Rowing Machine Guide

Getting your own rowin machine is always a big decision to make and like in any other fitness equipment you need to be making good decisions instead of bad ones. I have had a lot of frieds telling me that they bought something that they had to return to the seller the first week. Some of the models that I have heard of are usually braking up just after the warranty is void. You really need to learn how to avoid these makes and models and I will be telling you how to do this.

The first thing that comes in to my mind when I think of a rowing machine is actually a row boat. If I go past that there is the sliding bench on the machine that you sit on while doing the exercise. You need to be making sure that it is not made out of plastic. And I am not talking about the body of the seat but the whole seat. No plastic parts are allowed here. Why is that? This is the part of your rower that has the most weight on - you sitting on it - and moves the most. Plastic parts have a tendency of breaking under pressure. They don't show it out at first but over time they will bend slightly, turn white and break off. By the time it is broken your warranty is already void. I am not saying that all the plastics are like this but most of the cheap plastic seats on rowing machines tend to brake like this. Look for a metallic seat body covered with leather. Leather will never break, but it will stretch and lose its form. This is easily replaced and you should be back to rowing in no time.

The next thing is the chain that holds your "paddles" to the rowing machine. It takes all the stress that comes from the rowing motion and transfers it to the part of the machine that is making the resistance. During some fast sprints on a rowing machine it can be under a lot of duty so you should make sure that it is atleast double locked and made out of steel instead of any other material. Some of the good and more expensive models have the chains made out of really hard metals that are guaranteed for life. Opting for something like this is a good choice.

You can be doing all the same types of workouts on a rowing machine that you would be doing on a treadmill so it is not a bad choice either for your own basic home gym machine. Many of the fitness equipment out there are very versatile so you can basically choose what you like the most but keep in mind that doing different exercises from time to time provide better results than sticking with the same rowing machine all over again.