Explaining the Concept2 Display

When first using a rowing machine (and specifically the Concept2), there is a lot of data that is shown and making sense of it is key.

Above is a quick summary of the key facets, however in reality there are only two items on this you need to understand.

Strokes per minute

This is the measure for you cadence on the rowing machine, the frequency at which you are moving the seat from the front to the back position. This number is calculated frequently, and will estimate your strokes per minute based on the time between your previous two strokes. This means when you are changing rate, you can see that you are moving speeds effectively.

My personal opinion is that the usual gym user of a rowing machine spends the majority of their time at too high of a stroke rate. As per my rowing machine workout post – I am a huge proponent of spending a lot of time around 18-20spm to build a long and powerful stroke.

Split

This is the larger part of the screen where it says “/500m” – and this is telling you how long it would theoretically take you to row 500 metres were you in an olympic class rowing boat. As you get more experienced on a machine, this point is critical to your performance. You should get in a habit of noting the averages for all sessions you do, taking the average spm, split and total time.

Rowing at low rate (approximately 18-20 spm) is a great way to get a good indicator of your ‘steady pace’ and use this to monitor how both power and fitness grow over time.

Once you are tracking and documenting your splits – you should get to a point where you know which split you can hold at each spm. A simple rule to follow is that for every stroke rate you go up by, your split should come down. This is a sign of true efficiency.