Setting up a session > Warm-ups and warm-downs

Love 'em or hate 'em, warm-ups and warm-downs are an essential part of rowing safely.

WARNING: As with any physical exercise, warm-ups are important to prevent injury, and warm-downs are important to flush toxins from your muscles. Digital Rowing strongly recommends you incorporate both a warm-up and a warm-down into every session you row.

RowPro makes it easy for you to include warm-ups and warm-downs with each row. Here's how:

•	Set Pieces and Custom Rows - In Session Setup just set the Warm-up/down numbers. Any that you set to zero will be skipped. To save you re-setting them every time, your settings will be remembered until you change them.

•	Training Plan sessions - Apart from Technique sessions which are very light rows, all training plan sessions automatically include both a warm-up and a warm-down. You cannot shorten these settings, but you can lengthen them if you prefer a longer warm-up or warm-down.

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Just Rows - These don't have warm-ups and warm-downs. You can either start your Just Row gently as a warm-up and finish it gently as a warm-down, or if you want a separate warm-up and warm-down, you can do a short Just Row as a warm-up, then another Just Row as your main row, then another Just Row as a warm-down.

Choosing an appropriate warm-up and warm-down

Here are some suggestions for your warm-ups and warm-downs:

Warm-ups

Aim for a minimum of 2min or 500m for your warm-up, and extend this if your main row will be intense. Start gently and gradually build up so you finish at an intensity similar to the early parts of your main row. If your main row is an Interval Row, towards the end of your warm-up do a couple of brief bursts at the level of the Active periods in your Interval Row.

Warm-downs

Aim for around 2min or 500m minimum for your warm-down, and extend this if your main row was a high load on your muscles (for example rowing at a low SPM of say 18-20 SPM puts a higher load on your muscles). Row the entire warm-down at "walking pace", which typically means around 3:00 /500m or a heartrate around 100 beats per minute.