Rowing Machines – Training for a Lifetime Adventure

Rowing can take you on an adventure on the high seas from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But never underestimate the sea – rowing machines will help ensure you’re at optimum fitness.

It’s understandable why amateur and professional rowers have an urge to take to the sea. The ocean is powerful, mysterious, challenging and provides the ultimate adventure, complete with danger and the very real risk to life. So training on rowing machines is crucial as part of overall fitness regimes for ocean rowers, as well as circuit training and, of course, rowing on the open waves. Of course rowing machines can never match the real power and spontaneity of ocean rowing, but they can help you reach optimum fitness fast.

Rowing machines – training indoors for the outdoors

For anyone who is used to training on rowing machines indoors, away from the harshness and extremities of the ocean, it can be a massive psychological leap. Dealing with squalls and sharks can be terrifying. But for ocean rower Roz Savage, her love of the sport is rooted in rowing across oceans solo. Salt water sores, blisters, dehydration and epic ocean journeys may sound crazy; rowing across the Atlantic is a punishing challenge but such colossal challenges proves to athletes they are self-sufficient with the ability to achieve in the face of extremity. Rowing machines offer a crucial training apparatus – but such challenges demand psychological strength too.

The body and the soul of sport

In an interview with Roz Savage in The Observer Sport, she was asked if rowing solo across the ocean made her crazy: “My usual answer is that I feel a lot more sane now than I did in the days when I put on a suit and went to work in an office.” Training on rowing machines, getting herself physically fit and even putting on weight in preparation for such challenges is crucial. The idea of going alone into a harsh environment is one that has endured for millennia as people search out spiritual enlightenment or renewal.

Rowing machines – training for adventure

With the right training regime using rowing machines and general circuit training, the fact is anyone can take on an extreme challenge. Before tackling oceans single-handed, Roz Savage studied law, and then worked as an IT project manager in an investment bank. She was married, wealthy and successful but, she said, not happy. So she quit office life, became a divorcee, and began taking on adventures and challenges. Losing her possessions and materialist trappings, she found, she said, freedom. From there, she followed her heart, started training on rowing machines, and set her sights on conquering the Atlantic.

As Roz told the Observer, rowing is more than just a sport: “There are things that are worth being afraid of, like pain or death, but failure or ridicule, these things aren't going to hurt you, or at least not physically. I suppose I reached a point where other things in my life became more important than those fears…Life can be so fulfilling if you can only figure out what it is that you want.”