Rapid Fitness for Everyone

Some bio-mechanical experts now think that today’s high-tech resistance machines are not only inefficient at improving muscle function, but they may actually increase the risk of long-term injuries and movement dysfunction. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to perform complex movement, marked by highly complex natural sequences of muscle recruitment which share the load over as many joints as possible. Our muscles operate as teams not individuals. Every muscle makes its own contribution, operating at optimal length, tension and orientation. Lift a bag, lift a free weight, climb over a fence – all these movements require your brain to process a cast array of information and send the right impulses to millions of motor units small groups of muscle fibres each controlled by a single nerve ending). Contrast this with movement on a resistance machine where every movement is restricted to a pre-determined axis and plane.

Our natural development to share load across as many joints and muscles as possible is restricted in virtually all static machines, even if the handles or footplates are mobile, and of course the crucial element of balance is missing entirely. Every time you perform a movement, the exercise follows the exact same path – in the free-system, the path will vary with each repetition unless you control it. In addition, research has clearly established that the nervous system actually rotates the motor units used as fatigue sets in – a process known as Asynchronous Stimulation. It is an essential adaptation enabling the conservation of energy and helps avoid unwanted overload in particular tissues.
Free or 3-dimensional exercises (as opposed to static) enable load-sharing and Asynchronous Stimulation – Fixed exercise machines at best restrict them and at worst eliminate them. In the case of a machine chest press, the same muscle units will fire at the same point regardless of fatigue. The lack of Asynchronous Stimulation means the muscle units most suited in the superimposed pattern will fatigue much earlier than when performing the same exercise with free weights. If this movement pattern is repeated often enough, the result is “pattern overload”, effectively RSI (repetitive strain injury) for athletes.

Rowing in a boat, or an a Rowperfect rowing simulator is a genuinely complex exercise.

Not only is the movement extremely complex in terms of the load – which is spread between the soles of the feet on the foot-stretchers and the hands gripping the handles and involves nearly every muscle in the entire body – but the entire movement is conducted in an unstable environment.

So now added layers of complexity – requiring balance and dynamic interaction with a moving mass – have been added to an already complex skill set. When performed at maximal intensity, rowing is one of the most complex of movements – certainly the most complex common resistance exercise.

Operating in an unstable environment crucially tends to involve excellent activation of the abdominal and spinal stabilising muscles – the core stabilisers we hear so much about today. Why are the core stabilisers so important? Clearly, it is this group which enables us to absorb or transfer energy or force between the feet/ legs and the hands/arms (remember – spreading the load over as many joints as possible….) while keeping the information processor ( the brain) as safe and stable as possible – in summary, the core muscles tend to be working when we are avoiding pattern overload.

The one thing which has restricted the more widespread adoption of rowing has been the difficulty of learning to row and perhaps the inaccessibility of suitable water. On-water rowing requires relatively long stretches of protected water – which may be difficult to access or require very early training sessions, and good weather. Until the development of the Rowperfect, the physics of a dynamic rowing boat were only accessible if you put a single scull on water and climbed in. The Rowperfect thus represents an historic moment in the development of indoor exercise – the physics of real rowing available on dry land.

As we have discussed above the benefits of rowing for the whole body are exceptional – now they are truly easy to access.

Whether you want the benefits of rowing for general health, or to improve your performance in any sport requiring balance, coordination, rhythm, strength or endurance, it is now truly easy to “get in a boat”!
As the Water Rat said in The Wind in the Willows:
“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”
And in exercise terms at least, it seems he was pretty close to the mark.