Give Yourself Room to Practise on the Ergo

I’d ease off the split while you’re learning the rowing machine. You can pull hard at the start, see a number you like, then spend the rest of the row trying to get it back. Breathing hard and grabbing with the arms, with the legs doing less than you’d hoped.

Hard work. Difficult to practise like that.

Most of your early rowing should feel manageable enough that you can notice what you’re doing. That easier work helps build your aerobic base for rowing beyond a short burst. Going hard has a place, but you don’t need to make every row a test while you’re still working out the stroke.

With my own steady rowing, I’m not trying to push every session. I settle into a comfortable effort and hold it there when I feel good. If I don’t, I back off slightly. That’s part of keeping it consistent.

So for your next easy row, choose a duration you can manage and an effort you can settle into. Actually, “manage” leaves quite a lot of room. I mean finishing without having spent most of the session wondering whether you can finish. If it feels too hard early on, ease off rather than defending the split you started with.

The training zones guide can give you somewhere to start if you’re unsure about effort. But leave yourself enough attention to feel the stroke.

Push through your feet. Let the legs start the drive before you swing the body back and finish with the arms. That push through the feet is worth coming back to, because pulling the handle towards you immediately can feel like plenty of work without getting much from your legs.

Coming forward, move the arms away and tip the body forward before bending the knees. Give yourself time. Sit tall rather than folding over the handle, and let the handle come into your body at the finish rather than cutting that end short.

There’s quite a bit there. I wouldn’t try to fix it all in the same stroke. Pick something to pay attention to, perhaps whether you’re grabbing with the arms at the start. You can practise it in the warm-up too, before you’re tired enough that everything feels difficult.

The machine setting can make this harder than it needs to be. On an air-resistance ergo, the damper changes the airflow. Drag factor tells you about the resulting drag on the flywheel, so check that rather than copying somebody else’s damper position.

A higher setting isn’t something you have to graduate to. If every stroke feels like a heavy haul, lowering the drag may make it easier to concentrate on how you’re moving. Then get on with the row. There’s only so much practice available in the settings menu.

I’d write down the average split afterwards, alongside the stroke rate and a sentence about how it felt. A notebook is fine. Notice whether the rate stayed fairly steady, or whether you started taking more strokes as you tired while the pace went backwards.

If your monitor has a power curve, you can use it to look at how you apply force through the drive. It also gives you something to discuss with a coach beyond the average split. The split calculator is there if you need help with the pace numbers, but you don’t need an elaborate recording system.

Repeat the same duration another day at a similar stroke rate. Put the effort alongside the pace when you compare them. Heart rate can add context if you record it; it doesn’t decide by itself whether the session went well.

The split might be much the same. If you weren’t rushing forward this time, or you could feel the legs working without immediately pulling with the arms, write that down too. Otherwise you’ll open the notebook and miss something you actually changed.