Rowing with Young Children

I write this as a mother of three kids who has continued to row reasonably regularly throughout my past 20+ years of mothering. I have done this for several reasons:

• Rowing keeps me physically fit and healthy so I can keep up with my kids!
• Rowing keeps me mentally healthy and is a great stress reliever. This is also very important and makes me a better Mom.
• I do a limited amount of competitive on-water rowing, so it is important to me to keep training.
• I want my children to see that rowing is important and enjoyable to me.
• I want my children to see that all of the above things are priorities in my life so that hopefully they will make them priorities in their own lives as well.

So, given that you want to keep rowing, there are two basic approaches:

1. Make arrangements so that your day can include some kid-free time when you can row. This may be done in a number of ways, though these will not work for every one, nor will they always be predictably reliable.
   1. Let your husband have the kids to himself for an hour.
   2. Take advantage of time when your kids are in child care.
   3. Get up early or stay up late to find time when the kids are asleep.
   4. Set up an exchange with a friend or neighbor who also wants some personal time.
   5. See if the local health club offers child care (and has a C2 indoor rower).
   6. Row during naptime.
2. Get creative and come up with ways to involve your children in your rowing so that it will be possible for you to row while they are present. Even if you prefer not to do this all the time, it will come in handy when your other arrangements fall through. Note: As your children grow and change, so, too, will the ways that you can involve them in your rowing. The following suggestions are arranged in developmental order more or less:
   1. Eye exercise: When my kids were very little, still sitting in their car seat, they would often (not always, of course) be very content to watch me row for a reasonable period of time. It was fascinating to watch their tracking ability improve month by month. In the earliest days, they would not be able to keep up with me—their eyes would be at the finish when I was at the catch, and vice versa. But as they grew, they became better able to follow me and stay in sync with me. Rowing is a nice rhythmic motion, so sometimes it would even put them to sleep!
   2. Shared gym time: Set up a baby gym next to your rowing machine. It can be in a playpen, or on a blanket on the floor. Provide a variety of things for your child to look at and touch and play with—preferably including some things that are new, or reserved only for rowing time. This will make them special and interesting so that hopefully the child will be busy learning about them long enough to give you a good workout.
   3. Rowing nearby: Once your child gets more mobile and better at keeping him or herself busy, you can often get a good workout by moving your indoor rower close to the play space. IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: Make sure your children stay away from the sliding seat. The seat could catch fingers or clothing and cause injury. Position your indoor rower so that you can watch your children play without being right in the middle of their play space. You can also do this outdoors.
   4. Playing "Health Club": "Let's pretend that you are the people running the health club and I am one of the people coming to use your exercise machines." Help your kids set up a pretend fitness center. They can run aerobics classes, lift weights, even offer child care for busy exercisers. If they're into writing, they can make signs for the machines and classes, and sign up sheets for participants. They can practice telling time as they watch to see when your allotted 20 minutes (or whatever you can get) are up!
   5. Taking turns: When your kids get interested in rowing, which may happen any time from about age three on, you can start taking turns. Their turn won't be nearly as long as yours*mdash;at least not at first! Let them go first, and then they may be happy to go do something else and let you keep rowing. If they want more turns, use their turn as a rest period and make it an interval workout. Again, practice telling time: "I'll row for five minutes, then you row for one minute."
   6. Rowing math: There's lots of great math that can be done with rowing, from just learning to write numbers, to adding them up, to converting them to distance on a map, to graphing them. Start by showing your child how to keep a logbook. Concept2 provides free logbooks, and we're happy to provide them for kids as well as grownups. Or simply start with a piece of paper taped to the wall next to the rower. They may also be interested in helping you keep your logbook, too. This may make them more interested in having you row more meters, because then they'll have more meters to record for you—a real "win-win" situation!
   7. Join the C2 Kids' Club (and the grown-up Million Meter Club!): We offer a series of graduated Kids' Club Distance goals for your kids. They can earn patches and certificates by logging their meters and then sending the completed log in to Concept2. This parallels our Million Meter Club for grown-ups, whereby grown-ups can also earn prizes, making a great experience to share with your kids!

Hopefully some of these ideas will work for you as you try to keep rowing through the mothering years. Most importantly, keep your sense of humor, and remember that this phase will pass all too soon!

Readers: We welcome you to send us additional ideas—the things that work best for you—so that we can share them here.

About the author, Judy Geer: Before her three kids were born, Judy competed as a member of the US National Rowing Team for nine years, including the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics. She also coached women's rowing at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and continues to coach sculling at the Craftsbury Sculling Center in Vermont for one week each summer. Since marrying Dick Dreissigacker and having a family, she has continued to train and race, not only in rowing, but also running and cross-country skiing. Judy joined Concept2 in 1983 after getting her Master's Degree in Engineering. She is now a member of the Marketing Team and enjoys the challenge of keeping Concept2 customers motivated and enthusiastic about rowing. Her kids are now all older than 18, having long since outgrown the backpack and racing stroller. They have all become athletes in their own right and Judy is having a harder and harder time keeping up with them.