Body Requirements for Women Rowers

Women's rowing is gaining popularity at high school, collegiate and professional levels, and coaches are always on the lookout for prime candidates. But not every woman is built to be an elite rower. Certain physical characteristics of height, limb length and strength separate recreational rowers from true athletes. Learning more about shared traits can help you decide if rowing is a sport for you.

  1. Rowing Classes and Categories

    • Rowing is a sport available to any woman, regardless of age. Competitive junior class rowers are younger than 19 and are required to be enrolled in high school. Under-23 rowers are 19 to 22 and are often on college teams, where they continue to develop before they can rank among senior rowers competing at Olympic and world-class levels. Master's category rowers are 27 and older, and are eligible to compete at the World Rowing Master's Regatta. At all levels, women's rowing can be divided into two subcategories, lightweight and open weight. There are no weight restrictions for open class rowers, but lightweight women cannot exceed 130 pounds, and the average weight of all rowers in a lightweight boat must be 125 pounds or less.

    Long Tall Sally

    • Successful female rowers are tall with long upper and lower extremities and short sitting height. A 2007 study of Olympic rowers published in the "Journal of Sports Science" compared lightweight and open weight rowers to a control group of healthy young adults who were not athletes. They found that open weight female rowers were taller and longer limbed than the controls, while lightweight rowers were closer in height and limb length to the control group. All the female rowers in the study had an arm span greater than their height. According to USRowing.org, open class female rowers tend to be near 6 feet tall.

    Muscle Up

    • Rowers are characterized by lower body fat and higher levels of muscle mass than nonathletes, resulting in a higher total body weight for the open weight class. The Australian study found lightweight female rowers to weigh less than the nonathlete control group, indicating very low body fat values for lightweight rowers, whose lean mass was high by comparison. In a 2005 study of female rowers published in the "British Journal of Sports Medicine," greater muscle mass was associated with faster heat times and higher overall regatta placement during competition.

    Power On

    • The correlation between muscle mass and performance in rowers has to do with peak aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, explain researchers Richard Godfrey and Greg Whyte in an article published in "Peak Performance." In addition to being required to row with maximal force in a controlled environment, rowers must be able to withstand environmental conditions imposed by water temperature, wind speed and direction, and air temperature. Peak aerobic conditioning coupled with strength and power are desirable traits for high-performance rowing.