INDOOR
WaterRower John Duke had one clear aim when he started
WaterRower: he wanted to create a rowing machine that could harness the resistance of water.
WORDS ANT ADEANE // PHOTOGRAPHY WATER ROWER T 30
he year was 1988 and Duke, an engineer and a lightweight rower at Yale University, was on the verge of something very special indeed. He wanted to move
away from the mechanical feel of fan rowing machines and instead to build a piece of exercise equipment that more accurately emulated the dynamics of a boat moving through water. Starting off as more of a hobby than a business, Duke honed his craft, ironing out the kinks in his design until he had a product of which he was truly proud. Duke started off selling one or two machines per month from his home in Rhode Island. Then it grew to one or two a week and before long he was taking his rowing machines along to expos, sleeping in his car to save money. Soon word began to spread, and more and more machines began to sell, and suddenly it wasn’t a hobby anymore. It was a business. And this is how WaterRower was born. Duke’s most striking innovation
was the WaterFlyWheel. Most rowing machines imitate the action of rowing without approaching the actual experience of moving a vessel through water, but the WaterFlyWheel aims to change that. It works from a principle familiar to all rowers: that an increase in the speed of the boat through the water causes more resistance against the oars,
resistance to equal the amount of the work that your body is putting in. In this way, then, the WaterRower may be unequalled in its replication of the experience of rowing. It is a company that, despite its long
history, has always kept abreast with cutting-edge developments in the rowing machine world. Fan machines, for example, were, for a time, favoured by rowing clubs over the WaterRower. So in 2010 the company developed the Oartec Slider, an attempt to improve on their dynamic rowing machine. The Oartec Slider, used by college and school programmes ranging from Harvard in the US to Radley School in the UK, is designed specifically for rowers rather than the wider fitness community. The Slider further enhances the feeling that you are out on the water rather than on a machine. Its appearance, too, is a major part
and therefore requires more effort from the rower. The WaterFlyWheel uses the rule of cubes to achieve this effect: a doubling of speed requires an eightfold increase in power. So, in effect, the more work you put in, the more resistance you must deal with. It means that there is no need for users of the WaterRower to key in their settings and to risk overloading their bodies by mistake. On the contrary, Duke’s machine automatically adjusts
of WaterRower’s appeal. Eschewing the mechanical, functional look favoured by the majority of the rowing machines on the market, WaterRower machines have a sleek and stylish design that aims to fit in to the living room as much as the gym. Metal designs (the WaterRower M Series) are perhaps more suited to gymnasiums, but the wood model (the WaterRower Oxbridge) could easily be imagined in the home. Rather than the mechanical creaking sounds made by most rowing machines, the WaterFlyWheel omits a gentle shushing
ROW360 // Issue 001
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