Cut cardio?

Absolutely not. That is the worst idea ever if you want to be good at rowing.

I can kind of see where you're coming from, but it sounds like the advice of a bad internet article gone wrong. Cardio is what people increase when they want to lose weight, right? So if you want to gain weight you should cut it out, shouldn't you? No, a million times over.

"Cardio" or your cardiovascular output/aerobic capacity is the basis of rowing. Strength is certainly important for a heavyweight male, but cardio is king. You know those guys that can pull off a decent 500m time because of brute strength but die during their 2k? That's because they don't do enough cardio. Strength is what lets you hit your powerful target race pace, but cardio is what allows you to sustain is for several minutes.

If you're not gaining weight, you're not eating enough. There are roughly 3500cals in a pound. If you eat an extra 3500 calories, you will gain a pound. If you burn that many calories through activity, you will lose a pound. Adding 500cals daily to your meals on top of your daily requirements will result in gaining about a pound a week (500cals x 7 days = 3500cals). Download a calorie tracking app (MyNetDiary, My Fitness Pal, etc.) and count how many calories are in the food you're eating. At your height and weight, you should be eating about 2600-2700 calories to maintain your weight without including your physical activity. So if all you did was walk the dog occasionally/walk to the mailbox/chill all day for activity and ate ~2600 calories a day, your weight would stay the same.

But this is not the case with your activity level, nor is this what you want to do with your weight. So what do we do? We include your energy demands from your training. If you don't have a heart rate monitor that tells you exactly how much each training session burns, then assume that one hour of steady state rowing or erging burns ~800 calories, an hour of biking at a low intensity around 500, and a hard workout like 4x2k with 5min rest in between will burn around 1000 with a proper warm-up and cool-down included. Weights are tougher to calculate, because a lot of the increased energy demands come out after the activity, not during. Aerobic activity uses lots of energy to perform the activity, but for weights you burn calories while lifting, but also tons after as your body is rebuilding muscle. I would guesstimate that doing weights for about an hour (3 sets of 8 reps, 4 different lifts so let's say squat, deadlift, bench pull, and bench press) with 1-2min rest between each set will have you burning about 1000 calories once we include how many calories you're burning after the workout.

Now we've got an idea of how many calories your training burns and how many calories you burn as a result of your body weight and height plus daily activities.

So let's put everything together You burn 2600 calories by being alive and walking to school. You will have, on average, one training session about an hour and a half long per day. That'll burn about 1500 calories. And you want to gain about 1lb a week (this is a good amount and will hopefully minimize fat gain—keep in mind there is a cap on how much muscle you can gain. Sure, it's possible to eat all the pizza and gain 3lbs a week, but most of it will be fat.) 2600cals from living, 1500 from training, and an extra 500 a day to gain a little weight. That's 4600cals a day, also known as a shit ton of food. Track your calories for a week or so to get an idea of what that much food looks like, and then you can stop tracking if you find it too tedious.

/r/Rowing Thread