SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., August 14 — Imagine low-impact, total-body training that works your heart, lungs, and muscles (basically, the perfect exercise). It’s gotta be swimming — and not all of us have the budget or backyard to afford that kind of fitness, right? Wrong.
Mercantila Does Rowing Machines!
How did Viking warlords, Julius Caesar, and a bread truck put full-body fitness in your living room? In the Beginning. Think the Brits invented rowing? You’re only a few millennia off. Julius Caesar and militant company crossed the English Channel way back in 54 B.C., and the Roman Army sculled right up the Thames about 350 years later to re-occupy London. Of course, the Danes and Vikings and such followed suit, and finally the thoroughly marauded-out Brits decided to just turn the whole strategy into sport. (There’s your stiff upper lip, then.) The "competitors" were the watermen operating skiffs and ferries before the city was full of bridges; they plied their trade skillfully enough that the gentry started placing bets. Eventually, the annual battle for Doggett's Coat and Badge, the foundation of boat racing, was established in 1716. Boat clubs hit America in the 1800s — the first was Philadelphia's Schuylkill Navy, in 1858 — and collegiate and amateur oarsmen started the National Association for Amateur Oarsmen (NAAO) in 1872. Paris hosted the first Olympic regatta in 1900, and — well, the Olympics have a way of making sports popular. If you went to any college near a substantial body of water, chances are some of the more impressive physiques you might have ogled (back when you did that kind of thing) had a crew program to thank.
Innovations
Regattas need water. Ah, but the exercise of rowing doesn't, thanks in large part to Dick and Pete Dreissigacker. The brothers rebounded from failing to make the 1976 U.S. Olympic team by starting an oar company in an old bread truck. Buoyed by their sales success, they moved to an old Vermont farm, made a rowing machine out of bicycle parts in 1981, called it the Concept 2, and lowered the going rowing-machine rate from $3,000 to $600. Suddenly rowing was widely available, and the doors of the market blew open to research and development. Row against air? Sure. Row against water? But of course. Row against piston and magnetic resistance? Why not?
What’s In It For You?
Cost efficiency. Piston rowing machines, the smallest and most budget-friendly options, start under $200. Yeah. Take that, ye coat-and-badge elitists.
Cardio training. It should go without saying, but your heart pumps when you’re on these. You can opt for self-controlling machines like air or water, which vary resistance according to your stroke rate (read: work as much or as little as you like), or go for a sweet magnetic machine that can set program goals and dare you to hit them.
Complete toning. All rowing machines work you all over. We could stop there, but you might like to know that a few even provide with you non-rowing exercise options. One of our rowers converts to a recumbent bike; others double as home gyms. Find us a treadmill that does that. Go on. (You can also opt to recognize a rhetorical dare when you see one.)
Competitive edge. Training for fitness is one thing; training for races is quite another. Happily, we can accommodate both — the latter is best served with air or water rowers, both of which are so like the real thing you’ll end your workout looking for a coxswain to fling water-ward.
Meet your match:
A market refresher: water rowers are huge and smooth; magnetic rowers are silky and versatile; air rowers are loud, cooling, and great training for the real thing; piston rowers are compact, affordable, and reasonably quiet. Phew. Okay, now read that again. Or just read our recommendations:
| | Save & Share |  $100 off of $1,000!
Take $100 off any rowing machine over $1,000. Enter coupon code RWMCH at check out. Coupon valid through 8/24/2006 at | | |
| Penny For Your Thoughts? |  We sell a lot of stuff. Is there any particular line of products that's always mystified / fascinated you? (Go on, admit it. We're retail freaks. We're into this.)
Tell us why you're so curious -- give us a good enough story, and we'll give you the inside scoop. (Nobody wants pennies these days anyway.) Send your reply to readers@mercantila.com | | |
