Does Rowing Help With Tennis and Pickleball? Your Guide to Cross-Training

As a tennis or pickleball player, you’ve likely heard about the many benefits of cross-training, from enhancing performance to preventing injuries. But if you’re looking to elevate your cross-training routine, you might be wondering which fitness equipment will best translate into gains on the court—and whether a rowing machine, in particular, can improve your game.

In this blog, we’ll explore how cross-training with rowing can enhance your tennis or pickleball performance and share tips for seamlessly incorporating rowing into your training regimen to keep you agile, strong, and injury-free.

How cross-training with rowing enhances your tennis and pickleball performance

1. Rowing builds cardiovascular endurance

Rowing is a full-body workout that places significant demands on your aerobic system. By elevating your heart rate and oxygen intake, rowing strengthens your cardiovascular system over time. This enhanced endurance translates directly to the court, improving your stamina for long rallies and matches. It also helps your body better manage and more efficiently recover from the sprints, lunges, and quick directional changes essential to your game.

2. Rowing strengthens your core

As you move through each stroke on your rowing machine, your core muscles engage to connect your upper and lower body, working your abs, obliques, and lumbar muscles. Having a stronger core can boost the power of your shots, as well as keep your body stable during rapid footwork, volleys, and any awkward shots. Strong core muscles also help support your spine, which can reduce the risk of injuries such as lower-back pain and shoulder strain. 

3. Rowing develops explosive leg power

The rowing stroke engages your quads, glutes, and hamstrings, leading to the explosive leg power that can help you move faster, hit harder, and stay agile. When pushing your legs off the footplate of your indoor rower, you are mimicking the explosive force you need to move effortlessly around the pickleball or tennis court. Focusing on these explosive movements can help you move faster around the court and change directions more efficiently, as well as enhance your ability to jump and lunge (improving your serves and groundstrokes). 

4. Rowing enhances upper-body strength

Upper-body strength is key to taking powerful and accurate shots in both pickleball and tennis. By working out on a rowing machine, you’ll target muscles in your biceps, lats, rhomboids, shoulders, forearms, and triceps, helping to elevate your performance on the court and maintain your arm strength during long and intense matches. 

5. Rowing can improve your rhythm

Rowing requires concentration and rhythm to achieve your desired pace or technique. This focus can be transferred to meet the demands of tennis and pickleball. The transfer of energy from the lower body to the upper body is crucial for both rowing and on the court, and rowing will also stimulate core strength and stability for effective movement and shot execution in tennis and pickleball. 

6. Rowing is low-impact and joint-friendly

Rowing machine workouts are classified as low-impact, meaning they place minimal stress on your joints compared to the repetitive, high-impact movements involved in tennis and pickleball. Incorporating rowing into your routine allows your body to recover between matches while helping prevent overuse injuries. And just because it’s low-impact doesn’t mean it’s low-intensity—rowing delivers a powerful, full-body workout that keeps you in peak condition for your next game.

How to cross-train with rowing and tennis or pickleball

If you’ve decided to mix up your routine with rowing machine workouts, we recommend rowing on your “off days” to prioritize recovery. To maximize the benefits of rowing as you prepare for your next match, try a variety of interval and endurance workouts: 

• Steady-state cardio: Steady-state rowing workouts help improve cardiovascular endurance, allowing you to stay energized longer without getting fatigued. 

• Interval training: High-intensity interval training (HIIT) rowing workouts entail short sprints followed by rest, helping you boost your power and endurance and sustain higher-intensity efforts for longer periods of time without getting tired.

Another great thing about rowing is that you don’t need to log an hour on your machine to experience the benefits. Even just 20 minutes a day can help you on your way toward improving your fitness! 

Start cross-training with a Hydrow rowing machine

Cross-training with an indoor rowing workout program is the perfect choice for tennis or pickleballs players, whether you’re a casual player or a competitive athlete. If you are looking to invest in a rowing machine for your home, be sure to check out Hydrow. Our state-of-the-art rowing machines are the perfect addition to any home gym, giving you an immersive and total-body workout in just 20 minutes a day. 

Hydrow’s extensive library of workout content is led by our team of world-class and Olympic Athletes and filmed in stunning locations around the world. Whether you’re looking to do a rowing workout or do additional cross-training with yoga, Pilates, circuit training, or mobility training, you’ll be transported to gorgeous global destinations that keep you motivated to come back again and again. 

Learn more about the benefits of a Hydrow rowing machine today!