Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My mom is past 90 and while still ambulatory (walking without assistance), was starting to slow down a bit and have some issues with her knees. I've tried different solutions for her, and walking around the neighborhood with her dogs helped some, but I was looking for something to give her a greater range of motion in her exercise. Picked up Row&Ride and put it together. Not too difficult. Had one extra bolt after, but I think that was for holding a piece in place for shipping and wasn't needed in the final product. Overall, I think it took me about 20 min to get it all assembled and ready to test. The mechanism is a little odd. The foot pedals and hand grips are on the same bar and pivot around the center. The seat rises up and settles down as you pull and relax on the handlebar/foot pedal. The tension comes from 3 bungee cords mounted to the base and the back of the seat. As you 'sit' down, extending your feet and arms, you get a good muscle stretch. Then you pull the handlebar and push with your feet to 'stand up' as the seat comes up with you. If you just park your butt, it's going to be too difficult...the seat is there to keep you in place, but not really rest. The exercise is pulling with your arms and pushing with your feet then relaxing back. The pull is the part that is tensioned with the bungees. There is a counter on the handlebar that has an accelerometer that tracks how many times the bar moves back and forth. That is the only tracking mechanism. What is getting the greatest movement is your hips...dropping down into a lower than horizontal position and then pulling yourself back up gives a wide range of motion to the hips that you can't really get from any other regular exercise. Extending and retracting your arms and legs exercises your back and knees with zero impact. I used it for a bit and can get winded after a few sets, but for my mom, she started just doing 25 reps. We also found out that you need to get a little instruction in use for the first time... When I got on it, I didn't think much about how far down to go... At full extension, you're essentially standing up with the seat bumping your butt. As you settle back down, you should keep tension on the handlebars and peddles. When my mom first tried it, she sat all the way down and didn't have the strength to push with her feet or pull with her arms to get back up. As she was sitting below the horizontal, there was no way to even step off the device. The excessive 'bend' did not give her great faith in the device, and being trapped on it was not a selling point. I helped her off the device. I don't think she could have gotten off on her own, actually, and then demonstrated what had gone wrong. When I sat down on the unit and went all the way down in extension, it was quite the pull to get back up, and if you try to use only your arms or only your legs, the way the pivot is mounted, you're not going to be successful. It takes BOTH an arm pull and leg push to pivot the bar to then be able to rise back up. Just something a little funky about the way this device works. I'm just warning you, don't sit all the way down or you'll have to roll off the device to get back up. Once the way the thing worked was better understood. we reduced the tension from 3 bungee cords to just one. She's learning how to move on the device rather than trying to build up more muscle. After she feels she's no longer gaining, she'll go to 2 bungee cords, etc. She's been using it for about a month now and is up to 70-100 'revolutions' per day. She has found her hips are benefitting from the greater flex provided by the exercise and was surprised when she went up a step ladder to get something from the cupboard and didn't feel any pain in her knee like she usually does. She said the climbed up and opened the cupboard and then realized she hadn't been jammed up on the 2nd step this time like she always had before. Anything that aids in hip and leg flexibility is a good thing, and it's showing benefit to her already. I wasn't certain this was going to are something useful for her or that I'd even be able to convince her to use it, but it is, and she does. She also has found that my suggestion to play some music while working out makes everything easier...focus on the music as you move and not the counter or your breathing, and you'll hit that 100 before you even know it :). The counter, not age ;p