In our pain cave, in addition to the trainers and treadmill, we also have a Concept 2 rower. Although Zwift has not really implemented rowing on the platform(and they don’t plan to anytime soon), you may have heard that you can row on Zwift with a Concept 2 rowing machine. I have done it a few times myself just to see what it is like, and it works pretty well, the only issue is when your activity uploads to Strava it will upload as a ride not row, and if you switch it to a row, the pace will be messed up. A work-around to this is later on in the article. Here is a step by step article on how you can row on Zwift.
BUY PERFORMANCE RECOVERY SYSTEM
Download Painsled/RowedBiker
To row on Zwift you will need one of the two apps, Rowedbiker(Link to google play version: Google play version) or Painsled(link to google play version: Google play version), both work pretty well but I prefer to use Rowedbiker. You can also find both of the apps in the Apple app store.
Connect Rower
Once you have the app downloaded and open, hit the menu button on your Concept 2 rower (Note: This is only compatible with the PM3 head unit or newer). Once you are in the main menu, hit connect. The screen will then say whether it is already paired to a device, if it is and it’s not the one you want to use, then hit disconnect, and then reconnect.
Connect Zwift
Once you have the Concept 2 rower paired with the app, you should be able to pair your rower/device to Zwift. You will need one device running Rowedbiker/Painsled, and one running Zwift. You can also use this as an Ant+ Heart Rate Monitor(HRM) bridge. It is a painful process to bridge the HRM, but if you really need to use a Heart Rate Monitor, then this is a way to do it. You can pair a HRM to the Concept 2, pair it to the RowedBiker app, and then it will pair to Zwift as the name of the device you are using, along with the model number(ex; iPad 7th Gen 128428). A more in depth article on bridging Ant+ and bluetooth can be found on this article: How To Bridge Ant+ and Bluetooth Zwift.
Row!
It would be great to see rowing on Zwift eventually but I think we will have to wait a bit longer to see this implemented. Thanks for reading and I hope you found this article helpful!