Snorvey wrote:improves my cardio, strengthens my ankle (& my weedy legs in general)...I'm also not a fan of impact (sore knees)....
I also have a waterrower rowing machine (4 years old now). This has been the best bit of exercise equipment I have ever, ever bought
I'm similar in terms of general requirements, although it's my knees that are the problem. And rowing was always my sport, I rowed to a decent club standard when I was younger and so I was brought up on Concepts as that's the default in the boat-rowing world.
Having tried both, personally I prefer a Concept even if it needed to go in the garage, partly for the better data handling (Waterrower are a decade behind when it comes to things like Bluetooth) and partly just because I grew up on Concepts, the Waterrower is fine though, and they are more house-friendly (although the Concepts are much less antisocial than they were).
Having let things go for some time, I went in a bit too hard and never got into a routine, whereas just doing 5min/day for a week, then 10min/day for two weeks, then 15 min/day for 2 weeks and building it up that way worked much better for me until I got up to 30-40min/day and could start dropping the odd day.
In the boat-rowing world, the standard reference piece is 2000m on a Concept - the Olympic distance on the machines that everyone has. But our main training piece was 40 minutes at aerobic threshold, a steady heartrate of 80% max heart rate (MHR, 220-age is the traditional formula, 205.8 - (0.685 × age) is more accurate) or 75% of your heart rate reserve (HRR) - see
this for the latter, I imagine for you that will be aiming for somewhere around 140-145bpm.
I can row at 75% HRR for 20km or more if I want although 40 minutes (about 10km) is my usual - I aim to average 20 strokes per minute over the 40min which means about 16 spm for the first 10 minutes and then building as I get tired up to 24 spm at the end. It takes some getting used to, it means a really slow roll up the slide and then exploding off the front - the usual comparison is with riding a Spacehopper, or a frog jumping.
I tend to do all my steady-state cardio training based on a heartrate, typically 75% HRR. It's worth noting that "proper" runners
are recommended to do 80-90% of their training at "easy" pace (65% HRR, say 130bpm), 10-15% at threshold and <10% flat out, but I guess they're more worried about impact injuries. When I started I was just doing steady-state stuff until I was reasonably confident I'd built up a basic level of cardio fitness. Now every so often I will do either a 2k benchmark (current target is to get back under 7 min, I was closer to 6 min back in the day) which works out around 90% HRR, or intervals. These are based on an old routine we used to do where we would pair up and then row 500m flat out (in about 1:15) whilst the other recovered, then the partner would row 500m flat out, and repeat 5 times. I've worked up from 4x200m to now doing 5x400m (about 1:20 these days) with a minute rest between each one, which gets me up to about 95% HRR and then down to 100bpm or so before going again.
It's worth noting that the above is based on Concept calibration, IME the only Waterrower where I've really paid attention was calibrated at about 60% of Concept distances (ie 1000m on a Concept is about the same as 600m on the Waterrower). Just do it on times and heartrates.
Another exercise that we used to do a lot for technique in the boat is to row say 200m or 500m at a fairly easy pace (under 25 spm) with no footstraps - you'll find it really difficult to start with but it encourages you to not hang around on the finish but get straight back into the recovery phase of the stroke. Rowing is all about technique, for efficiency and to avoid injury, but most people in gyms are pretty terrible at it - see
this video to do it properly. I'm weedy compared to some of the apes you see in gyms, but my technique allows me to row much more efficiently than them, which translates into better times. So I don't find rowing boring, because I'm always thinking about my technique - I'll do things like closing my eyes for 20 seconds to really feel it, and try and hit that heartrate number every single stroke.
Also don't make the mistake of the average gym ape and think that fan setting (or water level in the case of Waterrower) is a "difficulty" level - see
this. Since resistance on these things is proportional to speed, the fan/water is more like the gearing on a bike - you get the best aerobic workout by being in the "right" gear that allows you to get the rotor moving at its fastest, rather than by being in top/bottom gear which will just lead to injury. Concepts have a self-calibration which allows you to set a standard "drag factor" which may mean a fan setting of 7 on a new machine and a fan of 3 on an old battered one, where possible I aim for a Waterrower to be at the very bottom of the water range recommended for men.
So my typical trip to the gym is not too different to your programme I guess - short cycle to warm-up and get my heart up to 65-70% HRR, then 40 minutes rowing at 75% HRR, then 5 minutes 75% HRR on the Concept Skierg (my love-to-hate machine as I've no arm strength), then 15-20 minutes of strength work. But sometimes as above I'll row 2k or do intervals, in which case I'll do a bit more strength work or cardio on another machine.
I used to be terrified of running as my knees were so fragile but SWMBO got me some fancy, super-well-cushioned running shoes (after about 90 minutes of trying different ones in the ASICS shop) and with those and not overdoing things (starting with 2k, listening to when my knees got grumpy, sticking with 75% HRR), I've sort of got into it a bit. Even if I'll never run a marathon, 1-2 times a week I'll go out for either 2 miles up/down or 3 miles on the flat.
If you want more ideas of programmes, the Concept website has all sorts of ideas including
a daily workout which get you doing pyramids or whatever.
Also if you've a rower and weights then you're most of the way to what you need for CrossFit. I know someone who's into it - Very Into it - and it gets a bit cult-like but the general idea is 3 days on and 1 day off with a variety of exercises that will give you a good general level of fitness rather than specialising too much in cardio, anaerobic or strength. They're very keen on rowing and weights, along with skipping (specifically "double unders") so that might be one to consider if you want to add something different. The standard routines expect people to be pretty fit but they give easy versions - I don't think I've ever done one literally but flicking through the daily routines is good inspiration if you want to do something a bit different - each has a video showing you what to do.
https://www.crossfit.com/workout/