Your Coffee is ready.

You Can Row 15 Cals on a Concept2 in Just 5 Pulls

March 8, 2018 by Justin LoFranco

Enjoying Morning Chalk Up? Access additional exclusive interviews, analyses, and stories with an Rx membership.

That sounds fake.

We know, that headline sounds like one of those really bad marketing scams but we promise we’re not selling you anything.

OK, you just pull really hard right?

Wrong. You could try that but three cals per stroke is kinda ridiculous. Instead, you could try this hack, which requires very little time and effort that the guys at Dark Horse Rowing just detailed in this walkthrough, where 15 cals took five pulls and 35 seconds.

Again, we know it sounds like we’re selling you fake insurance or something nefarious but just watch the video.

I’m not convinced.

You might not be, but the founder of Concept2, Peter Dreissigacker, is and he issued this statement explaining why:

“There is a time limit, programmed into the monitor, of 6 seconds from the finish of a drive to the start of the next drive. A delay of more than 6 seconds signals the monitor that you have stopped rowing. The monitor’s self-calibrating function uses the completed stroke cycle (drive, recovery, drive) to determine the drag factor to use in calculating the correct data you see on the monitor. Unfortunately, by pausing for 7 seconds before you start your next drive, the monitor assumes you have stopped rowing…and the monitor never ‘sees’ a complete stroke (it determined you had stopped rowing before it could sense the end of your recovery). If the monitor never ‘sees’ a complete stroke, the drag factor will not be correctly determined and the data displayed will not be correct. In terms of getting a valid score, what are you are doing here is like painting ’45’ on your 25-pound weight plates.”

That’s awesome!

No, it’s not awesome; it’s cheating, and it also shows that an athlete could have used a Concept2 to post a VERY competitive score.

If it’s cheating, why did you post it?

So glad you asked. One reason, so that everyone in this community knows that it’s cheating, judges reviewing future Open rowing videos can spot athletes trying to pull a fast one, and so that power brokers in the sport of CrossFit are aware that this issue and can take action to make sure it doesn’t affect the outcome of our sport.