Note: I'm not a doctor. This article shares my personal experience and my reading of the sources listed below. It is not medical advice. Check health decisions with your doctor.
Let’s be honest: the circumstances are not exactly friendly right now. The news cycle is loud, the economy is jumpy, and every few weeks an AI model arrives that makes last month’s state of the art look quaint.
I could spend the evening scrolling through all of that. Or I could do something I fully control: get on the rower, pull for twenty minutes and wake up a little stronger than I fell asleep the night before.
I think this is the best moment in a long time to start building muscle. Here is why, and what a realistic start looks like.
Control is what you build, not what you are given
When the world feels unpredictable, the instinct is to wait until things calm down. Waiting for the “right moment”, however, is pointless.
Strength is one of the few things where the relationship between input and output is merciless. You show up, you pull, you get better. Nobody can reorganise that away, no algorithm update changes it, and nobody has to approve it. Your body is the one project where today’s effort is still yours tomorrow.
That is a quiet kind of control, and I have come to value it more than almost any other effect of training.
Why muscle, and why now
Muscle is not a vanity project. It is the organ system that helps decide how independent you will be in 30 years: how well your body handles sugar (German), how stable your joints are, and whether you can get up from the floor without help.
The evidence for even small amounts of strength work is encouraging. A 2022 meta-analysis of 16 prospective cohort studies found that muscle-strengthening activity was associated with a 10-17% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, total cancer and diabetes. The curve was J-shaped, with the largest benefit at roughly 30-60 minutes per week, and the effect was independent of aerobic exercise.
Two honest caveats: these are observational studies, so they show association, not proof of cause. And strong people may simply be healthier to begin with. But the direction is consistent, and the entry price is low.
Rowing as strength-endurance training
This is where the rower comes in. A stroke is a leg press, a hip hinge and a row in one connected movement. Legs, back, core and arms all work together, for minutes at a time under load. That is strength-endurance in its purest form, and it is easy on the joints because there is no impact.
I wrote about this in more detail in Muscle building with the rowing machine (German). The short version: rowing at high resistance and moderate stroke rate trains your muscles; rowing steadily at lower intensity trains your engine (German). You get both on one machine.
Twenty minutes per week – what that really means
I want to be careful here, because “20 minutes a week” (German) can sound like a magic trick. It is not.
- It is a starting dose, not a ceiling. The research on muscle growth suggests more volume generally helps: a meta-regression by Schoenfeld and colleagues (2017) found a graded relationship between weekly sets and hypertrophy, with the best-supported range being around 10 or more sets per muscle group per week. Twenty minutes of rowing alone will not get you there.
- It is enough to start a habit. The biggest jump in benefit comes from going from nothing to something. For someone who has not trained for years, a short, sharp session is a realistic way in.
- It works best with a little extra. Add two short sessions of squats, push-ups, weighted rows or deadlifts, and you move into the range the studies point to.
A simple starting week:
| Day | What | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | Rowing, 4 x 2 min hard (stroke rate 22-26, high resistance), 1 min easy between | ~12 min incl. warm-up |
| Thu | Rowing, 8 min steady, then 3 sets of squats and push-ups | ~15 min |
That is about 20 minutes on the rower. Progress by adding a set, a minute or some resistance, not all three at once. I would rather you row irregularly than not at all. ☝🏼🥸
If you have a medical condition, are returning after a long break or are over 40 (German) and have not exercised in years, talk to your doctor before you start hard efforts.
Why 2026 is different – and why I’m writing this
I follow AI developments (German) closely, partly for work and partly out of curiosity. What I see in my research is a pace I have not experienced before. Tools that needed a team a year ago can now be run by one person with a laptop. My expectation, and it is only that, an expectation, is that we will see many more company foundations and side projects than ever before.
That is exciting. It also raises the stakes for the one resource none of this can replace: your own energy and your own head.
Building takes stamina. Long days, uncertainty, decisions without a manual. People who build for a living will tell you the same thing: the body is part of the toolchain. A founder who sleeps badly and sits for twelve hours has the worse product after six months.
Use AI without handing over your thinking
There is a flip side, and I want to say it plainly. AI can make you much better, or it can quietly make you more comfortable. Which one happens depends on how you use it.
A 2025 preprint from the MIT Media Lab (54 participants, not yet peer-reviewed, so please read it with care) compared people writing essays with an AI assistant, with a search engine, or with no tools at all. EEG measurements showed the weakest brain connectivity in the AI group, and these participants also felt less ownership of their text. The authors call this “cognitive debt”. The sample is small and the task narrow, but it matches something many of us notice in daily use.
My personal rules, which I try to follow and sometimes fail at:
- Think first, ask second. Write down your own rough idea before you open the chat window.
- Use AI as a sparring partner, not a ghostwriter. Let it challenge you instead of replacing you.
- Keep one thing analog and slow. For me, that is rowing. Breath and rhythm, steady. That is where the best ideas come from.
Training is, in that sense, the perfect counterweight: completely analog, impossible to delegate, and your head is clearer afterwards. Muscle and thinking go together better than the internet suggests.
Time to build
You do not need a perfect plan, a new machine or a better year. You need twenty minutes, a rower (or a pair of dumbbells) and a decision.
The world will keep spinning at its own speed. What you build with your body and your head in the meantime is yours.
Start this week. Put the session in your calendar like a meeting you cannot cancel. Then tell me how it went.
In that spirit: Get rowing 😉🤙🏼
References
- Momma H, Kawakami R, Honda T et al. (2022): Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. Br J Sports Med 56:755-763. Meta-analysis of 16 observational cohort studies. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW (2017): Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sports Sci 35:1073-1082. (doi.org)
- Kosmyna N et al. (2025): Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv:2506.08872. Preprint, 54 participants, not peer-reviewed. (arxiv.org)