The Mississippi River was smooth as glass, and yet we were barely moving on the boat.
As our first time rowing on the water, we clumsily tried to synchronize our strokes and maneuver the long oars, barely leaving the view of the dock outside the Minneapolis Rowing Club. But the club's three-hour "Rowing Adventure" class, which started in 2016, was meant to give rowing rookies a taste of the sport.
As Patty Ohme Hansen sat at the stern as the coxswain, steering the boat, she yelled out advice. The movement is similar to doing a dead lift with weights, she explained. Use your legs. Look ahead at the person in front of you.
"Don't look at your oar," she yelled.
After practicing on ergometers, or "ergs," inside the club's riverside building, it seemed like it should be easy enough to replicate the sweep rowing technique, holding one oar with both hands in the rowing barge, a wider, stable boat they use for teaching. Not at all.
Away we went — slowly — sweating in the summer heat. The common misconception that rowing uses mostly arm muscles was quickly dispelled as my legs ached.
"You actually train every muscle in your body," said Sabine Johnson, the program director. "It's a sport you can do forever. I think it's more popular because people are looking for an alternative to their sports like running and biking."
The club, which dates to the 1880s, has more than 300 members of all ages — from 11 to 83 — and all abilities, including novice teams and competitors who travel all over to race in regattas. While rowing is an old sport, it's gaining new popularity from indoor rowing classes to people inspired by seeing the sport in movies, books or in the Olympics.
