Last week when we were down south, Ryder and I went canoing on Little Grassy Lake for about 2 hours and I found it to be a great upper body workout. I perfected my J stroke and could paddle vigorously, pulling at a good clip, and more or less keep the canoe straight. It was a lot of fun and I really liked the sore muscles I experienced, evidence of a bit of exercise. This week as perused my email, I found a message from the Livestrong.com touting the virtues of rowing. I didn't know I was subscribed to email bulletins from this site, but I was subscribed to the Daily Plate and it seems as though Livestrong consumed them. It is actually quite a nice site with lots of different type of exercise, health, fitness and diet related content. The bit on rowing caught my eye and I recalled how I would row a few years back after I suffered an injury and couldn't run. I really liked it but when I returned to my feet, I abandoned rowing. Well, now that I have to meter out running carefully due to my knees, I was receptive to rowing again, and gave it a try. The Concept 2 machines are positioned so that they look out over the courtyard adjacent to the student union, so its better than television, watching the student body walk by. Especially now that all the students are starting to return for the fall semester and are fit, tanned and aren't wearing winter coats. So I jumped on and rowed 2000 meters in about 14 minutes. It felt great, so I did another 1000 meters and really started to feel it. The next two days I felt tight and trim-- good core, lower back, upper body and leg work.
Today I warmed up and then did 5000 meters, which was just a bit of a challenge. At about 2500 meters my butt started to burn, the gluteus and piriformis. The compression of my knees on the "catch" concerned me and bothered me a bit, but I didn't feel any real pain, just an awareness. I had a whole body experience as I felt my trapezius, lats, pectoralis, deltoids, biceps, triceps, abs, quads and calves, all involved. I breathed into each pull and kept my heart rate up. I really humped to break 30 minutes for the 5000, and when I got off I felt like I had a very good workout. I did a 1/2 mile on the treadmill to stretch out my hamstrings and feel if my knees were ok, which they were. After my matt work I felt really good and quite well exercised. I plan on including a few rowing sessions into my regimen now. I have been dropping weight with 4 workouts a week and watching the carbs. One of these days I will step on the scale at the gym and the beam won't tilt with the 200 lb notch engaged. I haven't been below 200 since I was in my 20s and then before that in my teens. I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
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