Building a home gym is one of the best decisions you can make for your health and fitness. But if you’re working with limited space and budget, you may be in the tough spot of narrowing down your choices.
If you have to pick just one, a Row-N-Ride® or rowing machine would both make for a great choice. But which machine is the best choice for you? Keep reading to learn about the features and benefits of both incredible machines and decide which one you should get.
Row-N-Ride® Benefits
The cult-favorite Row-N-Ride is packed with features to help you achieve your fitness goals all from the comfort of your home gym. Lose weight, burn tons of calories, and sculpt your body with this full body workout machine.
1. Achieve a Full Body Workout
Use the Row-N-Ride to target your glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves, inner and outer thighs, core, shoulders, triceps, biceps, back, chest, and more! The Row-N-Ride is designed to help you achieve a wide variety of squats and rows - two compound movements involving multiple muscle groups to help you gain strength, tone muscle, and burn more calories all in one go. While it may be designed for squats and rows, there are a slew of other exercises that can be completed off your machine, like deadlifts, glute bridges, incline chest press, bent over rows, and more.
The successor of the Row-N-Ride, the all new Row-N-Ride Pro offers even more options to sculpt your body and create a fun and engaging workout with the optional resistance bands. When attached to the front base of your machine, these resistance bands can be used for a variety of exercises such as kickbacks, inner thigh kicks, outer thigh kicks, bicep curls, rows, shoulder raises, and lots more.
2. Great for Strength Training
The Row-N-Ride is designed for strength training. Strength training is great for building strong lean muscle, sculpting and toning your body, increasing metabolism, and burning calories! An important aspect of strength training is continuing to progress in resistance over time to see results, and the Row-N-Ride has a variety of resistance levels to keep you challenged.
The Row-N-Ride includes 4 levels of resistance - starting with no resistance, you’ll have the option to build strength with your bodyweight. As you progress in your training, there are 3 resistance bands, each approximately 22 LB in resistance, for a total of 66 LB in resistance.
The Row-N-Ride Pro offers even more resistance with 12 total levels of hydraulic resistance and level 12 maxing out at 202 LB. More resistance means more strength building and toning potential! With 12 total levels of resistance, this machine is built to keep you challenged and engaged in your workouts for years to come.
3. Space Saving Design
If you have limited space for a home gym, the Row-N-Ride is designed to maximize your workout all within a compact, space-saving design. Both the Row-N-Ride and Row-N-Ride Pro offer a compact design, as well as the option to fold, making them ideal for small spaces.
Rowing Machine Benefits
1. Achieve a Full Body Workout
Like the Row-N-Ride, rowing machines are designed to work your full body. In fact, rowing machines have been proven to work up to 86% of the muscles in your body. Muscles used include your quads, hamstrings, back, abdominals, shoulders, chest, biceps, triceps, and more!
In comparison to most traditional types of cardio, like working out on a bike, treadmill, or elliptical that is heavily legs dominant, rowing depends much more on the upper body. By working your full body during your cardio workouts, you’ll become more balanced.
One of my favorite things about rowing machines is - unlike sitting on a bike which puts you in a similar position to what you’re probably sitting in already for most of your day. On the rower, you’re moving in a new movement pattern that, when done correctly, reinforces good posture. Good postural strength is something you can carry with you both in and out of workouts to help you move better all day long.
2. Great for Low Impact Cardio
Rowing machines are great for cardio-based exercise. Not to say you can build strength and power from your sessions on the rower, but each session will primarily be based on building your cardiovascular strength, endurance, and speed. If you’re looking to build up your cardio in your regular routine, a rowing machine is one of the best options out there!
Rowing is also a great form of low impact activity. On a rowing machine, you’ll minimize the impact on the joints since your feet are always supported by the pedals. If you’re someone who struggles with joint pain, you may benefit from low impact cardio in your routine.
Low impact is a way to describe any sort of activity that minimizes pounding of the points that can lead to pain and injury and is common in higher impact sports like running or jumping.
3. Sturdy & Durable Design
Rowing machines are more like the machines you’ll find at the gym, as they’ll take up a larger footprint than the Row-N-Ride. However, one of the added benefits of investing in a larger piece of at-home fitness equipment is the quality of materials used to make these machines are exceptionally sturdy and durable.
If you do have space in your home gym to accommodate a rowing machine, the experience is going to be much more like what you may be used to using if you frequent a regular gym. These machines are designed to become a staple in your fitness journey and last for years and years to come.
Is a Rowing Machine or Row-N-Ride® a Better Fit for You?
Want to learn more about these amazing machines? This video has everything you need to know and more about the features, differences, and how to add each of these machines into a balanced routine.
Check out the chart below for a quick breakdown of the major differences and features.
| Row-N-Ride® | Rowing Machine | |
|---|---|---|
| Muscles Worked | Full Body | Full Body |
| Type of Workout | Strength Training | Cardio |
| Footprint | Compact/Space-Saving | Medium-Large Size |
1) Muscles Worked
On both machines, you’ll be able to achieve an incredible full body workout, to challenge a wide variety of muscles, and the largest muscle groups in your body. Keep in mind; a rowing machine is designed for one movement, a standard row, which makes it better suited to repetitive cardio exercise than building strength. Whereas, the Row-N-Ride is built for a variety of exercises which makes it better suited to a well-rounded strength training routine.
2) Type of Workout
The Row-N-Ride is built for strength training, while a rowing machine is better suited to cardiovascular exercise.
While you can perform high intensity intervals and build your cardio on the Row-N-Ride, a rowing machine is better suited to all aspects of a well-balanced cardiovascular routine which includes longer endurance workouts, bootcamp-style classes on and off the rower, high intensity sprints, and recovery sessions.
While you will also build strength and power on your rowing machine, a well-rounded strength training routine incorporates a wide variety of muscle groups and exercises that can be better achieved on the Row-N-Ride.
Both machines have their place in a well-balanced fitness routine. In fact, if you have room for both, the Row-N-Ride and a rowing machine would work incredibly in tandem to create a complete home gym suited to both strength training and cardio.
If you only have room or space in your budget for one, it’s time to decide which aspect of training you’d like to incorporate into your routine.
3) Footprint
Size is also a big factor! It’s important to ask yourself - what do you have space for?
The Row-N-Ride is a bit more compact and can fold away to fit in a small space or store in a closet when not in use.
While a rowing machine is going to take a bit more space, the durability and quality of materials will make this machine a staple in your routine for years and years to come. Many rowing machines are also foldable, which makes it possible to store in a corner when not in use.
I hope this comparison was helpful and helped you narrow down your choice between the Row-N-Ride® and a rowing machine. Regardless of which machine you choose, both machines are amazing and provide so many different options for achieving an incredible workout at home!
