Originally Posted by
carleton
Do low reps in the gym. High reps on the bike.
Originally Posted by
Minion1
The upshot? It was NTFU (next to f******* useless). The idea was endurance conditioning, but because rowing is a strength endurance sport the time would have been better spent actually practicing the activity. The gym time would have been better spent doing standard strength endurance training (8-12 reps, 3-4 sets, etc, the ones everyone here knows), or having a break, instead it just built up a huge level of fatigue and probably left me skating close to RSI injuries.
Can't agree strongly enough with these. Nearly every cyclist I've ever heard who starts to think about adding gym work inevitably has the epiphany "hey, high reps replicates what I do on the bike!" And right there is why most people come away thinking the gym didn't help them much. You should be in the gym to add strength, and lifting heavy (low reps) is the proven way to best accomplish that (overwhelming evidence over many decades).