Buy spares for your Rowperfect classic indoor rowing machine or your RP3 Rowperfect (built since 2012).
Rowperfect Spare parts listed in the store:
Download the spare parts list for the Rowperfect Classic here Rowperfect Component List
In this article we interviewed the popular rowing Facebook page – Rowing Confessions. With over 5000 likes and regular fan contributions it is no wonder this page has taken off.
I wanted to create a page that would become popular within the rowing community. Finding out what people really think about rowing is hilarious, especially when someone you know sends in a confession.
I started rowing at the age of 13 for a local rowing club. As with most people, rowing quickly developed into a passion and a lifestyle. The highlight of my career so far is getting to Thursday at Henley Royal Regatta.
They are all pretty funny, but these are my favourites:
“I can’t pass a river without checking for crews on it”
“If I see someone on the ergo in the gym doing it wrong, I go and sit next to them and do it right hoping they will notice and do it right”
“I came to university to do a degree, then I took up rowing…”
Only my closest friends know that I run the page. I don’t intend to purposely reveal my identity.
There was ground breaking news from the NBA this week. Jason Collins, 12 year veteran, 7ft centre and Stanford graduate has come out as gay. Amazingly he is the first professional athlete from any of North America’s four big sports leagues to come out.
Collins was apparently prompted to make his brave move by the Boston bombings, and his realisation that life can change in an instant. His comments in the mass of interviews and articles produced by the media over the last few days show him as an intelligent and self-aware man, a player any of us would be glad to have in our team, in our crew.
The media fuss around Collins has prompted me to think about similar issues in our sport of rowing. Are there any openly homosexual top rowers out there? I don’t know. Does it matter?
In my experience over the last 40 years I can’t remember any openly homosexual top athletes among the men and only a few discreetly lesbian women. At the lower levels (measured strictly on performance) there are more and, in fact, I was surprised by the on-line resources that appear if a search for “Gay Rowers” is tried on Google.
When I joined A.U.S.R Orca in 1999 I was inspecting the fleet and noticed one eight that was named in pink and with a different font than all the other club boats. When asked the why this boat was different the club’s maintenance officer coughed and l got a half answer about it being bought by a group of ex-students. Later I discovered that they had formed a crew to race at a gay sports festival, bought a boat to race in, and subsequently donated the boat to their old club. All this was admirably open and tolerant and just a touch surprising to a boy from the boondocks.
Data are confusing but the best estimates available suggest that around 3.5% of adult Americans are of a different sexual orientation rather than straight heterosexual. (My internet research for this article has introduced me to the acronym LBGT and I know a little more about this area of humanness than I did a few days ago.) So if such data are accurate the chances of there being gay rowers at the top levels of our sport is high, virtually a certainty, if we reflect society in this.
If this is the case then why are none of them a public figure as Jason Collins is and, earlier, Martina Navatilova was? Is it that rowing is so socially advanced that we don’t care? I would like to think so but I doubt it.
An alternative hypothesis is that rowing doesn’t appeal to gay athletes, I doubt it. Or, and I can’t even begin to believe it, heterosexuality helps you row fast.
So what is the answer? I don’t know but my suspicion is that that rowing society is a little mirror to our wider society where people who want to be different feel the need to hide from the disapproval of the majority. If this is the case it is an indictment of all of us.
What do you think?
I have been coaching a young athlete who has ambitions to row at the Olympics – one of the things we discussed what how to find the right rowing club for her to join.
English: Marlow Rowing Club Boat House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was very frustrated by being asked for advice (which club to join) only to find that many people were being asked the same question.
What puzzled me most was her desire to try to join a rowing club NOW, without waiting for a conversation with the club coach, athletes or even a basic appraisal of the number of wins the club had delivered in recent seasons.
Now, I don’t mind athletes canvassing views, but I was taught that your coach was the person whose advice you took.
There are lots of famous rowing clubs who go through down-periods and one of the ones being considered was in this situation. I didn’t want to say flat “no” don’t join them, because I respect the views of the athlete and they need to buy into any decision.
What would you have done? Is this a problem of youth or did I frame my questions in the wrong way?
If you have bothered to think about this it will help you work out which clubs may be right for you.
Eight steps to decision making gives a helpful framework, the main things it misses are:
Back when I and the world were young I swapped a shirt with an attractive young woman from the USA eight. It was bright green and, if my memory serves correctly, the slogan in white on the front was “Smith College 100 years of women on top!”
