How to train a ROWER | SUF Personal Training CHALLENGE

Rowing exposes your weak links fast: sloppy wrists, rushed recovery, too much layback, and suddenly your “cardio day” turns into cranky elbows, tight hip flexors, or a low-back flare-up. We want trainers and everyday lifters to use the rower as a real conditioning tool, not a pain generator, so we walk through the exact cues we coach for a clean, powerful stroke and how to fix the most common errors.

We start with a simple form breakdown you can apply immediately: hands on the outside of the handle, wrists flat, elbows out and back, and a consistent finish with the handle coming in just below the chest. Then we dial in the layback target (think 11 o’clock or 1 o’clock) so you stay braced and efficient without overleaning. The recovery gets special attention too, because sequencing is everything: push the handle down and away with straight arms, lean forward, and keep the handle traveling over your knees before your legs bend.

From there, we zoom out into a trainer-friendly needs analysis: the muscles and joints doing the work, the planes of motion involved, and the overuse injuries that show up when tissue capacity can’t match volume. You’ll also hear practical accessory work ideas, including isometric elbow strengthening, hip flexor work with dorsiflexion, and frontal plane stability drills to keep your hips resilient. We wrap with rowing bioenergetics and nutrition coaching basics, including carb guidance and when glucose gels make sense for longer efforts, plus details on our monthly rowing challenge, leaderboard, and the $500 prize.

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Transcript

Welcome And Quick Announcements

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Haday all, welcome back to the Show Up Fitness podcast. Today we're going to talk everything about rowing with our monthly challenge. May the 4th be with you. Vroom vroom vroom vroom. Rowing challenge, challenging trainers to level up their cardio. Everything you need to know, rowing needs analysis. Whether if you're rowing a bunch or you're doing the SUF challenge for the month of May, we're going to get into the needs analysis with the muscle actions and the joints, planes of motion, common injuries, and then the bioenergetics. We're going to begin by watching a video, proper form breakdown, and then we're going to get into all this fun stuff.

Layback Timing To Protect Back

Recovery Sequence Handle Over Knees

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Your hands should be on the outsides of the handle and your wrists should be nice and flat. We achieve these flat wrists and a proper activation of our back muscles when our elbows go out and back. If your elbows are just back, you get the T-Rex arm. And if your elbows are just out, then your chest tends to cave inward. We don't get the maximum activation and usage out of our back muscles. So as you pull on that handle, aim for right below the chest, elbows out and back. The second point of focus for having a perfect rowing stroke is having the ideal layback. And the idea there is to have an 11 or a one o'clock layback with your body. If you think about the numbers on a clock, 11 and 1, we want to be in a position with our shoulders behind our hips, our abs nice and tight, but we're not leaning back so far that it makes it too challenging to lean our body forward and come up on the return. More layback is not ideal and that can cause some lower back issues. So just think 11 or 1 o'clock, depending on which way you're facing. Now that we've established a rock solid finish position, the third point of focus for a perfect rowing stroke has to do with the return or the recovery portion of the stroke. And this third point of focus is doing what's called the handle pushdown. This means that as you come up to take the next rowing stroke, to push your handle down and out with your arms straight, followed by a lean with the body. The handle should be going over your knees before your legs bend. The reason why we push the handle down is to perform.

