Tag Archives: rowing

Discover your inner sporting strength and shape your body

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With only 47 days to go until London welcomes sporting hopefuls from all over the world, athletes and supporters are gearing themselves up for the greatest spectator event Britain has hosted since 1948.

Rowing is one of the oldest sports in the world and with several of the medals predicted to come from the rowing team this year; it’s a sport definitely having its day. If you crave the same athletic power and prowess, or simply want to stay in shape and tone your body, there’s no better way to train from the comfort of your own lounge – while watching the experts do it in style – by challenging yourself on an indoor rowing machine.

The rowing heats kick off on Saturday 28 July with the finals taking place on Saturday 4 August. So why not simply position your Concept2 rower in front of your TV set, wait in anticipation of the start gun and row your heart out.

No longer an elite athlete’s secret, the all-round benefits of indoor rowing are highly recognised as an effective way to help achieve weight loss, improve body tone, self-confidence and fitness. Motivate yourself to change your lifestyle, with a Concept2 indoor rowing machine you can combine your individual training sessions by rowing alongside elite rowers, providing an exercise regime that fits easily into a busy lifestyle.

Alex Skelton, former rower and communications manager of Concept2 Ltd, the distributor of the Concept2 indoor rowing machine, says: “When indoor rowing is combined with a calorie controlled diet, it’s a fantastic way to kick start a weight loss programme to help shed any unwanted weight. With this summer’s sporting extravaganza on the horizon, we’re seeing more and more amateur rowers becoming inspired by rowing and discovering a love for indoor rowing as a way to keep fitness levels up and shape the body.

“Unlike many fitness activities, indoor rowing is an ideal exercise for everyone whatever their age and ability, and more people, particularly women, are finding out that it’s an excellent all round work out. It’s a low impact sport which exercises all of the major muscle groups to get people fit and toned.”

To get ready to go up against the elite rowers, you’ll need to set yourself up with a dedicated training plan. Concept2 has designed several free detailed training guides, which can be tailored to your individual demands. The guides can be found at www.concept2.co.uk/training.

To help the nation get rowing, Concept2 has a hire scheme which allows people to get fit in the privacy of their own home at a fraction of the cost. If people find that rowing is not for them, they can return the machine without any hassle. Rentals start from £35.75 a month and hire to buy rentals at £40.85 per month.

Roz Savage, Explorer and Environmentalist, On Rowing & Being Green.

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1) What inspired you to become an explorer and environmentalist?

In 2004 I had an environmental epiphany. I was reading a book about the Hopi tribe, and their belief that we have to look after the Earth if we want it to look after us. That hit me with all the force of a fundamental truth. I was horrified that I hadn’t realized this very obvious fact sooner, and appalled at my past carelessness in over-consumption and careless disposal. I resolved that I would do what I could to wake other people up to the fact that we can’t carry on treating the Earth this way and expect to have a healthy future.

But I needed a platform for my message, and I found it in rowing solo across oceans.

2) What kind of training did you do to prepare for rowing the pacific?

Training is really the least part of my preparations. I have a pretty relaxed attitude to training, spending between 30 and 90 minutes a day in the gym (depending on my other commitments) – pretty much a “fitness for life” philosophy, i.e. the kind of training that any person would do to maintain strength, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness, and to keep their body relatively fit and lean.
The much bigger parts of my preparation are fundraising, refurbishing the boat, arranging logistics and media coverage.

3) What are your strongest memories from rowing the pacific?

The sad memories would include seeing pieces of plastic suspended throughout the water column, even thousands of miles from land. The great ocean wilderness is far from pristine now.

Good memories would include the wildlife I saw – whales, dolphins, turtles, pelagic birds, and even a whale shark. And the stars – I love to look up at the stars as I brush my teeth at the end of a long day’s rowing and feel connected to everything.

4) Do you think climate change is a real and immediate threat?

I think it is absolutely real, yes. How can we think that we can keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and for it not to have consequences? For a long time humans could get away with more, because there were fewer of us. But now we are nearly 7 billion, and although the world is large, you can take it from someone who has rowed around most of it that it is not large enough to continue to take this abuse.

5) You launched an anti-plastic bag campaign with Greener Upon Thames and Zac Goldsmith. What do you think are the effects of plastic on the environment?

Plastic is just about everywhere now, throughout our ecosystem and getting into our food and our bodies. The real tragedy is that most of the plastic that we generate has a useful life of about 20 minutes (think plastic bags, bottles, and drinking straws) and yet has an afterlife of many decades. It simply makes no sense to make “disposable” items out of an indestructible substance.

