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. In fact, Willmore and Costill report, a sedentary individual who trains at seventy-five percent capacity for thirty minutes three times per week can achieve a fifteen percent to twenty percent increase in their ability to transfer oxygen from the air they breathe into their bodies in six months. Since, as they note, “available oxygen supply is the major limiter of endurance performance,” rowing increases your endurance, or “wind” for daily activity.