Above is a short video showing how the canoe adaptor works on the Concept 2 rower. Dawn (aka Sandybottomkayaker) commented after the Feb 3rd post that she'd like to modify her Concept 2 for a canoe stroke but didn't want to spend a lot of money. Well, I checked into it. The canoe adaptors we have on the rowers at the boathouse were made by Vermont Waterways. At $385 it's not cheap, especially considering I paid around $850 for my Model D Concept 2 with PM3 monitor.



As you can tell from the photo this is not a do-it-yourself adaptor. It's made of solid steel and custom cut to fit the Concept 2 perfectly. The canoe paddle shaft pulls the fly wheel through a series of pulleys. So I think it's worth $385. And my personal experience with the canoe adaptor has been that it does feel a lot like paddling in the outrigger. The tension on the fly wheel of the rower mimics the force of the water. And then you get all the rower statistics that come with the PM3 monitor.



There are other canoe rowing machines. The PaddleOne C looks very similar, but it lacks the stats monitor that comes standard with the Concept 2. And the foot position on the Paddle One looks awkward ... more like the foot position in a competition canoe and not the foot position you would use in an outrigger. So even though the Concept 2 with canoe adaptor is about $400 more ... I'd still go with the Concept 2. Rowing indoors is always boring. Without the stats monitor to keep track of my progress and race myself (through the rerow feature) I doubt I'd use it very often.

I should mention that there are also kayak specific erg units for those that want to work out kayak stroke specific muscles. Both PaddleOne ($1200 Cnd) and Speedstroke ($2000 US) sell models which mimic a kayak stroke. I've never used either but I'd be more interested in a kayak adaptor for the concept 2 than a kayak specific unit. But that's just me.

-Susanita

Those are Concept 2 rowing machines modified to use a canoe stroke. The club has six and we had over 12 people show up for this Saturday's Erg workout. So we had to take turns doing our reps on the Ergs.



This Saturday we did reps of 5 minutes at different strokes rates sandwiched around a rep of 20 minutes. The workouts are similar to what I do on the Concept 2 at home except I don't take breaks between the reps. I do what's called interval training where you go all out for a few minutes then switch to a resting stroke rate for a few minutes then return back to the high intensity workout. But since we have so many people show up for the workouts at the boathouse we take full rests so we can do our reps in shifts. By taking the pure rests between reps we're doing something more along the lines of anaerobic threshold training.



But the best part about working out at the club house ... it's FUN!



-Susanita

When it's too cold or too windy or too rainy to kayak outside ... I always have my rower. This is a Concept 2 rower that I bought last spring for cross-training. I don't want to sound like an advertisement for Concept 2 but this rower is great!. It has a built in computer monitor which tracks your workouts and provides predefined workouts to keep you motivated. I like the interval training workouts. I also like the rerow function which allows me to race my previously saved workouts. Yesterday it was cold and rainy so I raced myself. And won! What better motivation. Today it's sunny but very windy. My kayaking plans have been cancelled. So I'll probably race my workout from yesterday.

-Susanita