6) Who inspires you as a person?

I get inspired by the people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get on with tackling a problem. There is nothing special about these people, other than that they go from complaining to acting. Talk is easy, but we need action. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is a particular hero of mine. He is intelligent, well-informed, passionate, and relevant. Anita Roddick was also a real role model for me. I love the way she used her shop windows to wage campaigns on everything from rainforest destruction to human rights.

7) What can people do to be more green?

The first step is to take responsibility, and to recognize that every action counts. If we wait around for governments and corporations to do the right thing, we will be waiting a very long time indeed, and the ecosystem will be damaged beyond repair by then. We all need to recognize that every time we buy something, or throw something away, or choose how to get from A to B, we are casting a vote for the kind of future that we want. We have to cast those votes wisely.

I’d also like to point out that we are not talking about saving the planet. The planet will be fine, given a few billennia. We are talking about saving the human race. We are not as resilient as the planet is, and if we don’t wise up really soon, we will have altered our world so much that it can no longer support human life.

8) Any advice for those wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Or oarstrokes!

There is nothing special about me. I just found a cause that concerned me so deeply that I couldn’t stand by and watch the world go to hell in a handcart. That motivated me to overcome all kinds of fears and limitations. Even now, I occasionally suffer a wobble, and wonder if I can continue – either with the rowing, or with the campaigning. And I just have to remind myself to take it one oarstroke at a time, and I can accomplish almost anything.

9) What’s next?

Indian Ocean this year, North Atlantic next year, and then I hang up my oars and find a less physically strenuous way of cam

Roz Savage and Zac Goldsmith launch anti-plastic campaign.

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When: 4th of November, 2010. 7pm

Where: American University, Richmond.

I was already anti-plastic before I went to hear this talk by Roz Savage and Zac Goldsmith. The event is by Greener Upon Thame’s, and Michael Glazebrook was on brilliant form. The videos I saw and the talks that I heard my anti plastic stance  tenfold. It is not a small issue. As well as bringing news of the launch of an anti-plastic campaign by Greener Upon Thames, with the help of  Zac Goldsmith and Roz Savage, Frost will be doing a series of articles of how you can be more environmentally conscious.

MP and  Pacific rower launch campaign to make Olympics plastic bag-free
Zac Goldsmith, MP, and ocean rower/ environmental campaigner Roz Savage have launched a campaign to make the Olympics 2012 plastic bag-free.
 
The duo are backing Greener Upon Thames and will unveil banners and bags, soon to be seen across London, declaring “London – shouldn’t we be plastic bag free?” The group fear that the Olympics could prompt the production of hundreds of thousands of promotional bags, which would be carried around the world, creating a global problem, and shaming the British capital.

The campaign, backed by politicians,  schools, more than 500 shops and thousands of London  residents, will call on the Government to rid the Olympic Park and the capital of  the polluting bags for the duration of the games to break the habits of millions of Londoners, and as a symbol  to the world.  
 
The move follows Roz’s latest – 8,000 mile – Pacific row, where she skirted the North Pacific Garbage Patch. This is an area of marine plastic pollution roughly twice the size of Texas, containing around 3.5 million tons of rubbish, including millions of plastic bags that kill animals and contaminate our food supply. 

Roz Savage has now rowed solo across much of the planet: she is the first woman to have rowed across  the  Pacific, adding to her 2005 solo crossing of the Atlantic. In 2011 she will be setting off to row the Indian Ocean before rowing the North Atlantic to return to the UK.

Roz   combines her epic adventures (she is one of the Top 20 Great British Adventurers) with raising  awareness of  the top environmental challenges facing the world today:  marine plastic  pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction. She is a United Nations  Climate Hero, a trained presenter for the Climate  Project, and an Athlete  Ambassador for 350.org.

Her Pacific row was a project of the Blue Frontier Campaign and she is an Ambassador for the BLUE Project. Her inspirational book, Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, came out in   2009.

Richmond Park MP Zac Goldsmith is a former editor  of  The Ecologist  magazine and author of The Constant  Economy  (2009), which looks at some key environmental problems and  provides a  programme for action.
 
In 2005 he was invited  to oversee the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Policy Group,  which helped develop the  party’s policies on issues ranging from  transport, housing and energy to food,  farming and the countryside. 
 
Zac supports Greener Upon Thames, the Richmond and Kingston anti-plastic-bag campaign which is organising these  two  events, with help from the American International University and Kingston University’s Sustainability Hub.

Zac and Roz will also address an audience at Kingston University at 7.00pm on Thursday 11th November.