I was on my rowing team in college, and I have a couple of opinions. 1) 27 strokes per minute is not max. I'm 70 years old and I do 30 to 33 on the rowing mach

I was on my rowing team in college, and I have a couple of opinions. 1) 27 strokes per minute is not max. I'm 70 years old and I do 30 to 33 on the rowing machine where I work out. When I was in college, our training sessions were all at 30 to 35 strokes per minute. Training sessions lasted for 1 to 2 hours, six days a week. 2) As for HIIT, during a race we would often do a "power 10", where we would apply maximum power to our strokes for 10 strokes. We only did 10 strokes because at the power levels we were expected to apply, doing more than 10 would burn us out rather quickly. I still do rowing because it's an aerobic exercise that works most of your muscles; arms, back, legs, stomach. The only exercise I've heard of that does more all around is cross country skiing, and I hate the cold.