Concept2 Forum

Hello All.

I would like to put together a story on people who found rowing as their last resort to staying fit and healthy.

We have a new rower named Rich. Rich had a total knee replacement done ten months ago. After meeting him at a fund raiser I convinced him that he should try rowing with us.

Rich used to run over forty miles per week. Then three and a half years ago he had so much pain that he stopped every physical exercise. The pain became so bad that he "surrendered" to the knee replacement surgery.

Now he rows and broke a sweat in a way that he used to when I ran his weekly forty miles. His smile on his face was extremely rewarding.

My goal is to publizise indoor rowing to the US public and for that I would like to hear of your stories.

What brought you to rowing? Do you mind sharing it on the board? Was it the heart, hip, ankle, knee, an accident, and/or plain and simply the discovery of an ability to exercise that started your rowing endeavor?

Thank you for your comments.

Sincerely,

XENO

Xeno,

I was a runner from age 27 to 55. The last few years were tougher with more injuries as I was competing in corporate track meets. My doctor finally told me to find a new sport because my knees could not take the pounding.

I owned a C2 model C that I had purchased as a cross training device but seldom used it. I liked rowing but the seat on the C2 was pure torture. I finally decided to make it work. Made myself a seat pad from a back packing sleeping pad that made the seat tolerable and have been indoor rowing ever since. That is from age 57 for about 3.5 years and about 8.9 million meters.

My knees feel great and because erging is such low impact sport I have been able to train harder and longer than I was able to do for the last 10 years as a runner.

This past weekend I went to the Craftsbury Sculling Center and learned how to row on the water. I figure this is going to be my sport through my sixties and ??? until I can row no more. So now I'm going to try to make it an outdoor sport when the weather allows.

Frank

That is great.
THank you.
XENO

I was a runner from approximately ages 23 to 45. I was diagnosed with pigmentary glaucoma around age 30, which, in short, means pigment was coming loose into my eye and clogging things up causing the pressure inside the eye to elevate. At the time, this disease wasn't well understood and there were some medical opinions that the pounding nature of running might aggravate things. That didn't turn out to be true in my case (it seemed) but I bought my erg when I was about 36 as a non jarring supplement to my running just in case. Later, problems stemming from flat feet and sprained ankles and maybe just running too many miles on feet that weren't up to the challenge finally took their toll, and I found myself rowing more and running less and finally decided I really had to quit running because of the injuries. As much as I enjoy rowing, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket - I like to mix things up - other fitness activities besides rowing but rowing has become my primary aerobic exercise. Definitely a great workout and I think I push myself harder in my normal rowing workout than I used to in my normal run.

And someday I may make a trip to Costa Mesa as I think my interest is starting to become more than just general fitness - might be nice to get faster too. And I read all these great things by people who came to see you.

Hello Danwho
Thank you very much for your story.
Good job enjoying rowing.
XENO

Bad knees, bad shoulders, bad habits...
Easily bored, easily distracted, easily discouraged...
Out of shape, out of luck, out of time...

For all these reasons, I was led to the erg, and haven't looked back since.

Finally an exercise that doesn't bother my knees, is curiously gentle on my shoulder, and has rejuvenated my enthusiasm for working out.
Boredom isn't part of the equation, and progress is easily measured, providing that 'can't wait to see what I can do today' feeling.
My body is getting stronger, my heart is thanking me everyday, and my outlook has brightened.

Work still piles on my desk, dishes go undone, and appointments can wait for another day. But no matter how much or how little time I have, I ALWAYS have time for the erg.

This is great stuff.
Thank you Dutchcan

I don't think the erg is my "last resort to staying fit and healthy," but it's pretty close. My wife and I both work and have two young children (one is 3 years old, the other 2 months old). As much as I used to love my old workouts (squash 3-5 days/ week; mountain biking; cross country skiing; trail running...), I would much rather spend my children's waking hours with them, rather than out engaging in solo pursuits. I still need exercise, though, and I am finding that the erg is going to be perfect for my needs. I can row in the morning and listen for them to wake up or, as I did last night, I can row while my 2 month old girl watches me from her bouncy seat and make funny faces at her.

Xeno- I'm a 31 year old mother of 4 children who has returned to the erg in an effort to regain my fitness and lose weight. I ran cross country in high school, rowed sweep in college, then married young and started having children. It was very difficult for me to work out timing and childcare to get back in the gym- if the baby's up half the night, you're not too crazy about getting up at 5a to get to/from the gym before your husband needs to work. My weight increased with each child, and I struggled to get it under control. Eventually, running was out due to my weight, not to mention that putting 2 kids in a jogging stroller and 2 on bikes makes for a majorly stressful time. Even when childcare was available at the gym, I found it wasn't worth it because my kids regularly brought home colds, which would mean I had to stay home for a couple weeks while the illness made the rounds through all 4 kids.

Now that I own a Model C, I can work out around my life and children. I am back on the water with a local rowing club several mornings a week. I am also putting in long, steady rows in the late afternoons to help the weight loss along so I'm ready for race season this fall. After naptime, I get ready to exercise, and either take the erg outside so I can watch the kids play in the backyard while I erg, or I put it in the playroom while they're watching a kids tv show. Finally, I can consistently exercise!

