Why Is It Called a Rowerg or Erg?

[ant_in_wales]

Hello
Anyone has been in a gym has seen a Concept 2 rower, and maybe the name "Concept 2" has stuck in a lot of people's heads.
It has to be one of the best known brands in fitness.
So why isn't it called a "Concept 2 Rower"? What is an "Erg" anyway? Have you ever heard anyone use the word in normal life?

[Sakly]

Hi,

an erg is an ergometer, typically a machine to train your endurance. It could be elliptical, bike, treadmill or - a rowing machine.
rowErg
bikeErg
skiErg
-> names refer to the type of ergometer, that is all the magic.

[iain]

Strictly an ergometer is a machine for measuring work. Mechanical work is the useful energy expended and more commonly ergometers measure work per unit time, ie "power". The conversion of the measured power into a pace is a calculation based on an estimate of the pace that a 4 would be moved at if that amount of work was done by each of the 4 oarsmen.

I suspect the rebranding to rowerg is to both allow similarity to naming of thei 2 other products (skierg and bikeerg) and to get around a peculiarity in American competition law that forbids the trademarking of any name that has become synonymous with the product (ie the danger that others would be able to call their copies Concept2's if the term Concept2 was a common name for an accurate rowing ergometer.

[Tsnor]

"Why Is It Called a Rowerg"

Because C2 marketing / product planners junked the naming system used by C2 for years (model A, B, C, D, E) in order to get unified names across C2's product lines (rowerg, skierg, etc.)

Be interesting to see if there was a sales bump associated with the name change to offset the pain. The name change made many of the C2 and non-C2 online documents less useful - you have to know that a "rowerg" and a "model D" are the same and google for both. There's also complexity around part fitment.

Be interesting to see what they call the next gen in each erg type... The rowerg model B ? Rowerg Model F ? Rowerg model 2 ? Dynamic Rowerg model F ? NewRowErg ?

[jackarabit]

To Iain the coveted Golden Prony Brake Award for noticing that the Bros. D didn’t hang the moon.

[Ombrax]

I thought that maybe they'd skipped Model F and gone straight to G.

(jk, of course)

[gvcormac]

Concept 2 has long called their rowers "rowing ergometers" because they are ergometers. At least since 1988 when I started using a Model B.

They are ergometers because they measure energy delivered to the flywheel. As noted by previous responses, the measured energy can be displayed directly as power in watts, or indirectly as pace/distance/calories.

Row Erg is just a stylized contraction of the formal name "rowing ergometer."

[mict450]

I miss the model alphabets! RowErg sounds too generic.

[alien878]

An erg is 0.0000001 J. I once heard someone say it is about the same work as a fly doing a push-up. My math is a bit rusty, but I think it is closer to a mouse push-up. To bad the PM5 doesn’t have an option to display ergs.

[gvcormac]

An erg is 0.0000001 J. I once heard someone say it is about the same work as a fly doing a push-up. My math is a bit rusty, but I think it is closer to a mouse push-up. To bad the PM5 doesn’t have an option to display ergs.

Just multiply the power in watts by 10 million to get ergs/second (not sure what if any special name there is for that).

Or multiply average watts by 10 million by number of seconds to get ergs!

[alien878]

Or multiply average watts by 10 million by number of seconds to get ergs!

But seeing 50,000,000,000,000 erg/hr on the display would be sooo much more satisfying than 800 cal/hr.

Note: I never use calories in the display because, for various reasons, I don’t find it useful.

[gvcormac]

Or multiply average watts by 10 million by number of seconds to get ergs!

But seeing 50,000,000,000,000 erg/hr on the display would be sooo much more satisfying than 800 cal/hr.

Note: I never use calories in the display because, for various reasons, I don’t find it useful.

Yes, I so wish they would display KJoules (i.e. ergs/10000000000). Much more informative than calories, which guesses at your metabolic efficiency and adds in (estimated) base metabolic rate. I want to know net Calories/Kjoules. Again, you can subtract 300*hours from carbs to get (estimated net burned calories).