I wore the shirt till it wore out. It came to mind today as I read an article on the NZ news site Stuff. The article, reprinted from the obscure Taranaki Daily News was a report of a presentation by the high profile Beth Brooke.
Brooke is a Global Vice Chair on the board of Ernst and Young. While she has been in New Zealand she spoke at a seminar and spoke about issues relating to the employment of women at high levels. The line that caught my eye and is, I think, relevant to this blog is “…80 per cent of top businesswomen had played team sports.” The data come from an impressive sounding survey run in the USA.
Now, it has long been accepted that successful participation in team sports fits young men for positions of importance and with high remuneration. It is well known that the Boat Race for instance can help as a stepping stone to jobs in the City of London. Anecdotally it is certainly believed that Ivy League graduates who have rowed are extremely employable and successful. This article on the Bloomberg site supports the argument.
Now if women are saying that team sports help women to succeed in business then maybe all the angst that we went through in the seventies about whether to let women join our male only rowing clubs was worthwhile. The record of our male business leaders on the important things like fairness and environmental concern hasn’t been great; maybe, just maybe, the new generation of sport assisted women can do better.
Ps. I Googled the shirt slogan and there is one for sale on ebay!
The Rational Fitness blog has written a detailed review of Oartec Slider, Rowperfect Indoor Sculler, Concept 2 Slides and the Concept 2 Dyanmic ergo.
The Author writes in the comments below the article
In-so-far as technique goes, I think the Rowperfect is the best machine. There are a lot of good programs now using the C2 dynamic with their rowers. I would think that if technique was a huge shortcoming with that machine they wouldn’t be using it. I just think it feels a little different than the other offerings. Xeno Muller is an olympic gold medal winner, he likes the C2 dynamic. For a contrasting view search Carlos Dinares on youtube. He talks a lot about the C2 dynamic and compares it to the Rowperfect RP3. Keep in mind he sells the RP3 so take it with a grain of salt.
To summarise his findings:
I am just back from coaching some masters rowers for a weekend. As I reflected during the flight home I realised I had enjoyed it. But why? After a lifetime involved in high performance rowing, where the goal was to be the best, how could I be enjoying coaching rowers who were well past the date when their bodies and lifestyles would allow them to dream of being the best.
This idle philosophising led me to further questions: Why do Masters Athletes bother? Why do they train and race? As part of the weekend we attended a Masters’ regatta and I watched them racing with impressive intensity if not always impressive accuracy.
One thing I did learn at the regatta was that lycra (spandex in US speak) is not always wise; but that is another topic for another day.
From a personal and selfish point of view coaching Masters is comfortable in that there is no need for crowd control, there are plenty of volunteers to join the tired coach in some alcohol therapy at the end of the day, and there are no worries about impropriety or whether one of the children in your care is sneaking off to inhale something illegal, or to have a tryst with one of the opposite sex. I would prefer however to see my motivations in a slightly more favourable light.
As the plane bounced around on the approach to Queenstown I realised why the weekend had been so much fun; the aha! moment.
Several times during our sessions one of the rowers had said “Oh, that’s what people have been talking about!” They were experiencing that sudden clicking of cogs into place and the realisation that they understood what coaches and other rowers had been talking about all this time. Such experiences are all too rare in our lives and are extremely enjoyable. For a brief moment we are in control and know how to make the world behave as we wish.
When I am coaching and one of my athletes has an aha! moment I also feel good. Watching a fellow human being take one small step along the path to enlightenment, even if only enlightenment about rowing, is enjoyable.
So maybe the masters have taught me more this weekend than I taught them? That’s an interesting thought. Is my coaching now more about teaching rowing than about winning races? If I am more excited about an athlete’s Aha! moments than their race results, have I going soft, or have I also taken a few steps along the path to coaching enlightenment?
Emma sent us a great question
“How to maximise your training sessions on the water to become very good really quickly?”
English: Rowing training on the Thames at Brentford The rowers are in an eight, two fours and a pair; their coach is in a motor boat. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are three principles to getting good really quickly
In terms of monitoring your tuition – keep a training diary and record what you learn – read it back to yourself before the next session so you remember.
