The Best Heart Rate Monitor For Rowers

 The Polar FS1 is an entry level Heart Rate Mon­i­tor which is per­fect for those who want the train­ing ben­e­fits of heart rate mon­i­tor­ing, with­out spend­ing a for­tune on fea­tures that will never be used.

The Polar FS1 has a clear easy to read dis­play which shows the time of day, heart rate, exer­cise time and aver­age heart rate. Easy one-​​button use makes the Polar FS1 extremely easy to use.

Polar FS1 Features:

    * Wire­less ECG accu­rate heart rate.
    * Aver­age heart rate of total exer­cise.
    * Exer­cise Time.
    * Heart rate (dis­played as bpm)
    * Visual and audi­ble alarm in tar­get zones.
    * Man­ual tar­get zone.
    * Time of day.
    * Stop­watch.
    * Water resis­tant 50m.
    * Polar T31 trans­mit­ter and elas­tic chest strap.

If you’re look­ing to spend lots of money for lots of unneeded options then this is not the heart rate mon­i­tor for you.

How­ever if you want some­thing that is sim­ple to use, well thought out, and does what it says on the box this mon­i­tor could be a winner.

It comes from Polar, a well known and respected heart rate mon­i­tor man­u­fac­turer. It uses the pop­u­lar Polar stan­dard chest strap so reli­a­bil­ity shouldn’t ever be a prob­lem. The strap itself is easy to adjust and is as com­fort­able as any other on the market.

The watch is ridicu­lously sim­ple to oper­ate as it has only a sin­gle but­ton. The unclut­tered dis­play with extra large num­bers makes read­ing the watch while erg­ing or sculling very easy.

Polar claims the bat­ter­ies will last for 2 years with 1 hour of exer­cise use per day. Sadly after this you have to send the watch off to Polar for a bat­tery replace­ment. While not expensive,it is an incon­ve­nience, even if it does help main­tain the unit’s water resistance.

This watch is a great value way to com­ple­ment the infor­ma­tion the erg gives you, it pro­vides sim­ple feed­back when you are sculling or running.

The only down side to this prod­uct is that it doesn’t have Polar’s shield­ing tech­nol­ogy. This means that it is pos­si­ble the mon­i­tor might pick up other sig­nals from other mon­i­tors being used in close prox­im­ity, like on the next erg, or in a team boat.

This is a very easy to use prod­uct, it does what is required at an unbe­liev­ably cheap price. How­ever the lack of shield­ing tech­nol­ogy and thus poten­tial inter­fer­ence from sim­i­lar devices means it is prob­a­bly best suited to sin­gle scullers and those who tend to erg by them­selves. There are def­i­nitely bet­ter mon­i­tors out there, but with the Polar FS1 the price is most def­i­nitely right and you’ve got to ask your­self — do I really need more?

Polar FS1 Heart Rate Mon­i­tor Watch (Dark Blue)
 

The Sigma Onyx Clas­sic Heart Rate Mon­i­tor is easy to use and has a very attrac­tive design. It focuses only on the most impor­tant stuff which is why the Onyx Clas­sic is so easy to use. The Clas­sic comes with a dig­i­tal coded chest belt which helps the user have fault-​​free train­ing in a group. The Onyx Clas­sic is avail­able in Black.

Strik­ing details make all the dif­fer­ence on this dig­i­tally coded heart rate watch. The most notable is the very easy to read dis­play with large fig­ures and the watch’s ease of use thanks to a flex­i­ble dec­o­ra­tive ring instead of but­tons. The pro­gram­ma­ble train­ing zones and the calo­rie counter pave the way towards healthy training.

# ONYX CLASSIC Fea­tures Dig­i­tal coded trans­mis­sion
# Easy to read dis­play with large fig­ures and pic­tograms
# Eas­ily oper­ated by press­ing the flex­i­ble dec­o­ra­tive ring
# Train­ing mode with 1 adjustable HR zone
# ECG-​​precise
# Back­light
# Water resis­tant
# Calo­rie Counter

Sim­ple to setup, easy to syn­chro­nize the mon­i­tor with the chest-​​band, and quick to pick up heart­beat. Can be worn on wrist, wrapped around oar/​erg-​​handle, or wrapped onto the rig­ger. All these options allow easy read­ing of pulse rate with­out any drop­ping of beats. Mul­ti­ple units can be used in team boats with no inter­fer­ence. At the start of train­ing, syn­chro­niza­tion takes place between the coded chest belt and the heart rate mon­i­tor. As a result the watch only receives data from its own chest belt. There is no inter­fer­ence between mul­ti­ple mon­i­tors in the same boat. The bat­ter­ies are eas­ily replace­able in both the watch and chest strap. This is a great unit at a great price for crew boats and is per­fect for high school teams or for those who like to erg in groups.

