Wall Street Journal: The Best Home Workout Machine? It’s Not a Treadmill
TREADMILLS AND indoor bikes have evolved from unsightly basement-dwellers on which suburbanites hung laundry to statement pieces for the living room. Now rowing machines, long shunned for their clanking chains and dusty flywheels, are undergoing their own Peloton-esque evolution. These chic devices also let anyone aspiring to fitness stream live and on-demand workouts via HD screens or race against at-home athletes across the world.
While rowing’s roots date back to university races in 17th-century England, the machines—or ergometers—have only recently surged in popularity as the tech and fitness industries continue to overlap. January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas saw the debut of two state-of-the-art rowers. The Ergatta ($1,999, ergatta.com) is a dynamic machine hewn from rich cherry wood. After measuring your stroke speed, top speed and level of endurance, it offers competitive games and tailored workouts that can automatically adjust as you improve. Its water-based flywheel also makes a soothing whoosh sound as you row, mimicking the sound of a scull plying a river even as you’re lost in a virtual game.
High-tech home rowers now offer live-feed classes and tailored workouts that evolve as you improve.
Another, the Echelon Row ($1,040, echelonfit.com), lets users quickly and smartly toggle between 32 resistance levels using handlebar-based controls. It also features a 22-inch HD touch screen that can spin from landscape to portrait mode, or swivel 90 degrees as you perform complementary exercises off the rower, in the kind of mixed-workout you’d normally find in boutique studio classes.
These two machines follow on the heels of the Hydrow ($2,199, hydrow.com), which last year introduced livestream rowing classes and virtual excursions with Olympians who walk you through workouts on screen and help you keep pace while you imagine cutting through bodies of water like Boston’s Charles River.
Since, unlike running or cycling, rowing demands movements foreign to most people, this level of interactivity is finally making the sport’s benefits accessible to those who don’t know an oar from an ergometer. “You really want to develop good technique; that’s what’s going to make certain all those muscles are engaged and you’re not going to hurt yourself,” said Jo Hannafin, Ph.D., an orthopedic surgeon and chair of the U.S. Rowing Sports Medicine Committee.
People make the mistake of assuming rowing offers solely an upper body workout, explained Dr. Hannafin. But research shows rowing uses 86% of the body’s musculature; the rowing stroke consists of 65-75% leg work, according to the American Fitness Professionals Association. “Your glutes, hamstrings and quads essentially drive the rowing stroke,” said Dr. Hannafin. “Then you’re firing core muscles to stabilize, and arm muscles to return to the start.”
A machine with live demos, which provide basic instruction and motivational cues, is especially crucial, offering something you won’t get in most gyms. Before your first stroke, on-screen coaches will walk you through the proper form because if you’re not nailing that, “you’re never going to get the max benefits,” added Dr. Hannafin.
Not only is rowing a total-body workout, “it’s low-impact, good for joints and you can really develop strength, power, and cardiovascular endurance in the same movement,” said Cameron Nichol, M.D., a former Olympian and founder of the coaching community RowingWOD. “You get a lot of bang for your buck.”