r/concept2

In last year i have lost 143.2 ibs , i started at 343ibs and am now at 199.8ibs .I achived this through rowing every day and calorie defict (calorie counting) .Rowing is helping to change my life and get fit ,any questions please ask .

Got the rower on 30th of August 2025.
Took me a while, but here I am, 8 and a half months later :)

Lost about 6 weeks due to travel and several colds, but I'm happy with my result :)

Just did 100k on my rowerg. Really struggled with cramps everywhere at around 60 and 90k. Got through it. Never again. I was aiming for 7hr30mims and was on target at 60k but had to have some
Stops to sort out cramps.

How’d I do?

I’ve been rowing consistently (~3x a week) since January, but only started doing extended steady state sessions in April in preparation for this half-marathon.

Go ahead, roast me for not having a Concept2 😭, I can take it. First 10k row, don't know if this is a good pace or not. 5'8 male, 185 lbs. I think I can improve this with some slight form fixes. Tried to maintain a consistent pace throughout.

Male, 57, 6’0”, 235lbs.

Bought a Model D as a Christmas present for myself late last year. Started rowing in earnest after the first of the year, participated in the World Erg Challenge - great motivation - and three weeks ago put together a plan to ramp up to a half. Did that session this morning. I’m slow, to be sure, but had a little gas left in the tank to bring my pace down below the target.

I’m proud to have completed this one, and look forward to improving on it next time!

Good morning everyone, my concept 2 has just arrived, is this normal? like the box's condition? I am very nervous about the condition of the machine

I have been busy for the past 48 days.

Hello. I have a very old (Model B) rower that started misbehaving today. I’d pull a few strokes normally and then there’d be no resistance on the next pull. Might work for another one or two strokes but then slip again. After taking this video it started working and I was able to do my workout, but I’m assuming something is going, like a clutch mechanism.

Any suggestions? Any maintenance I can perform?

I told myself id never do a 50k again, but the fact that I didnt break 3:30 the first time was bugging me so bad. Today it was done. The last 8k was probably the hardest thing ive ever done, my ab was cramping and so was my left quad, and i was barely holding on to my splits. So glad it's done though.

79 yo male, 182 lbs Started rowing July 2025. I’m happy!

Complete newbie. Thank you so much!

A friend of mine runs Backyard Ultras. The real ones — out in the woods, 6.7km every hour, last one standing wins. He does one of the biggest ones in Germany every year. Every time he comes back with these stories about the mental game — the moment at hour 14 when your brain starts negotiating with you, when it's 3am and there's only two of you left.I've been listening to these stories for years thinking: why doesn't this exist on the erg?

The format is perfect for Concept2. Fixed distance every round. Miss the cutoff, you're done. Last one standing. Simple, brutal, and the kind of challenge that's completely different from anything else you can do on an ergometer.

So I tried it on the BikeErg.Set up the Backyard Ultra format: fixed distance per round, hourly cutoff, keep going until you can't. This was my first real test — not going all out, just seeing if the format holds up over a long session.200km later, I can confirm: it works insanely well on the erg.

The thing that surprised me most is the pacing game. On a BikeErg, you can't just cruise — the pace drops off a cliff if you lose focus for 30 seconds. Every round you're doing mental math: "Can I afford to recover this round, or will that cost me the cutoff?" It's the same chess game my friend describes from his runs.

The problem was: no tool supports this.

PM5 can't do timed rounds natively. ErgData can't do it. Nothing out there handles a Backyard Ultra format on an erg — let alone across multiple ergs. So I built an app that connects to the PM5 via Bluetooth and runs the entire format: automatic round detection, transition countdowns, real-time tracking. It also supports a "Triple" mode where you rotate between RowErg, SkiErg, and BikeErg every round.

After this test confirmed everything works reliably over 200km, I filed a US patent for the multi-erg Bluetooth orchestration tech. The ability to sync multiple PM5s simultaneously and handle automatic transitions between ergs.

Now I'm curious:

Has anyone here ever tried something like this? A long-format endurance session on the erg with Backyard Ultra rules?

Would you be interested in doing something like this?

Hi all,

I I recently acquired a used concept 2 model C rower with a PM3. It came with this sensor- google shows it as an older discontinued heart rate sensor that pairs to a polar heart rate sensor.

Is there any way I can still get use out of this? In a perfect world I would like to be able to pair it to my garmin or my phone. If anyone has experience with this, let me know!

I bought my rower Christmas 2023 and have been relatively consistent with my workouts. Already requested the pin and shirt, just wanted to share