Is rowing as good of a workout as running?

Hi,

Well rowing is an awesome workout and better than running in many ways. However because of your injuries it is not the best in your case. The knee injury will not heal up very quickly with rowing neither will the stress fracture as you have too much stress on both injuries with rowing. Far better to go swimming or something that is non weight bearing but still working the joints.

Hope this helps.

UK Personal Trainer and Life Coach

Rowing is one of the hardest workouts you can do. Using an erg is no walk in the park.

However, if you're injured, I would absolutely not row. It leaves you open for hurting your knee a lot more (I didn't have knee problems until rowing) Also, if you are doing it correctly, a lot of force goes to your feet when you kick off for the drive, which doesn't seem to be in your best interest.

As someone who won the NCAA championship and broke the all-time record there in my event, I've done a lot of training and seen a lot of injuries. We erged (land rowing) all winter and 2 people made it out without serious injury. By the end of spring, we were down to 8 people, all just an accident away from a hospital bed. A few of us were forced to retire or risk paralysis or something else.

Personally, I would think that spinning or swimming might be more of what you're looking for, but really I think you should rest. The reason that I can't row anymore is because I refused to rest. I can't run, erg, row, or even walk/stand for too long anymore.

Seriously, watch out for yourself so you can be active for years to come!

P.S. It's just "rowing", not "crew" or "crew rowing". Rowers laugh when people say that, so just a heads up in case you sound like a n00b haha. Common thing, though. No big deal, really :)

Rowing is a good workout. I have arthritis in my hips and can't walk very far much less run and I find rowing very good.