Rowing Modification of “Annie” WOD

This is a pretty decent and short little WOD you can squeeze in for a quick sweat. You can push yourself really hard if you like, or take it easy. I found the trick is to try to minimize your transition time between rower and floor – so you can’t really haul on the straps of the rower because then you take a while to get out of them. So I deliberately left mine loose enough that I could slip out, but tight enough that I didn’t feel I was floundering on the rower.

The “regular” version of Annie that uses a declining ladder of double unders (50, 40, 30, 20, 10) instead of a row is certainly an easier WOD to tackle on your own because then there’s really no equipment required that you wouldn’t already have.

I like the rower modification for three reasons:

1. In my case, I’m recovering from a knee injury – tendonitis, which is slow to heal – and so I’m trying to take the pressure off of my knee and skipping in any form is more likely to injure me than do me any good, especially since when I do skip these days, I’m doing so one-legged and that puts a lot of pressure on your achilles, especially as you start to fatigue. I’m doing the row one-legged too, but I don’t find that as bad.
2. Try as I might, I haven’t gotten double unders yet, so a workout with high volume of double unders, even if I wasn’t injured, would be problematic. I’m practicing them when I can (while taking it easy on my knee), and I do expect to get them soon – or die trying!
3. Rowing targets more than one major muscle group, and so it’s a phenomenal workout that is comparable to double unders on aerobics and strength – it’s a pretty fair substitute in terms of workout intensity, though not in terms of time. Plan on being on the rower longer than you would need for double unders. And if you crank up the resistance level, well, be prepared to really sweat.

For the record, on my first crack at this one, I finished in 14:15. I certainly could have pushed myself a bit harder on the rower, but this being my first time going through this WOD, I opted to play it safe a little. I look forward to trying it again for comparison.

No rower? No problem.

If you don’t have a rower and you’re still looking for a substitution for the double unders, you could try a run, but you’ll need to plan that one a little to have your distances right unless you plan to simply drop along the route and do the sit-ups when you reach each interval’s distance. Maybe not quite as convenient. You’ll may also have to push your run a little to get a comparable workout.