Playing with a C2

The hotel I stayed in in Sydney had one of the better gyms I've encountered. Not huge, but enough gear to be useful, and some clear floorspace.

They had a (Model B?)C2 which I thought had flat batteries when I first wandered through the place. Later I remembered you had to row a bit for the display to activate on those.

So one morning I rowed 2K, no idea of the time. When I looked for the overall time I found it gave you 500m splits and found my first 500m was my fastest. Now as I had been what I thought was "sprinting" for the last 500 and just sliding the seat back and forth for the first 500 I found that really interesting! My splits weren't at all fast, 2 minutes and change/500m.

So the next morning I did
3 RNFT
Row 1000m
10 manmakers

As a WOD that's pretty wussy, but I was just trying to wake up. Mainly though I watched myself rowing in the mirror, watched the numbers and tried to analyse what was different in the times I was getting better times/500m.

It turns out that when I thought I was sprinting I was doing most of the work with my arms and when I was going fastest it felt like I just slid the seat back and did a half hearted flick on the handle with my arms. I knew I was supposed to do most of the work with my legs but I didn't know what it felt like when I did that. I think because the resistance of the rower is very light I wasn't able to feel my legs working particularly hard compared to a squat or deadlift and didn't realise that's where most of the pull was coming from. I'd love to play some more with a C2 and a mirror so I could bed the feeling in and drop that 500m time well below 2 minutes. I think if I got the movement sorted and learned how to get a really solid push with my legs I could make some progress.
Hard when my rower at home has even less resistance than a C2 and doesn't give me that /500m time.

Fascinating and fun.