Core Exercises in the Gym for Rowing

In this video, Joel demonstrates a series of exercises he has used to improve his core strength using conventional weights equipment. Ken describes the importance and idea behind each movement and gives tips on getting started with strengthening your core for rowing.

Video Transcript

​it's really important in rowing to make sure that we have a really strong core because the core strength is is vital to executing a good growing stroke and indeed your core area of your body is one of the largest groups of muscles that you have that you use during the rowing stroke and so having these muscles strong and balanced so that you use all of the muscles in that area is going to give you a very powerful latter part of the drive phase so very important thing for us to be aware of and to strengthen as much as we can a really good way to do it is in the gym and so here we have a series of different exercises and how to build core strength demonstrated by joel using basic gym equipment in the main so let's just run through a few of them what i suggest you do is choose the ones that suit you best and fit with the equipment you've got and then gradually progress into doing heavier weights and heavier loads with them but being very careful always to make sure that you start off with easy level of work to make sure that you don't do yourself an injury in strains of muscles so here we have joel demonstrating just strengthening his core with leg raises on the on the device if you have one and here's a simple one you can do by leaning back essentially works the hip flexors as well and other various components but what it does it's just a way of making sure that your core has to be strong from this particular exercise

again no equipment required in order to do this you could do this at home along with other core exercises that we have in other videos

this is a relatively simple one has a couple of purposes it's a heavy ball this ball is about 8 kilos but you can do it with any weight of ball the idea is to have an explosive force down onto the mat it's a soft ball and it's designed for this purpose

this is a very simple exercise but you have to be careful doing it to make sure that you get it right it's really about balance and a lot of core strength exercises that we've run through here to do with putting yourself in an unbalanced position and then being able to control your body that way here you can see Joel is moving from side to side putting one leg in front of the other and so on so I'd suggest just copy what he's doing here and get comfortable with it without any weights and then you'll see in a moment he starts to use weights in the same process

again i'd suggest start with a very light weight rather than the one you see here and then progress as your strength improves

again it's really about putting your body in an unbalanced position and then making sure that you control it and use your core muscles in particular to maintain your body posture

and you can make it harder or easier depending on how far you lean and how heavy the weights are

again just repeat on the other side again seeking balance as in balance of work for each of the groups within the body and we don't want to work one group of muscles to the extreme when we have an opposing group of muscles that we want to work as well so balance is important when it comes to strengthening your core

here we have a different type of exercise but again similar basis you can see here he's just essentially balancing on one leg and moving his body over to one side with the weight and then pulling it back again balancing with the other leg

really useful exercise for strengthening the core region of the body

again important to do both sides of the body in order to maintain that good even workout for the core

here we have joel demonstrating again without much gym equipment at all a simple balance beam where he's a piece of wood with another piece underneath to balance in the middle

you can easily adjust this the difficulty of this by where you put the band how far you move it away from your body etc so a good easy exercise that you can do at home or anywhere just need a gym band and a balance thing here joel's doing something similar but standing on again a small surface like just a piece of pipe or anything that's difficult to balance on and carrying a weight as well again same principle it's about just putting yourself into a difficult position to hold yourself and then you need to use your core strength a lot in order to be able to maintain that position again i'd suggest try it with different hands and different positions and you'll find that the more you do these sorts of exercises the better you're going to get at doing them because your skills become better but in particular your core becomes stronger and you're able to activate all those little core muscles that are in your lower part of your body in order to maintain your balance very important and great for strengthening your core in a very rounded way so that you end up with a very powerful set of muscles for that opening up phase of the of the rowing stroke

here we have something slightly different again standing on the balance beam pivots and the concept here is to do something else whilst you're standing on it which in essence is distracting for you and so then you have to activate your core muscles and quite a lot in order to be able to undertake a separate activity here the same thing just with the simple rubber band on your fingers is enough to improve the exercise and to improve the activation of the core muscles and therefore strengthening them and giving you more control over your core

here we are same process but essentially just making it difficult here with the band between the legs means that and balancing on a soft ball on the other foot just increases the level of difficulty and again these are just a range of exercises that you can choose from and indeed you can modify them yourself to see what equipment you have available and where you happen to be quite easy to do significant core strength exercises with minimal equipment again here's just another variation

and as you can imagine you could do this type of exercise without any equipment at all just by standing on an unstable place and maintaining your balance

requires quite a lot of activation of your core muscles to be able to do these sorts of drills and as i say you can do them on any piece of apparatus really even the edge of a footpath would help or a ball or a piece of pipe just use your imagination

if you want to make it difficult again then try and do it with your eyes closed because if you close your eyes then that means that you end up engaging another set of muscles in essence to to keep your balance so trying any of these drills with your eyes closed and you'll see immediately that the degree of difficulty increases dramatically