Sigma Sport rep­re­sents Ger­man tech­nol­ogy at its high­est level, com­bin­ing inno­v­a­tive design with pre­ci­sion engi­neer­ing. Sigma tests all their prod­ucts in their in-​​house lab­o­ra­to­ries to with­stand the harsh­est con­di­tions, ensur­ing qual­ity con­tin­u­ally through­out production.

SIGMA ONYX Clas­sic Heart Rate Mon­i­tor Watch

The SUUNTO t6c black wrist-​​top com­puter is more like a fully equipped
sports lab­o­ra­tory than a heart rate mon­i­tor. The watch will pro­vide a
com­pre­hen­sive per­son­al­ized phys­i­o­log­i­cal analy­sis on your PC. The
dig­i­tal cus­tomiz­able menu is easy to use. The unit dis­plays real-​​time
train­ing effect and EPOC (excess post exer­cise oxy­gen con­sump­tion - 
oth­er­wise known as oxy­gen debt). Using optional add-​​ons or Periph­eral Obser­va­tion Devices (PODs) the unit can dis­play speed, dis­tance and
cadence (cycling) in addi­tion to being a real-​​time heart rate mon­i­tor and calo­rie mon­i­tor. The t6c also acts as a chronome­ter fea­tur­ing dual time, date, alarm, stop­watch with lap timer, inter­val and count­down timers.

The Suunto t6c heart rate mon­i­tor was designed for every­one who exer­cises seri­ously with the goals of improv­ing their fit­ness and achiev­ing high level of com­pet­i­tive per­for­mance. The Suunto t6c pro­vides accu­rate infor­ma­tion on seven key body para­me­ters includ­ing EPOC. By under­stand­ing how the body responds to exer­cise, the ath­lete, with or with­out a coach, can bet­ter plan his or her per­sonal train­ing pro­gram and, most impor­tantly, mon­i­tor its effectiveness.

The Suunto t6c is an invalu­able tool that brings lab­o­ra­tory accu­racy to every train­ing ses­sion you or the ath­letes that you coach do. Data such as changes in heart rate, EPOC and train­ing effect can be down­loaded to the com­puter by the ath­lete. This gives the coach/​physiologist the abil­ity to ana­lyze data from sev­eral ath­letes based in dif­fer­ent train­ing loca­tions. The data can be used to make fine adjust­ments to the train­ing pro­gram and opti­mal train­ing loads can be cal­cu­lated to pre­vent over­train­ing and the con­comi­tant risk of injury and illness.

The prin­ci­ples of EPOC and train­ing effect apply equally to elite
ath­letes as well as to those seek­ing seri­ous improve­ment in fitness.

The Suunto t6c is one of the most accu­rate and use­ful sports
instru­ments cur­rently on the mar­ket. The Suunto Team PODs open
up new pos­si­bil­i­ties for con­trol­ling train­ing pro­to­cols. Coaches can fol­low the heart rates and the per­cent­age of max­i­mum heart rates of all their ath­letes live on the screen dur­ing train­ing real-​​time — even, for exam­ple, all eight row­ers in a row­ing shell — and if needed, adjust the train­ing indi­vid­u­ally on the fly. The mea­sured data is shown, ana­lyzed and stored live. This helps ensure that not only every ath­lete is train­ing at an opti­mal level but also that the opti­mal team result can be achieved.   

The PODs expand the per­for­mance range of the Suunto t6c. With the Suunto GPS POD a row­ing crew can fine tune the effec­tive­ness of its row­ing — for exam­ple how much energy each rower has to expend to obtain a cer­tain boat-​​speed. The GPS POD can be used to ensure that speeds and dis­tances are accu­rately mea­sured dur­ing impor­tant train­ing ses­sions regard­less of water and wind conditions.    

Beside train­ing on water the ath­letes can also run, erg and bike with the Suunto t6c. The periph­eral devices from Suunto offer more data for com­plete analy­sis of all train­ing activ­i­ties. The Bike POD expands the Suunto T6C to a com­plete wire­less bike com­puter, and the Foot POD works accu­rately for every run­ner with­out the need for a GPS receiver.

This sophis­ti­cated instru­ment can become a key com­po­nent in the seri­ous athlete’s quest for excellence.

Suunto t6c Heart Rate Mon­i­tor and Fit­ness Trainer Watch (Black)