Lightweights & Heavyweights in Competitive Rowing

Video Transcript

" Hi again! It's Anna Marie and I am a Canadian Olympic rower. I am here on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am going to talk a little bit about lightweights and heavyweights. There are two different categories in rowing. Internationally, all lightweights are measure in kilograms. Heavyweight is anything above the lightweight mark. So for lightweight women, I am going to give you the numbers in pounds because that is what I am most familiar with. Lightweight women is pretty much anything under a 130 pounds, which I believe is about 59 kilos. For lightweight men, it is anything underneath a 160 pounds, which I believe is about 72 kilos. I might be wrong on the kilo number though. If you are going to be looking into roaring competitively internationally, make sure you know what your maximum weight can be. Anything in the heavyweight category for women is anything above 130 pounds and for men, anything above 160 pounds. There is also another category of rowers. There are called coxons and they are those little people that sit in the back of the boat and yell at all the rowers to go a little bit faster. Now for coxons, they have a minimum weight they have to be so they can't be below a 110 pounds or 120 pounds depending if it is a female or if it's a male. If for example a female coxon is below a 110 pounds, she would have to carry extra weight in the boat with her. Same thing with a male coxon. Internationally, only male coxons can cox male boats and female coxon can cox in the female boat. That is a little bit of an introduction into the different weight categories in rowing. "