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Comment by HK-NC | Hacker News Reader

Not what this conversation is about but anyone running and worried about their knees should consider doing a little cycling. Dooesn't have to be fast or high resistance, but it does supposedly "massage" your joints without impact and help cartilage recovery. I definitely noticed a difference with myself and about 2 dozen clients with knee issues from running intensely (military, athletes etc)

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As somebody who uses both, I personally think a rowing machine is better for general cardiovascular exercise than a bicycle. The work is better spread over your whole body instead of mostly the legs. You can get cheap ones with magnetic resistance that work fine for exercise purposes (the main advantage of more expensive rowing machines is more accurate simulation of rowing in a real boat).

Cycling is however a lot more interesting if you have somewhere good to ride.

Or row on water. Before dawn, songbirds and pelicans. Rowing machines are the fallback, not the first choice, just like running machines.

If I had to load a boat onto my roof rack and drive to the nearest river at 5am every time I wanted to exercise, I'd do it once a week at the absolute maximum. I don't think it's a reasonable way to exercise for most people.

This is true. It's also why I moved to live near water. But, a lot of people in the rowing club do exactly this: row 1-2 times at most a week.

Rowing machines are fine. I'm not sure why they have a he-man scale going up to 11 when the on-water experience is mostly below 4, but I guess people need goals. Bad back goals.

>I'm not sure why they have a he-man scale going up to 11

There's a big difference between air resistance and magnetic resistance machines. Air resistance scales with the square of velocity, the same as real rowing, while magnetic resistance is linear. On an air resistance machine you can get a good workout by keeping the difficulty setting realistically low and rowing faster, but on a magnetic resistance machine you'll end up going so fast it becomes difficult to maintain good technique. The higher difficulty settings are more useful on a magnetic resistance machine.

It's funny you just mentioned this because we just learned a few weeks ago in physiology about Henneman's Size Principle: that the somatic nervous system recruits smaller skeletal muscle motor units (1) followed by larger motor units as the amount of force needed increases.

That would make resistance training by rowing in water better fit than some magnetic resistance machine based on what you described. Air also has same property like any other fluid, your average big body of water has enough viscosity for this property to matter at speeds we don't need cybernetics and Tommy John's surgery to survive.

(1) A motor unit is just all the muscle fibers controlled by 1 motor neuron. With this single source of signals, all those muscle fibers respond the same way.

Better yet swimming... but both biking and swimming require a thing, where running does not.

Skipping rope is also a great option. Cardio is up there with running and it's not as hard on the knees. We usually start every session at my muay thai gym with it, and whenever I travel I'll just throw a cheap rope in my bag.

I do love just getting out and running though!

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