Muscles Joints And Planes Of Motion

Common Rowing Overuse Injuries

Rowing Bioenergetics And Carb Fueling

How The Meter Challenge Works

Prize Rules Tagging And Community Push

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Thank you, Mr. Training Tall. Great YouTube. Make sure to check him out. Getting into now the actions of with muscles, also the joints. We're going to be in the horizontal plane pulling, which is horizontal abduction, a lot of your mid-back elbow flexion, so your biceps and your brachioradialis and your brachialis really getting after it. You could use a supinated grip if you're doing prolonged work. Changing up the grip may be effective for you. See what feels right. And then when you come back after the concentric pull, you have to flex by placing and getting dorsiflexion on the little bands. So your hip flexors are going to be getting a lot of work done. So you want to make sure to look at the planes of motion sagittal for the lower body with flexion and extension, hips, glutes a lot. Your erectors are being getting a ton of work. So we identify the muscles that are working, and then we're going to get common injuries. Just like anything, common injuries are going to come up due to tissue overload. You're doing too much too fast. That's the tissue capacity issue. Meaning, if you've never rode before and you start doing 10,000 meters per day, which may be about 50 to 60 minutes, five days per week, your elbows are going to start feeling it. Your hip flexors are going to start feeling it. You are doing a lot of sagittal work for the lower body. So I'd like for you to incorporate some frontal plane stability, some Q-sac squats, CO-sac squats, whatever the hell you want to call them, to get that frontal plane stability, strengthening the hips. How are you strengthening your flexors? Let's do some isometric holds. Put a kettlebell on your foot with dorsi flexion. Hold for 30 seconds. Go out, use a band, stabilizing the frontal plane, go back and forth. We want to strengthen the hips, also the forearms and the mid-back. I would highly incorporate doing some strength training, a part of this, mimicking the sport. That's a specificity, specific adaptation to impose demand. I want to get into those elbows, do some isometric holds, 45 seconds up to a minute. We did a podcast with Dr. O'Ross from the prehab guys, taking a look at pickleball elbow, very similar. We're coming across the body. So strengthening the lateral as well as the medial parts of the elbow with those isometric holds. Now let's take a look at the bioenergetics. This is coming from the six edition physiological basis of exercise and sport, even though it was in 1998, almost 20 years ago, it's still relative today. So we're gonna take a look at rowing, which is gonna be 20% ATP PCR. That's high intense, primarily utilizing glucose and glycogen as the fuel substrate. Fast glycolysis, we're gonna be at 30%, 50% oxidative. This is an aerobic sport. So you need to be fueling properly, probably between at least 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kilogram when it comes to carb loading. Take your body weight, divide it by 2.2, and then multiply. If you're doing this for longer than 60 minutes because you want to win with the competition, you should probably be taking some glucose gels or tablets to give you that fuel so you're not breaking down muscle. The challenge for the month who can do the most? Meters. You don't have to do 60 minutes at one time. You don't have to do 10 minutes at one time. You can break it up. I went to Equinox over here in Santa Monica today. I rode for 10 minutes. That was 2,500 meters. I did my workout. I threw around 315 for nine reps. Okay, no, I didn't, but I did my chest workout and then I went back and rode for another 10 minutes. Total for the day, the leaderboard stands on May 4th. May the 4th be with you. I'm at 5,03 meters. The leader so far, Mr. Joe, trainer and manager up at lifetime in Roseville slash Arden area in Sacramento. He's number one, 10,000 meters. Who can do the most? The hunk who gets the most meters for the month is gonna win 500 bucks. The hunk at who gets the most? 500 bucks. You have to tag SUFCPT, throw it into your story. We will also be giving away swag seminars and our certifications. We have three of them online mentorship. We are building the best community for personal trainers. And why not practice what you preach? It can get boring doing the same crap over and over and over again. So we have monthly competitions challenging trainers all over the world to get involved. Your clients see that they're gonna want to do it. So now you're prepared for things that could happen. If they are not doing any type of rowing and you start rowing with them for 30 minutes a day, these are common injuries that could creep up. So make sure part of your CCA, if your client wants a full body workout and you're gonna be doing some squatting and then you're doing some polling, do an accessory that's gonna help prevent injuries for this competition. It's for everyone, not just for trainers. If your clients want to do it, great. Have fun with it every day. Get after it. The winner, 500 bucks. That's a stream of revenue. All things that we talk about within the SUF CPT, our soft issue mobilization certification, and our nutrition coaching certification. We have six months of online options where you get to talk to fitness professionals. You are gonna be within the best community. Surround yourself with the best if you want to become the best. Get into the challenge. Oh, those now some trainers gonna be crying because it's not something on a boshu ball. Just giving you shit. Friendly competition is fun. Remember, big roads are better than small ones and keep showing up.