Low Resistance Rowing Machine

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the machine is broken and the staff member was simply clueless. Most clubs buy Concept2 rowers and then neglect them, the rower at the hotel in Brussels did pretty much exactly what you described. The rower at my own gym is only slightly better which is one of the reasons I'm glad I have my own at home.

Yup, @sgt1372 is right. I've competed as a rower (on water and machine) and got USRowing coaching certification, so this is a familiar topic.

On a properly-functioning Concept2 machine, women will usually set the machine 3-4, men 4-5. I often work out in a roomful of rowing machines owned by a nationally-competitive NCAA division I collegiate women's rowing team. They set the damper around 4.

You make the workout harder by working harder with proper technique. Very few people in gyms - including, sadly, a lot of trainers - use proper technique. You'll find solid technique information on the Concept 2 web site.

At the catch (hands closest to the flywheel), you are trying to suspend your bodyweight between the handle and footplate, pushing hard with leg muscles, initially keeping the forward body angle until knees are nearly flat, then adding the body swing to use the core and back, and only at the last stage using the arms. At the catch, you want to suspend so you feel as if the weight of your butt on the seat rises ever so slightly (unweights the seat a little). You want to continue that slight unweightedness all the way through the stroke until the arm-pull phase is done. Doing so requires good body mechanics.

You also don't want to whip up and down the slide at 30+ strokes per minute. High spm are sometimes used in racing, but normal workout spm tends to be in the 20s, and when doing it properly, you should be able to get a good workout even down into the teens. Just for fun, here's a young woman setting an age group world record, holding the spm down until quite near the end.

https://youtu.be/kCHbghzpCyg

Makes it look easy, but I'm pretty sure she's getting a workout.

I just realized that in the video I posted above, at about 7:23, you can see the damper setting on the machine. It appears to be a little less than halfway up, so I'm guessing somewhere in the 4-5 range.

Just as a basis of comparison, as a male @ 156# and 67 years of age, I use a damper setting of 5.5 w/a drag factor of 125.

My stroke rate is 27-28spm. This is on the high side but I can't get the proper balance between power and rythym rowing slower. I only row faster at 30-32spm when I'm putting out max effort for a sprint or HIIT.

I routinely row 2500 meters at 27-28spm in 12-12.5 mins which burns 274-282 cals. This is a "moderate" rate of rowing for me (but extremely slow for serious rowers).
This level of effort just causes me to break a slight sweat but not lose my breath.

Don't use a HRM anymore but, based on past experience, I'd guess that my HR is only slightly elevated at around 125-135bpm which is pretty close to my "ideal" HR based on an output of 75-85% of my estimated 153 bpm max HR.

I have been rowing 4x2500 meters (or a variation thereof) for a total of 10k meters/day which takes about an hour w/a 5 min break between sets (almost everyday) for the past 4.5 months.

Have been averaging 50-60k meters/wk or about 240k meters/month so far. However, my goal for the upcoming 2018-2019 rowing season is to row an average of 250k meters/month for a total of 3 million meters for the season.

This is the form of daily exercise that I've discovered works best for me since I can do it 24/7 (at anytime day or not) in the convenience of my home.

Far prefer it to using my expensive LeMond spin bike that now languishes unused. I'm keeping only because I put too much money in it (which I can't get back) and it just looks so pretty where it is. LOL!

Happy rowing everyone!