Rowing is many things to many people. 

To competitive rowers, the sport of rowing is an ultimate challenge:  How hard can you push yourself physically and mentally using the whole body to move the boat fast, use good technique, control your body, and time your movements precisely with your fellow rowers (if you are not in a single)? 

To rowers for health, recreation and fitness, rowing is a non-impact activity that you can do at your own pace.  And with the development of indoor rowing machines in our lifetimes, it is possible to row for health and fitness indoors wherever and whenever you like. 

To all of us as we age, it is a way that we can maintain energy and strength to live the lives we want.  Whether or not it fights off aging, it can fight off the weakening effects that come with aging, the muscular deterioration that naturally occurs as we get older. 

To the non-athlete/never an athlete/uncoordinated, it offers a simple but challenging motion that does not require ball-handling skills or team strategy, does not call for having practiced a game since grade school, but rather is something you can begin at any age and enjoy and thrive at on your own or in the comfort of other adult rowers. 

To everyone concerned with the ill effects of a sedentary lifestyle and other health threats, rowing on your own indoor rower at home is a private way to get the blood flowing and get the muscles working to enhance your body's own natural disease-fighting mechanisms; and rowing together with others offers a shared challenge to disease and a rewarding path toward heightened fitness and improved health.