3 Secrets To Living Well, I Learned Rowing
“If I pass out, note my time” — Saying In Rowing
If you do it right, rowing is one of the hardest things you can do. It is also one of the best workouts there is, period. If you row 2000 meters as fast as you can, you’ll most likely finish somewhere between 7 and 8 minutes. You’ll also have gotten one of the best full body workouts of your life, and you won’t have to work out anymore that day.
You’re done.
And you’ll most likely be mentally and physically depleted as well.
Don’t believe me?
Sounds like it’s too easy?
Go do it.
Give it a shot, and talk to me when you’re back.
Rowing, especially indoor rowing — or Erging as it’s known among rowers — is one of the hardest sports I can think of. It is excruciating, depleting and incredibly addictive.
The Erg keeps me coming back day after day after day, to get my latest dose of suffering and dopamine. I would never want to go back to my pre-rowing days. That’s how addictive it is.
Oh, and as a side benefit it has gotten me in the best shape I’ve ever been in — physically as well as mentally.
See, the thing about the Erg, is that it is a microcosm of life. Erging will teach you a few things about the way the world works.
Here are three that I’ve learnt so far.
The More You Work The Better You Get
The 2000 meter row is the distance in rowing. It is what everyone benchmarks themselves against, and talk about to no end. The worlds fastest 2K erg’ers are revered in the small community that is indoor rowing.
In order to give you a taste of how excruciating a 2K erg test is, skip to the end of the video below and watch the last 20 seconds. Adam is as close to dying as you can come in this video, without actually dying.
The point is — the 2K is hard. It takes guts and heart and incredible physical conditioning to even get close to this level.
And how do you get there?
By preparing.
You have to put in the work.
You have to put in the long steady meters when no one is watching. You have to put in the hard intervals and keep fighting when everything in your mind is telling you not to.
The more you work, the better you get.
That is a universal truth right there, and one that applies to every single aspect of life, whether it is rowing, writing, making it in the business world or whichever endeavor you can think of pursuing.
Putting in the work is the only thing that works. And the rewards will come.
You will get better. In time. And if you put in enough work, you might actually get good at it.
But it will take time.
And it will be painful.
And you’ll want to quit.
But it will be worth it in the end.
Humility Is Key
When I started rowing I had no idea what I was doing. I was bad. Luckily I had enough insight to realize I was bad. This helped me improve more quickly than I would if I’d just assumed that I was doing well.
Admitting that we don’t know something is hard. I’ve always had a hard time doing it, but somehow rowing was different. Rowing made me realize that I was nowhere near as good as others, and nowhere nearly as good as I could be.
I saw others around me and online being so much better, and making so much progress that I figured I had to do things differently.
Something that helped me tremendously as well was getting a coach who provided feedback and technical instructions and helped me understand what it was I didn’t know, where I could improve, and how I could focus my efforts where it mattered the most.
The point is that when you’re setting out to learn something humility is key. Realizing that you don’t know the half of it is a good place to come from.
There is a catch though, because the more we know, the less humble we become. There is a trick to keep our humility about us, and staying humble.
Which is far from easy. It is especially not easy, when we start hitting our stride, reaching new highs and setting new records. But this is where it matters most.
Because in order to get from where we are now, to where we want to move to, we have to be humble. And we have to realize that there is still more to learn, there are still ways to get better.
There are always ways to get better.
Being humble, and staying humble has been key to improving my performance on the erg.
It has also translated into other areas of my life and realizing that ego can be the enemy has been huge for me, because it has allowed me to take a step back and start from the beginning again.
Starting from scratch in terms of how much I think I know has allowed me to learn faster and better than I ever have.
Intellectual humility applies to nearly every area of life, and realizing that humility is helpful has been huge for me.
Learned on the erg — applied everywhere.
Spend Your Energy The Right Way
Almost everyone wastes energy when they just start rowing. I was no different.
This is known as energy-leaks.
It means that you spend energy doing things that doesn’t translate to faster times. You add input without getting more output.
Sounds familiar?
The more I row, the more I realize how important it is to spend my energy the right way.
We all have a limited number of resources, and the way we spend those resources is determine how well we do.
This is true on and off the rower.
The thing about the rower though, is that it gives you direct and immediate feedback.
The better you spend your energy, the better you do.
This is also true in life in general.
Find the points where you have energy leaks. Stop doing unproductive shit and hope that somehow it translates into productivity. Don’t cry about how little time you have if you’re at home watching TV instead of journaling, writing or reading.
We all have energy leaks.
Rowing has taught me the value of finding out where I waste my energy and stop doing that.
This might be the most valuable lesson of the three, because when we apply our energy in the best way possible and get the most output from our input, good things happen.
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