Any rowers?

[Catrin]

Last night we went out to eat in the city I grew up in. A few doors down from the restaurant, is a rowing gym. They have about 25 machines set up, and they do group rowing classes, like spin classes. I haven't seen this anywhere else.

Interesting! I am curious Crankin, is this an area where outdoors rowing is popular? Just curious if this is seen as a way to keep in shape in the off season.

We are doing a holiday staff rowing challenge at my gym. Our team is small compared to some, and SOME of the rowers on other teams are rowing 12K-17K almost daily! My little team is lagging behind as most of us are sticking with 2K-3K rows, which is quite respectable considering everything else we do.

[Crankin]

Rowing is a popular sport here, but I have no idea how many adults really do this. We have strong college rowing teams, as well as several high schools that have teams. My second to last teaching job had a HS rowing team and several of the girls whom i had in 7th grade went on to be extremely successful in this sport. The town built a "boathouse" on a lake which was really nice and was rented out as meeting space, as well as to other area rowing teams.
The rowing club is in an area where a lot of competitive athletes live, especially runners, as well as cyclists. I could see some of them seeing this as a winter training activity. I hope they play good music, as I don't know if I could do that for an hour. At least in a spin class, you can stand, do drills, sprints, etc.

[Catrin]

I hear you Crankin - but for me I don't find the rower boring, at least not yet. It is about technique and rowing as efficiently as possible. With the right music cranking in my ears it goes pretty quickly... AS LONG AS I don't have the rower's computer showing meters traveled. For some reason that really makes things slow down for me. Instead I have the computer either showing calories rowed, the power graph, or both. So I row X number of calories, rest X number (rowing very slowly), or get up to knock out some kettlebell swings or something else periodically.

It might get boring eventually, but for now it is a way to get some indoor cardio in that is more fun than my trainer at home