Indoor Rowing

My back hurts just thinking about doing that.

It hurts because it's not being used a lot. Your body will get used to it, just like my body has gotten used to rucking with 50 lbs at 6am, my shoulders no longer hurt, but they did at first

I've been using Dark Horse rowing vids on YouTube, very good. Lately, I've been putting YT Moab drive thru videos on the TV, 30min goes pretty fast and incredible scenery!

i'll jump in here. i have a concept2 model D with a PM5 in my garage. i primarily use it as a change of pace or weather-related work-out. generally, like to break up 30 minutes of rowing in 10-minute increments with dumbbells or body-weight exercises in between. i probably use it once a week on average...maybe twice if we get a run of bad weather.

i was a pretty decent all-round athlete and made an attempt to row in college. i was a classic "tweener" at 6'1" and 185-lbs, and since i was a newb to the sport the coach wanted me to drop weight to get into a lightweight boat...but i refused to drop to 155 lbs! i lasted about 4 months with the heavyweight team until coach made the final cuts to 4 eights. i did love the sport though. was in the best shape of my life.

Anyone in this thread have a Concept 2 and live in the Denver area? I ordered the tall legs for our rower, but the wife didn't like it so we went back to the shorter ones. If anyone local wants to try the tall legs, they can have them for free. Just PM me.

Just found this sub.
Own a CrossFit Gym, so I do my fair share of rowing... and coaching rowing technique.

Closing in on a 30 minute 6k row. When I got back into rowing a few months ago, I was at a 2:47/500m split. Now I'm at 2:34. Need to get to a 2:30 avg to hit 6k in 30 minutes.

This data is from EXR, which I think is more accurate than the PM5 on my Concept2. The PM5 showed that I rowed 6200m instead of the 5800m in EXR.

Bit late to the thread, but thanks for the videos.
This is my favourite activity and use as part as a rehab routine. On a good day can now get to about 5.5 km in 30 mins. Taken about 4 months to be able to sustain 30 mins.
Part of the routine is to keep a sustainable heart rate in the 108 -120 bpm region which is the 80-90 % heart rate zone that has been set for me ( late 50s and open heart surgery last year ) . Been great for getting upper body working again and opening up the chest a bit.

Will use the videos to work on technique.

As it's getting into the time of year where most of my exercise will be indoors, I started rowing again. I need to work this into my weekly routine somehow.

We moved in July and have undertaken some pretty major renovations. I'm almost to the point I can set my rowing machine up in the basement, I'm looking forward to it and dreading getting back into the swing of it at the same time.

I belong to Orange Theory Fitness (HIIT), and we use water rowers. We don't really do long distance rowing, but I really like rowing. Our longest benchmark row is 2000 meters. My best 2k was 7:23.75. Best 500 meter was 1:32.52, and my 200 meter is 31.33

I think I have topped out around 5k meters. That was during a working with time on the weight floor and treadmill as well.

It a very good all aroud workout.

My goal is rowing Mon-Wed-Fri mornings and functional weight training on Tue-Thu-Sun mornings. And then cycling as often as possible in the afternoons. Somehow I'll have to fit normal stuff into the rest of the day.

Today's workout. Pretty mellow.

Tried a HIIT workout today. It wasn't all that tough, although I couldn't maintain the 2:07/500m split they set. I hit that number briefly a few times, but pretty much stayed around 2:10 for the intervals.

Custom HIIT Workout. 6x20secs@2:20/500 with 5 minute 2:50/500 in between. 30m minutes total. After this workout, I edited it to increase the HI intervals to 30 seconds and decrease the recovery sections to 3 minutes.

Finally got my custom HIIT workout dialed in. Hit my HR goal and didn't feel like it was too easy or too hard.

I'm all for erging! Fantastic full body workout, obviously!

But I am also keenly aware of how grueling it can be. So for this reason, I would just advise, erg daily, weekly as much as you want. Just make sure that once you get into better shape, you switch it up so that you STAY in that zone. And allow for the next season of life to look different, just don't stop being erg level active, that's the key.

Often humans will get a wave of motivation and decide to run 5 miles a day or ERG 5,000 meters a day, only to burn themselves out because they don't eat and rest and recover. Or because what they chose is super tough and not sustainable.

If you are able to integrate the erg, and stair climber, and treadmill and machines and walks and protein shakes and sleep etc into your life for the rest of your life, that is the goal.

Don't be all or nothing, and don't let the difficulty of the ERG make you decide working out is not for you, when the day comes that it loses its allure.

I used to hate rowing when it was just staring at numbers. But EXR makes it interesting and makes the time go by. Doing a custom HIIT workout for 30 minutes 3x week seems to work for me. Gets my heart rate up where I want it and doesn't bore me to death. Then it's functional weight training 3x week and cycling either indoors or out on most days. I've been averaging 100 miles/week.

In 2023, entered a rowing competition to see who could row the most meters in a month. I decided to go for a million meters in Feb which only had 28 days that year. Beyond grueling. My sessions were 5,000 or 2,500 depending on how I felt.

I ended up with more meters than to other 5 class winners combined and Smartrow elected me into their little HOF.

I guess I was built for endurance….or I’m too stupid to stop. I did a couple of long-distance cycling events where you have to ride 750 miles in less than 90 hours/3.75 days.





The little engraved pieces are from their power meters which collect data that is fed to their servers to track every data point. It’s a very cool product especially if you like data.