by Nigel Wickenden

Created on: June 01, 2010

We need to know certain things when looking at buying a rowing machine and one of the first should be “what good will it do me?” A rowing machine will exercise every group of muscles, it is suitable for children to pensioners, it can give an excellent aerobic workout, it can burn fat, the movement is non jarring and it is done sitting down.

Obviously price will go up with quality.  Think about a gym and why they buy the rowing machines you see there. They are obviously built to take a pounding day in and day out. A top notch machine could set you back over £1,100 ($1,500US). One must decide whether one wants all the bells and whistles this sort of machine will have, or not.

You need to know how long a seat rail you need for your legs. Obviously if you are a tall person with long legs, you need to find a machine that is big enough for you. There are some models that will fold up and this may help with your decision if space is limited. Do not forget that where it folds, there will also be a weakness in cheaper models.

You need to think about how the thing resists your movement so that you get your exercise. Hydraulic pistons tend to be at the cheaper end of the price scale. There should still be some form of adjustment in order to change the effort required to row. Magnetic rowers have a fly wheel that is braked by the magnetism to give the required resistance. This too should be adjustable. More expensive and better quality machines use air resistance provided by a flywheel that has fins on it. As the rowing arm is pulled back, air will be drawn in. Resistance can be changed by something on the machine and by just increasing the stroke rate.

Virtually all rowing machines these days have some form of readout on a control panel. The simplest will possibly just give a time and distance measurement. More upmarket ones will provide information on distance travelled, time, split times, pulse rate and even the number of calories used during the session. Many of them will also provide a link to a computer so that workouts can be personally tailored and recorded for future reference.


Lastly what about a guarantee? Does it come with parts and labour, will they send an engineer to sort it out or will you have to return it to the place you bought it? The better quality rowing machine you buy, the more generous the warranty is likely to be.

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