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1.2 The First Principle: Automatic Adaptation of the Body to Daily Demand The human body is made to adapt automatically. You can use that capability. The principle is simple: Your activity each day sends a message to your body that it should expect more of the same. Your body adapts to enhance your ability to maintain that level of activity the next day and thereafter. Most people recognize the application of this principle to the body builder or the professional athlete. We acknowledge that they have trained their muscles to perform. We usually do not think of the same principle applying to us, too. Yet the same principle works for each of us. And it applies not just to the strengthening of a set of muscles but in a broader sense to our overall cardiovascular fitness, our wind, our ability to breathe more deeply and to use our bodies physically for work and play. . . . 2.2 Deeper Breathing and the Lungs The use of maximum muscle mass while rowing creates a greater demand throughout the body for oxygen. This is why rowing can seem harder than you expect at first. By creating a greater demand on the lungs by using almost all muscles at once, rowing does more good for the lungs in less time. As all major muscle groups work together, the heart must send an increased flow of blood to all of them simultaneously. This requires the lungs to develop more effective oxygen transfer. Then, as the blood returns more waste to the lungs to be expelled from the body, the lungs are ready with more oxygen from the air you breathe. Technical Note: “Large, highly trained endurance athletes, such as rowers, can have maximal pulmonary ventilation rates … fully twice the rate typical of untrained individuals,” according to Jack Wilmore and David Costill in Physiology of Sport and Exercise (see pages 226 to 229). In other words, rowing helps increase your lung capacity.
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