Keeping Interest
 Students from Central Elementary School proudly show off their certificates of participation. |
- Try the Indoor Rowing Fishing Derby challenge and get your kids hooked on rowing!
View instructions - Encourage your child to keep a log. It can be kept online or on paper – or both. Make charts to hang on the fridge or a wall where kids can fill in boxes to represent the meters they have rowed.
- Set some attainable goals such as the C2 Kids’ Club awards. You can find more info at the Kids Distance Clubs page.
- Make the activity available whether it means making a special trip to school, or the health club, or moving the Indoor Rower into the living room.
- Create home/family mini-challenges. Can your kids row half as many meters as you can over the next month? Or set a family meters goal for the summer and add everyone’s meters together.
- Encourage your child to try other distances - like 500 meters, 1000 meters - some variety in the length and intensity of rowing sessions is good.
- Sometimes it helps to get other kids involved. You’ll have the best sense of this. If your child has a few friends who would be interested, they could do “relays” where each kids rows for 1 or 2 minutes with quick changes in between kids – the goal being to get as many meters as they can in 10 or 15 minutes. If this seems to work, it could become a “rowing club” that meets every week or two.
- But most of all make it fun! There will probably be times when your child loses interest, or just needs some time off, and that’s fine. You might take advantage of our Holiday Challenge (Thanksgiving to Christmas) to get him/her started again. (We have a Kids' Holiday Challenge as well as two levels of adult challenge.)
Programming Ideas
These programming suggestions are based on the assumption that you may only have a few Indoor Rowers and more than a few children, so one of your biggest challenges will be giving everyone a chance and keeping them busy when it’s not their turn to row. If your program structure is such that children can't rotate to other activities when not rowing, here are some suggestions for keeping kids busy.
 Students from Central Elementary School use the indoor rowers while they wait to get into a team game. |
Rotation Strategies
- Time: Take your allotted program time and divide it roughly by the number of children you have in the group. For example, if you have one hour, 2 Indoor Rowers and 15 children, then each child gets a max of 8 minutes of rowing. With start-up and transition time, it will probably be more like 7 minutes. You can then decide if you want them to row their 7 minutes non-stop, or split it into two or three different sittings. You can vary this from day to day. Be sure to have them record the number of meters they row each time in their logbook!
- Number of Strokes: For variety, you can allot rowing time by number of strokes. Set up a rowing order for each machine, then have kids row a certain number of strokes, then switch. Thirty strokes should take about a minute. Be sure to have them record the number of meters they row each time in their logbook!
- Distance: This is yet another way to allot rowing time. Keep in mind that it gives more time to the slower kids, because is takes them longer to cover the same distance. You might set any distance from 200 to 500 meters. Again, be sure to have them record the number of meters they row each time in their logbook!
- Speedy Rotation: Kids will probably get into this! Try having each child row for 30 seconds, or 100 meters, or 15 strokes – then switch. This really minimizes the down time for everyone! However, you’ll note that it makes it harder to keep track of how many meters each child has rowed but it can be done. Assign kids to watch the performance monitor and record the number meters as each child gets on and off. Then you’ll have an opportunity for some math practice later as you calculate how far each child rowed!
Keeping Busy
Other things that kids can be doing while it’s not their turn to row:
- Record their meters rowed in their logbook. If they are rowing several short bouts per day, they can spend some time doing the math by adding up their meters before they enter them in their logbook.
- Stretching and other exercises. Create a number of stations around the room: rowing, stretching, ab curls or ab bicycles, superman stretches (lying on your stomach), run a lap of the playground, jumping jacks. Put a sign at each station, and number them, and have the kids rotate whenever you call out – every minute perhaps.
- Plan a group “rowing” trip around/along a local body of water. Make a map to post with distance increments and have the kids mark their progress along the route. When not rowing, kids can work on planning the trip, creating the map, and marking the progress.
- Do research on the sport of rowing. How many different kinds of boats are raced in the Olympics? When was the first Olympics in which women rowed? What is a “head race” and how did it get that name? What is the difference between sweep rowing and sculling? Work on a presentation for the rest of the school.
If time and machine access is not an issue, then it will depend more on the individual student’s goals, level of conditioning, and attention span. The trick is to strike the right balance between fun and challenge for each kid. Some kids may have the capacity for longer, steady rows, but interval workouts may do a better job of keeping kids focused and interested.
Online Opportunities for Kids
Kids can keep an online log of their meters and rank their best results against other kids with the Concept2 Online Logbook and Ranking. We respect your child's right to online privacy. To view the COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) Notice to Parents and Guardians, please click here: COPPA NoticeKids can participate in the Holiday Challenge every year as well. While the challenge for anyone 16 and older is 200,000 meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Kids Holiday Challenge is 50,000 meters during that same time frame. So they can row along with you and you'll all be rewarded with a certificate and Holiday Challenge pin and the option to order the limited edition Holiday Challenge clothing.