Indoor rowing vs kayaking

Cardio fitness

Indoor rowing Using 70% of your muscles dynamically gets your heart rate up: a 63.5kg (10st) person can burn more than 600 calories an hour. Being able to gauge speed, distance and calories burned is great motivation.

Kayaking Kayaking, especially in rougher water such as rapids or the sea, will strengthen your heart and lung system, and burn lots of calories – a 63.5kg person would use about 350 an hour in average conditions.

Lower-body strength

Indoor rowing Perfect technique on an indoor rower uses the big muscles of the legs to power the drive phase before power transfers to the handle for the arm pull. This will give you very strong quads and glutes.

Kayaking Expert kayakers move their legs up and down as though pumping pedals; this helps them gain more power and momentum, and develops strong, lean quads, glutes and adductors (inner thighs).

Upper-body strength

Indoor rowing The arms, back and shoulder muscles, such as biceps, latissimus dorsi, deltoids and trapezius, finish the stroke and will therefore become well-developed, but more of the power comes from the legs.

Kayaking Kayakers paddle on one side of the body and then the other, using a double-bladed paddle. In particular, this engages the pectorals, forearms, triceps and biceps, developing a well-defined upper body.

Core stability

Indoor rowing While you need to engage your postural muscles for good technique, the surface you’re sitting on is stable, so you don’t need them for maintaining balance as you would on water.

Kayaking Your trunk muscles are key to stabilising the kayak, and this is especially intense in rougher water. You’ll also use them to generate extra power and speed in your stroke.

Risk of injury

Indoor rowing Lower-back injuries can occur, but usually arise from poor technique, such as leaning too far back or forward, or from having the machine on too high a resistance level.

Kayaking Capsizing and impact injuries are an obvious risk, but you should be trained to deal with this. Shoulder overuse injuries from the repetitive action are the most common, along with blisters.

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