope with the load. A short, regular circuit addresses the weak links. Two or three sessions of 30 minutes a week is enough.

• Band pull-aparts and face pulls — 2 x 15, before or after every session. Keeps the shoulders back and the upper back switched on.
• Single-leg bridges and Romanian deadlifts — 3 x 8 each side for hamstrings and glutes, which drive the leg press.
• Dead bugs and side planks — 3 x 30–40 seconds to resist the rotation that a long stroke encourages.
• Press-ups and inverted rows — 3 x 8–12 to balance pushing and pulling.
• Split squats or box step-ups — 3 x 8 each side for the drive phase.

Keep the circuit brisk, resting 60–90 seconds between sets, and prioritise control over exhaustion. Build load gradually: rib stress fractures and lower-back flare-ups are usually a story of too much, too soon.

Fitting it around your rowing week

A workable pattern for a club rower training three or four times on the water:

• Monday: rest, or an easy 30-minute swim
• Tuesday: water session, plus a short circuit afterwards
• Wednesday: 45-minute turbo interval session
• Thursday: water session or erg, technique focus
• Friday: rest or an easy spin
• Saturday: circuit plus swim
• Sunday: long steady ride or a club outing

The golden rule is hard days hard, easy days easy. Don't stack a heavy leg circuit the day before a race, and in race week cut the cross-training volume by half — keep one short swim or spin to stay loose, then trust the work you've already done.

Keep the boat first

Cross-training supports your rowing; it never replaces it. If time is tight, water sessions and technique come first, every time. Watch for the classic signs of doing too much — resting heart rate creeping up, poor sleep, splits getting slower rather than faster. Add one new activity at a time and give it three or four weeks before judging it.

Coxes benefit just as much, and so do rowers carrying a few aches into the season. Best of all, a bit of variety keeps training interesting through the dark, wet months when the tide table and the weather are conspiring against you. Turn up in April fitter, fresher and still injury-free, and the cross-training will have paid for itself.