So, I didn't have any major health event which turned me towards indoor rowing, but rather the 4 little ones I care for each day. I am learning that I need to care for my body in order to better care for them- it took me a long time to learn that. I have big plans to eventually qualify for the CRASH-B's! This momma is gonna be fit and fast thanks to the flexibility erging offers.

Julie in CO

Mine is a somewhat similar story (though I've never completely abandoned exercise since I started doing regular workouts starting around the age of 20...I'm 53 now). Did the running/jogging thing for about 15 years - until the genetically bad back started to complain. Took up cycling (another 10 years) until the COST of cycling went through the roof, and the safety factor went south. Also developed problems with the knees (ironically, "runner's knee" - a decade after I stopped running ).

I'm brand new to rowing, but have really taken to it. I love the fact that it's safe, non-impact, and total body (another limitation of running and cycling). You can fit a killer, 30-minute workout into a busy, two-working-parent/two-young-kids life (which I accomplish @4:30-5:00AM!), and it seems to have actually helped my sometimes bothersome lower back.

I'm really looking forward to my new fitness 'career'

Your testimonials are amazing. I am so surprised that Concept2 is not just running your stories in papers just as you write them.
I really appreciate how open you all are. In the next couple of days I will add my own testimonial to this. Of course I luckily never had any health issues, but if I didn't row I would probably weigh four hundred pounds.
XENO

Hi Xeno…

I’m 62. General health, basic fitness and weight management have always been a struggle. I was a superior, multi-sport athlete as a youth and served six years in the military, including a year and a half in Vietnam as an infantry officer, but even as a young man I was prone to illness, injury and overweight.

Vocationally, I’ve always been an indoor critter, mostly as a writer and businessman.

I’ve never had a decent pair of feet, I left one knee on the pavement in a motorcycle crash at age 22, had my back cut on at 38, another knee surgery at 54, another major knee injury at 59 and spent a critical month and a half in hospital at 60 as a bacterium feasted on my spine and tried to kill me.

I’d found a C2 tucked away in the back corner of our new local leisure center in late 2002 and, since what bits and pieces I have left can’t cope with most gym gear, I sat down and started to pull. Thank God one of the staff had been on his university crew so my form was sorted from the start. My knees appreciated not having to bear any weight and my back appreciated moving with proper form. I cross-trained carefully with weights and swam many a mile.

A year later, I had dropped some 60 pounds, was dead fit and training for the all-Ireland over-60 indoor championships. I’d found the C2 community, logged every single meter, bought a recreational scull and booked a course at the new UK Olympic Training Center at Dorney Lake in Eton.

So then I got a bit unlucky and really sick and my competitive rowing and ocean swimming goals are now forever out of the picture. The boat has never been wet, although I did make it to Dorney last summer (and met Pinsent and Redgrave!). I was sick again all winter and now find myself back where I started, with even fewer physical tools to work with and pain a constant and inescapable companion. My strategic plan is a new C2 and RowPro, just shipped in from the UK. I strapped it on 19 May, 147,000 meters ago. (Haven’t lost a pound yet!)

My view is that the indoor rower, operated properly, coupled with a bit of weight training, is a perfect vehicle for rehabilitation and is a particularly excellent, low-impact choice for older exercisers. The C2 is a well-designed piece of equipment, the monitor is superb, the online support, log and motivational programs are terrific (and addictive) and the community is particularly pleasant and mutually supportive, if a bit over-competitive and monomaniacally technical.

In the negative, although C2’s are now found in most gyms, they tend to be neglected step-children. The high damper settings and dreadful form I observe in casual users is dangerously improper and fitness staff seldom has a clue how to correct this, or even bother to show an interest. Injury is the enemy of any exercise regimen. Too bad the monitor doesn’t feature a brief introductory video. (And I’ve always wondered why there isn’t any emphasis on the fact that, if you had oars in your hands, they’d have a damn hard time passing through your knees!)

Cheers… Hope this is what you’re looking for…

Too bad the monitor doesn’t feature a brief introductory video.

dear Sandy Cove ~ but it does ! At least the Model D PM3 does. It is there under INFORMATION - How To Row, and for a tiny screen is pretty good.

~ Sean

Rehabing a Knee.
Minor injury, minor surgery, no lasting affects.
I strongly hate a tread mill, the elipitical is always in demand.

Ever heard this Xeno? Are you going to be on the treadmill much longer I only have thirty minutes for lunch? You know..Spandex, a book and a water bottle, I pod

The bike and stair thing bore me to tears. So I would do 5 minutes on each machine and the rower was always available. Now the C2 is all I use. C2 or nothing. So, for a long time I just rowed. Slide and pull. If It hurt I did not do it that way again. No idea what I was doing or how, just Long So Distance. Time crept up to 10-12 k in 1 hour.

Then I discovered C2's web page written on the machine and looked it up and loved it. We bought a rower.
Then we went out last year and did "learn to row" at dexter lake with OAR> Oregon Association of Rowers. My lovely wife is into this also, she took the classes. She is a fan of Sarah Hall.
We now have a Hudson single and an Aylings single. I am up for this rowing thing.

I like it better than all my other attempts at Forties Fitness.