How Rowing Helps Cycling Edurance, Speed, And Strength

Written by admin on May 20, 2018. Posted in News, Rowing, Rowing Benefits

Do you want to get better, faster, and stronger on the bike? Then you better pay attention to this article and the following list of 3 different Olympic Rowers who have excelled in cycling less than a few years of switching from rowing to cycling. The following athletes are just incredible and really show proof that rowing is at the top of endurance strength when it comes to pain threshold and being faster on the bike during any distance course in cycling, time trial, and or Ironman events.

I’ll begin with the man, the myth, the legend Hamish Bond and his relentless pursuit of being the best rowers in the world dominating the international stage with 69 straight wins in rowing at the Olympics, world cups, and more. This two time Olympic Gold medalist Rower wanted a new challenge and this New Zealand rower turned his attention to time trial cycling and made the national cycling team after retiring from rowing in less than 6 months!

In his first attempt at the national time trials in January 2017 he finished in third place, he then went to win a bronze medal in the Oceania Championships. Bond competed in the 2016 Tour of Southland with the Vantage Windows and Doors Team. Bond was selected to represent New Zealand for the 2017 World Championships, held in Norway in September 2017, where he finished in 39th in the men’s time trial after suffering a puncture. On 5 January 2018 he won the elite men’s time trial at the national road cycling championships in Napier, NZ in a new course record. Off the back of this performance he was selected to represent New Zealand in road cycling at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in which he won a bronze medal finishing just 5 seconds out of 2nd place. In March 2018, Bond won t gold medal in the elite men’s time trial at the Oceania Championships. At the end of March 2018, he set a target to win a cycling medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Rebecca Romero from Great Britain is my next example and wow does she have some impressive stats being a rare double sport medal holder in two different Olympics in two different sports.

Romero has won world championships in both cycling and rowing; as a rower, she won a silver medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics in the quadruple sculls, and the following year was part of the British crew that won the 2005 World Championships in the quad sculls.

Romero later took up track cycling, and made rapid progress in her new sport, specializing in track endurance events. In December 2006, just 6 months after retiring from rowing Romero won a silver medal in the pursuit at the UCI Track World Cup event in Moscow – her international cycling debut – losing out to fellow Briton Wendy Houvenaghel.

Romero won her first Cycling World Championships medal in March 2007 with silver in the 3 km pursuit. The following year, at the 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, held in Manchester, she won the individual and team pursuit events. She became the first British woman ever to compete in two different sports at the Olympic Games when she rode in the individual pursuit in Beijing. In winning the gold, she also became only the second woman of any country (after Roswitha Krause of East Germany) to win a medal in two different sports at Summer Games. In October 2011 Romero announced that she was withdrawing from British Cycling‘s Olympic Program and that she would not be competing in the 2012 Olympics. She subsequently confirmed that she would compete in the Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Mallorca and the Ironman UK event in Bolton in 2012 and the 2012 Ironman World Championship.

Cameron Wurf is astonishing in what he has accomplished during his rowing and cycling career. Before becoming a professional road cyclist, Wurf was an Olympic lightweight rower and represented Australia at the 2004 Olympics in the men’s lightweight double scull.

Wurf left the Champion System team at the end of the 2012 season – having joined the squad at the start of the season – and again in the span of just a few months joined Cannondale for the 2013 season.

In February 2015, after finishing third in the time trial at the 2015 Oceania Road Championships, Wurf announced that he would take a year out from his professional cycling career, explaining that he felt he had not found his niche in the sport. During his time off Wurf competed in triathlon, finishing ninth overall and winning the 30-34 age group on his Ironman debut at Whistler in July 2015. Wurf made his professional triathlon debut at the Ironman Asia-Pacific Championships in Cairns in June 2016. In December 2016 he announced he would race for Cylance Pro Cycling in the 2017 season, combining bike racing with Ironman competitions.

In the 2017 Ironman World Championships Cameron Wurf broke the bike course record by over 5 minutes and blasted a 4:12:54 over 112 miles (180.25km) for an average speed of 26.68mph (42.764kph). In his first Ironman world championship as a professional, former World Tour racer Cameron Wurf was fastest among several triathletes to break the existing bike course record Saturday in Hawaii. It was Wurf’s sixth Ironman event of 2017, and the second time he’d raced the Ironman world championship in Kona.

If the following top 3 Olympic rowers turned cyclists aren’t enough to convince you than I don’t know what will but all I can say is that I personally have some of the fastest bike splits in every triathlon I compete in and catch individuals up and down the course with my rowing ‘legs’ advantage that you won’t know until you actually try indoor rowing. You can’t fake it, you can’t replace it, you must do it and feel what it’s like to have legs and lungs for days and you can only get that feeling with rowing.

We have a saying among some of the top rowing athletes in the world … You can cross train with rowing but you can’t cross train for rowing!

Roworx believes in providing you with extremely experienced, energetic, knowledgeable instructors. We believe that you will see results sooner and prevent injury by maintaining efficient, safe technique. We believe that if you are having fun and engaging your mind as well as your body, you will be more consistent with your exercise plan and you will get fitter sooner. And…we believe there are no better exercises than the low-impact, calorie-burning, workouts of Indoor Rowing Classes!

ROWING RULES!!!

Watch the video below as 2 of the 5 professional athletes (Rebecca Romero and Hamish Bond) listed below are Rowers who switched to cycling in a very short amount of time and made the national team in cycling within 6 months of retiring from rowing with no prior professional cycling experience.

Listen at Minute 10 in this following video as Cameron Wurf explains he had been cycling for 3 months before he did a cycling race on the national team and placed 4th and then beat the current world champion cyclist in France.

At the 1:38 Minute of this video describes Cameron Wurf’s unbelievable Kona Ironman record breaking bike time by nearly 6 minutes from the previously held record back in 2006!