A trim and fit body is one of the most important goals for many people in the 21st century. With the fitness craze sweeping through cities and suburbs around the world, many people continue to find the ideal strategies that would give them their dream bodies. But maintaining a healthy body with optimum fitness levels require eating highly nutritious food and adequate exercise. According to the Mayo Clinic, you can lose one pound in a week if you can burn 500 calories in a day. The key to attaining your ideal body weight is by burning more calories than you add to your body. Rowing is one of the best workouts you should engage in if you want to incinerate more calories than you take in. Rowing is a type of workout that exercises the cardiovascular and muscular parts and requires tremendous endurance. It is an effective exercise for burning many calories, and you can do it from the comfort of your home by purchasing a rowing machine. The amount of calories burned on a rowing machine depends on the intensity of your workouts, your body weight, the length of rowing time, your rowing speed, the resistance of the machine, and many others.

Weight

At 125 Pounds

For someone who weighs 125 pounds, it is possible to burn a high amount of calories when rowing at a moderate or high intensity, but a person with a higher body weight will burn more calories. The reason for this is that people with larger bodies need more effort to carry out the same physical activity compared to people with smaller bodies. The Harvard Medical School says that a person weighing 125 pounds can burn 420 calories per hour with a moderate intensity rowing and 510 calories while rowing for one hour at high intensity. And going by a report from the University of Washington, for your weight to stay at the ideal levels, a person needs to burn 15 calories for every pound of body weight when exercising at moderate intensity while you should burn 18 calories for every pound of weight while exercising at a vigorous intensity. What this means is that a 125-pound person will need to 1870-2250 calories per day to maintain his body weight.

At 155 Pounds

The Harvard Medical School states that if you weigh 155 pounds, you can light up about 520 calories in one hour while rowing at moderate intensity and 632 calories per hour of high-intensity rowing. According to the University of Washington, you need to eat about 2325 or 2790 calories per day to keep your weight at the current levels.

At 185 Pounds

According to the Harvard Medical School, a person who weighs 185 pounds will incinerate up to 622 calories in one hour of moderate intensity rowing, while the same person will light up about 754 calories per hour while rowing at a vigorous intensity. The University of Washington states that a 185-pound person will need to consume approximately 2775-3330 calories each day to maintain body weight.

At 240 Pounds

The Mayo Clinic says that a person weighing 240 pounds rowing at a moderate intensity for one hour can burn up to 654 calories, and can burn even more while rowing at a vigorous intensity. The US Department of Health and Nutrition recommends that overweight people can lose weight by eating meals of 1200-1600 calories. This makes us understand that the calories burned on the rowing machine depend on your weight.

Whether you are rowing at moderate intensity or high intensity, rowing can help you to burn a lot of calories. However, you should know that a high-intensity workout requires more energy and endurance than a moderate or low-intensity workout. So, you might not be able to do a high- intensity rowing workout for up to one hour, whereas, it is possible to continue rowing at moderate intensity for over an hour. The important thing is to know what works for you and stick to it. Also, high-intensity workouts reduce the amount of oxygen in the body, and your body will try to recover the deficit after the workout. This forces the body to continue to burn more energy even after the workout has been completed. This means you continue to burn more calories when you are resting. A regular exercise that consists of rowing and other exercises and a healthy diet plan will move you closer to your ideal body weight.

To help you maximize the benefits of your rowing workout, here are some tips to keep handy when you are using a rower:

Sit as tall as you can

According to rowing coach, Gretchen Raddatz, you can get more out of your rowing workout if you can sit taller during the workout. She says it is important to maintain your alignment if you want to get the highest benefits of your rowing session. Try not to round your back, keep your head high, lift your chest out, and keep your gaze in front of you. Doing this helps to keep your airways open, and you will be able to carry out your workout more effectively.

Concentrate on your legs

You can burn more calories on the rowing machine if you can drive your legs into the heels rest with every stroke of the rower, as this move engages the muscle centers of the lower part of your body. According to Raddatz, by connecting with your feet during the workout, you will have more energy and power which accelerates the consumption of calories.

Execute a ladder drill

Raddatz recommends the ladder drill, which consists of starting a rowing session slowly at 22 strokes every minute, and then add one more stroke after 30-60 seconds until you get to 30 strokes every minute. This action takes you from the aerobic phase to the anaerobic phase similar to sprinting. When you get to 30 strokes per minute, start reducing your strokes until you return to the initial 22 strokes per minutes.

Power Stroke Intervals

Raddatz explains that power strokes consist of “fast, hard strokes that explode back”. A power stroke requires you to grow faster by using your arms and core to pull harder while pushing the heels rest harder with your feet. You can add three sets of the power stroke to your workout after doing warm-ups. Raddatz recommends doing ten power strokes which consists of 24 strokes per minute, and then ten recovery strokes, increase your strokes to 26 in the second set and 28 in the third set and follow each set with a recovery set.

Do a different rowing workout every day

To keep your body burning calories all day long, try to create variety in your workout plan by doing more extended sessions that require endurance on some days and shorter high-intensity workouts on others, says Raddatz. She adds that rowing does not have to be long for it to be effective as the exercise is a combination of cardio and strength training.

So, are you planning to get your rowing machine so that you can workout in the comfort of your home? There are many factors to consider when calculating the calories burned on the rowing machine, but you can use the information on this piece as a guide. While rowing machines show the calories burned in every workout, these figures are usually unreliable as the machine either over calculates the calories or under calculate it. But the more expensive rowing machines provide a more accurate reading of calorie consumption.

Apart from the body weight, the number of calories you will burn while rowing is different for each person as factors such as intensity of the workout, age, health status, the rowing machine, and many other are at play.