again just different variations on a theme

here we start to use weights now generally we're just using free weights here and they're not very heavy weights it's more about that instability again here you can see joel's adding to the bar some weights that are hanging from resistant straps from the gym and you can see what happens is that they move independently and so if especially if you wobble a little bit you'll find that you have to really hold your core strong in order to maintain your balance and so you can make this as difficult as you like of course by adding more and more weights with different levels of elasticity in the bands but again it's the same principle as just using a little bit of apparatus and just try to walk around maintaining your balance with weights hanging on rubber bands and you'll find that it is quite a difficult exercise

again most gymnasiums would have this equipment and it's in essence relatively inexpensive to get some bands and just hang some weights from a bar i suggest suggest again start with with low levels of weight in order to make sure that you're not overloading yourself you can see here joel's demonstrating if you try and stand on one leg whilst you're doing this as well that increases the level of difficulty and therefore makes your muscles in your core area work quite a lot harder

easier to do this if you have someone there to help put the weights on and off but as you can imagine it's not that difficult to set it up on the ground before you pick it up so you don't really need an assistant it just may make a little bit easier

again you can see here Joel is moving sideways backwards forwards standing on one leg just different things in order to engage all of his core as much as he can in this drill

Here same sort of exercise but lifting up on his toes uh walking sideways just again variations on a theme and so you can change this as much as you like with the goal of just making your core muscles work and therefore strengthen

you see of course here too undertaking lunges with weights like this is still going to work out many other muscles in the body as well and the back legs arms it's it's really focusing on the core but at the same time you'd be working out many other groups so an interesting all-around exercise and maybe a bit more entertaining than a standard gym session

here we have something similar but not quite the same you can see here that the the bar is weighted with a different weight on each end which then again as long as you if you hang on to it in the middle means that you're going to have to use various core muscles and tick on the sides of your body in order to hold the bar in a flat horizontal position again swap it around so you do it on both sides so you're loading up both sides of your body to the same extent

here again using gym equipment a bit of a variation on the theme here of using one one leg lifts like this and then swapping over to the other leg again start with a light weight on the bar and and then practice that before you move to heavier weights again working more than just your core but it's a good drill for you have to balance yourself so it's a good drill for working on your core as well

now we move into a few other exercises of the same sort of pattern here lifting a bar on one side so as you can imagine you need to hold your body quite strong in your core area in order to be able to do this particular drill again start with light weights and see how you go but it's really whatever equipment you've got at the time and variety here is very important because it means that you're using a bigger range of core muscles so a variety of these drills is important here same sort of process but balancing on a ball and doing it this way of course you're on an unstable platform and so you need to really have your core engaged to be able to hold yourself in the right position again pretty simple equipment to be able to use and it's really just varying what you're doing with the bar and in order to exercise most of your core muscles here we have similar again but this particular case we have joel standing on an unstable platform and lifting the bar so we're just undertaking a normal workout uh certain aspects of a normal workout but making sure that you have to engage your core otherwise you'd become unbalanced and fall off another variation on the same thing

as you get better at it you can use heavier weights but it's the same principle and make sure always be very careful to make sure you're not overloading yourself because you don't want to cause yourself an injury

here again similar drill that we were talking about before but this time instead of being on a solid platform with your foot operating on an unstable platform again just engages a lot more of the core muscles in order to maintain your posture correctly

this one's slightly different in the instead of having a very unstable platform it's a platform that's on an angle so again it's just engaging a different set of muscles to to put some variety into your program

and as you can see here balancing on a ball like this or an unstable platform and having to undertake various different exercises makes a significant difference to the impact of how these exercises work on your body

here you can see even more difficult with the rubber bands holding onto the weights off the bar and on an unstable platform again having to engage significant amount of core muscles in order to maintain your posture and so therefore providing great strengthening in the area in a range of of muscles

same again as we saw before one arm lifts here one side then the other but again on an unstable platform rather than flat on the floor just makes it a little bit more difficult than the previous one that was demonstrated

again having a band on the legs reduces the amount of movement they have in certain muscles and therefore means that you have to engage other muscles to compensate again it's really about balance and i'd suggest find the ones that suit you and you can do with your equipment and start with relatively light weights and low levels of work and then work your way up as you get stronger you'll find you get significant increases in your core strength quite quickly by undertaking a range of these drills and again core strength in the boat is absolutely vital for both health protection in that it helps prevent lots of injuries by having a good strong core particularly your back and what it does as well which is important to us all if we're trying to race is it gives you a lot more power on the back of the leg drive so you can make the boat go faster in that latter part of the acceleration also to catch when you're holding your body in a strong catch position it's a lot easier to hold it in a strong catch position if you have a strong core because you'll find that otherwise when you start to push with your legs you tend to can tend to slump into the catch so a strong core very important for almost every aspect of the rowing stroke and indeed very useful and very important when it comes to predicting protecting health particularly back issues and the like so these sorts of drills with different levels of weights can be done by people of all ages and so i suggest embrace it