Learn to leverage your stroke rate and improve your rowing.
How often do you get into a rowing workout and feel as though you are spinning your wheels? Though it feels like you are going faster, your split is slowing down. All the while, it is becoming increasingly difficult to row.
Although rowing may seem like a simple movement, there are ways to make our strokes more efficient during workouts. Cranking up the stroke rate will not necessarily mean you are going faster. Without an efficient stroke, you may be wasting energy and slowing down in the long run. Fast strokes do not always lead to fast splits.
Stroke rate
Stroke rate, measured in strokes per minute (SPM), is one of the most essential yet misunderstood metrics on the rower. Whether you’re training for a competition, building your endurance, or just trying to make your meters count, learning how to manage your stroke rate can transform your rowing from frantic to efficient.
The stroke rate can be found on the rowing machine as s/m. If you would like some insight on how to find this number, you can check out this article by Concept2.
Many times, athletes will correlate a faster stroke rate to a faster pace. However, this is far from the reality.
We want to focus on the power and intensity behind each individual stroke, as that is what gives us speed and allows us to keep our pace across a variety of different time domains.
Breaking down the stroke
Before we look into the stroke rate, lets talk about rowing mechanics in general.
The stroke can be broken down into the pull and the recovery. Both are equally important.
The pull of the stroke is where you place the power. We start with a powerful leg drive that transfers into the hips, body, and, lastly, the arms. If you pull too early with the arms, you leave power on the table. If you lean back too quickly, you leave power on the table. The goal is to get a long stroke that starts with a powerful leg drive.
After the pull, the recovery starts. This piece begins with the arms traveling back, followed by the body, and lastly the legs. This is where athletes will typically rush into the next stroke. We want to avoid this, as the recovery is a very important piece in rowing well.
Think about each stroke as a rep—the same as a deadlift or squat. The recovery is the set-up for each individual stroke. If we rush back to the start with legs first, not only are we cutting out the last bit of power from the previous stroke, but we are also poorly setting up the next one.
So, both the recovery and the pull are very important to creating long, powerful strokes. We can use stroke rate to train this skill.
Rowing at low stroke rates
No matter your goals with the rower, you should spend some significant time rowing at low stroke rates.
Again, this does not mean slow. This means powerful. A slow stroke rate begins with a slow recovery, focusing on arms away, then body, then legs. Think about a 3:1 ratio of recovery to pull speed. This slow recovery allows massive power to be placed into each stroke.
Look at your monitor and try to keep a 16-18 stroke rate. This will likely feel incredibly slow, but see how fast you can get your split while keeping this slow rate. You will realize how much you have to slow down your recovery and how hard you have to pull to keep your speed.
When done correctly, these slower stroke rates are exhausting. However, if you spend time here, you will build efficient stroke mechanics that will transfer to higher stroke rates, eventually making you faster and faster.
Rowing at moderate stroke rates
After you spend decent time at the lower stroke rates, begin bumping it up to the 20 – 26 s/m range.
These stroke rates are ideal for 15 – 25 minute workouts, so long as you keep the power behind each stroke.
As the rate goes up, you should still make a point to not rush into the next stroke. Be sure to keep a slight lean back at the end of your pull. Get the arms away before both the legs and the body as you begin the recovery.
Rowing at high stroke rates
Once the workout time gets to be 10 minutes or less, that is when we can really start cranking the stroke rate up.
If you are rowing a 2k, shooting for 28 – 34 strokes per minute would be ideal.
For shorter distances, such as a 500m row, the rate may reach close to 40.
However, this is still controlled. It is not a fantic pull where we loose rhythm. The arms still come away first, the handles stay level, and the legs still power the stroke.
Building your stroke rate
To be efficient with rowing at the higher rates, it is essential to spend time with the low rates and slow strokes.
Be intentional with your strokes. When you are rowing in that 16-18 range, mix in some drills:
- Begin with some legs-only rowing. After that, add the body. This teaches you to begin each part of the stroke in the correct way.
- After you add the arms: pause at the finish position, then at arms away (still leaned back). After that pause, take a full stroke.
Deliberate is better than frantic
Though it may seem that the faster you move back and forth on the rower the faster you will go, this is far from the case.
To row well, we need to make each stroke count. We do that by keeping a consistent stroke rate for the distance we are going and by using the recovery to set up for another stroke.
The more time and focus you put into rowing, the more you will improve. And, you will notice that it will transfer to many other areas of fitness as well.
