SprintTriGuy
New Member
Ok, so in case I am about to make a fool of myself due to my ignorance of rowing, I'm not going to name names right now (like the club I recently went to) and sorry if some of my info is vague (to protect the innocent), but here goes:
So my wife was a lightweight rower in college and over the years she has been in grad school she has talked about how much she misses rowing. My For the last couple years I've thought about taking up rowing with her, as something to do / talk about / exercise / whatever. I thought it would be a good chance for me to take this year (her last year of grad school) to learn and then when she's done with her degree, and we relocate, we could row together or something since she will hopefully have time to come back to the sport.
So I go in to a local club and talk to a coach and shake hands with a few members, etc... Everybody is nice, they give me a quick show of the boat house and asked if I wanted to get on an ergo machine just to "try it out" and see how it feels since I've never been on one. He asked me "out of curiosity," if I wanted to try to row a 2k, I said sure, why not. I know that it is the standard test or whatever, just from knowledge of my wife talking about stuff years ago, so it wasn't a big deal for me, I more or less knew what I was getting myself into based on horror stories.
I get on the thing (I believe it was a Concept brand if that means anything) and he sets the little computer thing, tells me the basics on what to do and then lets me go at it. After I about kill myself on this thing, the computer tells me I'm done. The coach looked at my score startled (evidently a 6:32 is great for a first timer of my height and weight: 6'01" - 156 lbs).
The people there kinda seemed amazed like I was an alien or something. I told them that I was in pretty good shape, but even still, I have never used a rowing machine in my life. In high school I was a state wrestling champion at 152 pounds (in a very competitive state for wrestling), then in college, all conference NCAA at 157 pounds. Since undergrad, I have been competitively doing sprint triathlon (1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 3 mile run). So it isn't that big of a shock (at least to me) that I can get a "good" time on a rowing machine since it's basically a test of your overall fitness and endurance, plus it's not like it's that hard, at least it felt about equivalent to running a mile on a slight uphill gradient.
Anyway, the point of why I made this account is that after that, the coach was super interested and behaved almost like a used car salesman (sorry if that's cliche or if that is what any of you forum members do for a living). He was kinda probing as to how interested I was, how serious I wanted to get, how many days a week I could practice, talking about membership rates, team dues, and lots of other stuff. He said stuff like "your build is perfect to be a champion lightweight." Even when I responded to his question about how serious I wanted to get with "I don't know, I'm pretty competitive, but I'm mainly interested in rowing to have more in common with my wife," he responded with "Well, don't make any plans yet for the summer of 2016," but he said it with a straight face, not as a joke or anything.
Now ok, this is why I made this account: is this guy just trying to sell me on this $1500 a year membership by blowing smoke up my butt? Is that a normal price for a club membership? That included stuff like coaching dues, team membership, weight room privileges, boat house maintenance, regatta expenses, etc... I don't have much to compare it too since my wife didn't have to pay for stuff, other than tuition for school anyway, and yeah they didn't have any of the prices on the club's website so I was kinda blindsided by the prices and then how they behaved all buddy buddy when I got off the rower. Was that just a tactic of: tire him out on the machine, butter him up by alluding that I shouldn't make plans for the 2016 Olympics, give him a Gatorade, and make the sale before he recovers all his electrolytes, haha?
So my wife was a lightweight rower in college and over the years she has been in grad school she has talked about how much she misses rowing. My For the last couple years I've thought about taking up rowing with her, as something to do / talk about / exercise / whatever. I thought it would be a good chance for me to take this year (her last year of grad school) to learn and then when she's done with her degree, and we relocate, we could row together or something since she will hopefully have time to come back to the sport.
So I go in to a local club and talk to a coach and shake hands with a few members, etc... Everybody is nice, they give me a quick show of the boat house and asked if I wanted to get on an ergo machine just to "try it out" and see how it feels since I've never been on one. He asked me "out of curiosity," if I wanted to try to row a 2k, I said sure, why not. I know that it is the standard test or whatever, just from knowledge of my wife talking about stuff years ago, so it wasn't a big deal for me, I more or less knew what I was getting myself into based on horror stories.
I get on the thing (I believe it was a Concept brand if that means anything) and he sets the little computer thing, tells me the basics on what to do and then lets me go at it. After I about kill myself on this thing, the computer tells me I'm done. The coach looked at my score startled (evidently a 6:32 is great for a first timer of my height and weight: 6'01" - 156 lbs).
The people there kinda seemed amazed like I was an alien or something. I told them that I was in pretty good shape, but even still, I have never used a rowing machine in my life. In high school I was a state wrestling champion at 152 pounds (in a very competitive state for wrestling), then in college, all conference NCAA at 157 pounds. Since undergrad, I have been competitively doing sprint triathlon (1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 3 mile run). So it isn't that big of a shock (at least to me) that I can get a "good" time on a rowing machine since it's basically a test of your overall fitness and endurance, plus it's not like it's that hard, at least it felt about equivalent to running a mile on a slight uphill gradient.
Anyway, the point of why I made this account is that after that, the coach was super interested and behaved almost like a used car salesman (sorry if that's cliche or if that is what any of you forum members do for a living). He was kinda probing as to how interested I was, how serious I wanted to get, how many days a week I could practice, talking about membership rates, team dues, and lots of other stuff. He said stuff like "your build is perfect to be a champion lightweight." Even when I responded to his question about how serious I wanted to get with "I don't know, I'm pretty competitive, but I'm mainly interested in rowing to have more in common with my wife," he responded with "Well, don't make any plans yet for the summer of 2016," but he said it with a straight face, not as a joke or anything.
Now ok, this is why I made this account: is this guy just trying to sell me on this $1500 a year membership by blowing smoke up my butt? Is that a normal price for a club membership? That included stuff like coaching dues, team membership, weight room privileges, boat house maintenance, regatta expenses, etc... I don't have much to compare it too since my wife didn't have to pay for stuff, other than tuition for school anyway, and yeah they didn't have any of the prices on the club's website so I was kinda blindsided by the prices and then how they behaved all buddy buddy when I got off the rower. Was that just a tactic of: tire him out on the machine, butter him up by alluding that I shouldn't make plans for the 2016 Olympics, give him a Gatorade, and make the sale before he recovers all his electrolytes, haha?