And (of course I would say this) get access to a Rowperfect with a computer so you can see your force curve and compare yourself to experienced athletes’ curves – you will see exactly what shape curve your body produces when you move and your coach can guide you towards adjusting your body and the muscles you use so that you can make more power (joules) and a longer stroke length. This is helpful when you go back on the water because you can move in exactly the same way in the boat, handling the oar handle is the only difference. Plus inside your coach can get close up and help you by adjusting your body position which is harder to do on the water.
What do you suggest Emma does?
A reader wrote to us with a question
“The School Head of Rowing wants me to ‘weight train’ my U15 girls over the winter, all theories about this are discouraged due to their young age and I use circuits with them using their own body weight, do you have an opinion on this?”
It depends on a couple of things
Perhaps a solution will be to combine learning weight lifting skill with your body weight circuits so the girls get to lift some weight; or you increase the load in body weights using 0.5 kg bean bags on their legs to make it harder.
What do other readers think?
This is a true story but names have been changed for reasons that will become obvious.
Once upon a time I was responsible for Under 23 crews in a country that also won’t be named (those who know my history a bit will figure this gives a choice of three.) Trials time had rolled around and the selectors had published the list of who they wanted at the trials. I was responsible for the coaching of the teams and their performance but had no role in the selection, which is another article in the making!
As I read the list I realised that I had a quandary to deal with. One of the women invited was a prostitute, or I thought she was. I had heard this second or third hand from members of her club but it didn’t seem to be general knowledge around the rowing scene. Not illegal in the country of which I write, but still not necessarily what a clean living amateur sport needed to help with the public image. And what about her rights to live as she pleased, and to privacy and, anyway, was it only a rumour? So; what to do, how to react?
I initially did the easy thing, nothing. I then called a contact at the club and was told, yes, Mary works in the sex industry, and, no, it wasn’t widely known.
As I pondered how to react, what to do, I vacillated between simple “it’s her life, it’s not illegal, not my problem” to “imagine the headlines, imagine the phone calls from the mothers of the other girls in the crew if we select her” panic. I decided that one thing at least I could do for Mary was to help her have a fair rowing trial so I said nothing to the selectors about her occupation. And, I confess, I thought if she didn’t make it nothing would need to be done. A weasel way out I know.
Of course she did make a crew. Well done Mary! The selectors called me in after they had deliberated and showed me the crews they intended to select and asked if I had any comment. I said “Well, yes…” and told my story. After some toing and froing their attitude was simple and admirable; “She is good enough so she’s in. We don’t care about her private life.” OK, then still my problem to deal with.
Our CEO was also at the meeting and I turned to him and asked “ What do you think?” His response was equally simple but rather less admirable “ Your problem, you deal with it.” So nothing had changed except my problem had become real and urgent. And there was extra pressure on my decision because I knew the CEO was not to be trusted and would give me no support if trouble came. If the story broke it would be me and my job threatened, not his.
The crews were announced and the athletes sent away home to organise their lives and get ready to train in the new crews. I arranged to visit Mary’s home town to talk to all the new members of the squad who were based there and to arrange training programmes etc etc. When I hit town I rang Mary and asked for a 1 on 1 meeting at a café, a nice neutral space. There you could have seen a rather nervous National Coach figuring how to ask a pleasant young woman “Are you a prostitute?” Not something I had done before!
Anyway, the answer was yes. So I did have a problem. Mary and her madam and I had a couple of long and difficult discussions and in the end they agreed to do as I asked and for Mary to stay off the game while she was actually in the team. The discussion took me to places I had never been before; the madam was arguing strongly for Mary to be allowed to do what she normally did, and angered by my insistence that it wasn’t appropriate, threatened to go public with the names of several rowing big wigs who were her regular customers. I was tempted!
Anyway, back to the rowing. The crew trained diligently, and the secret stayed secret. Every week I scanned the headlines in the tabloid press for revelations but they didn’t come. Mary did complain to me that the job we found for here paid much less for much more work than her regular employment but she stuck it out. At the final regatta the girls won a gold medal.
At the end of the campaign I was a relieved coach.
On reflection though I am still not sure I did the right thing. Does it matter what a crew mate does out of rowing time? Was I worrying about myself and not about the athletes I was responsible for? Was I failing in my duty by not trying to persuade Mary to give up her occupation? I don’t know. What do you think?
Epilogue:
Not long after this campaign Mary gave up prostitution, went to university and got a qualification ad is now an apparently happy and successful social worker. A very happy ending.
