Rowing with RowPro

The big question everyone faces at the start is "What rowing do I need to do, to get the results I want?" And soon after that comes the realization that "I really need a plan."

Digital Rowing has engaged training guru Jon Ackland of Performance Lab International to create a training system specifically for users of Concept2 Indoor Rowers.

The result is a huge library of hundreds of training plan templates for weight control, fitness and competition, suitable for the full spectrum of users from beginner to elite.

It's driven by a state-of-the-art Training Plan Wizard that makes it easy to select a suitable plan and tailor it to your age, weight, fitness level, rowing experience and training purpose.

The fully illustrated Training with RowPro guide gives you step-by-step instructions for using the RowPro training system to structure your daily rowing.

When performance is your goal, your heart rate is a key metric you simply have to track, because it reveals how your body is responding to the workload. As your performance improves, your speed, strength and endurance go up, and your heart rate goes down.

Logging your total meters, time and pace is not enough to track your progress. It’s good for milestone-oriented goals like million meter clubs and challenges, but not for knowing if you’re maintaining or improving your fitness, or on track in your race preparation.

Proper tracking involves recording a lot of detail like strokes and heart rate. RowPro tracks all these items and more while you row, and makes it available to you in charts and tables so you can track your progress.

The best part is you don't need to do anything to collect the data, because RowPro does it all for you automatically. Learn more in the Tracking Your Progress mini-guide.

There is a very different and quite unique feeling when you know the other boats beside you on the course are real people rowing with you in real time.

The online rowing community is full of helpful people who are only too keen to help new members get started. Their support and encouragement can be a great help to people who would otherwise be rowing alone.

There's even an online rowing club called Oarbits where you can create or join online rows, see who's rowing online, and check your results.

The in-built text Chat is a key part of the Online Rowing experience. You'll quickly get to know the folks who row online regularly, and it's likely you'll go on to develop some great friendships online - they're a great bunch of people!

The fully illustrated RowPro Online Rowing guide gives you a step-by-step tutorial to get your online rowing off to a great start.

As your stroke technique improves, your speed, strength and endurance go up, and your effort and heart rate come down. That adds up to improved performance – the better your technique, the better you perform.

How do you learn good technique without having a personal coach? Often people start by searching for ‘rowing technique’ videos on YouTube or Google. While they show you good technique, using them to develop your own good technique can be tricky.

RowPro overcomes this challenge. It has a 3D Coaching Clinic where you watch an Oarsman perform excellent stroke technique in slow motion, and learn the key parts of the stroke from Olympic rowing coach Brian Hawthorne.

The best part is RowPro also shows you good technique while you row each stroke - just match your stroke technique with your 3D avatar onscreen while you row. Learn more in the Good Stroke Technique mini-guide.

RowPro pace boats are smart - you can make them change pace at set points along the way, and you can even set the stroke rate of their 3D oarsman. That gives you a big range of options so you can tune the pace boat to do exactly what you want.

People use pace boats in many ways – to push you to perform better, to zone out mentally while you stay on your target pace, or to bring your tactical race plan to life for time trials.

Past rows can be even better - in many ways there’s no finer pace boat than your own past rows. You get a strong sense of progress when you beat your own past performances, and that translates into great motivation.

RowPro makes it easy to row with your past rows by enabling you to choose them from your rowing log and use them to power boats stroke by stroke. That pin-point accuracy is what makes it so effective. Learn more in the Pace Boats and Past Rows mini-guide.

Research into the success factors driving long-term exercise programs like rowing clearly shows that your motivation is the most important, enduring and effective contributor to keeping up your rowing over the long term. Bottom line - it’s essential.

In our user research, 90% of rowers say finding the time and motivation to row are the most critical factors in long-term rowing success, and by far the most-cited benefit of RowPro is - you guessed it - motivation.

RowPro acieves this by providing a mix of mental and physical boosters to stimulate your rowing during the weeks, months and years of active rowing ahead. This can be a simple as seeing your meters accumulate, or as subtle as enjoying working out online with others.

Learn more in the Using RowPro for Motivation mini-guide.

The sessions your crews row can be anything from a group paddle to a full-on race. Even if your crew is not 'really' racing, their competitive instinct comes out and they will more likely than not try to keep up with or ahead of the other crews.

During crew rows, each participant crew sees their boat and the other crews' boats on their RowPro screen, moving along exactly in accordance with the average meters rowed by each crew. And for coaches and organisers, there's the added bonus that every stroke by every crew member is recorded automatically for later analysis.

Online Crew Rowing enables schools, colleges, clubs, universities, gyms, military units and many other organizations to compete with each other without needing to travel. This opens up a whole new realm of rowing activities, and enables local, regional, national and international online regattas.

The fully illustrated RowPro Crew Rowing guide gives you a step-by-step tutorial to get your crew rowing off to a great start.