Burning Calories With Exercise Rowing Machines

There are a number of reasons why people opt to purchase or utilize exercise rowing machines. For some, this is a novel way of increasing strength and endurance. For others, using exercise rowing machines can shake up previous exercise programs by providing a new way of getting some cardio and conditioning work in. For a small few, a rowing machine can be used to burn excess calories. Yes, the words used here are "a small few" as most people opt to use more traditional cardio exercise equipment items as a means of burning up excess calories. Despite being an excellent tool for burning calories, the rowing machine is not as popular as Nordic tracks, treadmills, or the old standby, the most popular stationary bike. This is unfortunate as exercise rowing machines can burn calories quite effectively while at the same time increase lean muscle mass.

Proper Techniques When Burning Calories On An Exercise Rowing Machine

The common design of exercise rowing machines allows for the person using the device to adjust the level of resistance on the rowing apparatus. If can be tweaked to be made very difficult to move or it can be adjusted to have little weight. If you want to use exercise rowing machines as a tool for burning calories then the resistance level on the rowing device needs to be adjusted so that you are using little or no resistance and/or weight. This concept is common among all forms of resistance training: low weight and high reps equal definition.

Now, please do not fall for the fallacy of logic that low weight/high reps means muscles tone. This is nonsense. What really occurs is more calories are burned and that reduces stored fat and allows the muscles to "show." There is no such thing as toning a muscle as muscles can only do one of two things: get bigger or get smaller. Far too often, people only consider the addition of extra weight as the primary goal of getting better with a rowing machine. This is a limited outlook.

While increasing weight will aid in building muscle and strength, lessening the weight also has a number of positive benefits as well. For example, when you have little weight or resistance, you can do more reps and do them faster. This will burn calories as the purpose of using the device shifts from strength training to a cardio workout designed to burn calories.