I’ve been using a Citius Remex seat pad with my Concept2 RowErg for about a month now, and it’s made rowing better for me, and made me better at rowing.
For context, I’m a 38 year-old semi-decent land-lubbing amateur – the kind of ‘rower’ who’s clocked up 3.6 million lifetime metres without ever stepping in a boat. I erg in my front room four mornings a week before the kids get up and they kick me off to play the PM5's fish game, but I’ve managed to drag myself into the 75th percentile in the Concept2 rankings for my age and weight
More importantly for this review, I’m tall - 189cm (6ft 2in) - and (though I tried to think of more flattering words for this) bony, weighing in at 72kg (159lbs). The height helps, but my sit bones have really taken one for the team over the years. My brother and I erg together occasionally, and he’d notice that during intense sprint training I’d feel the need to get up off the seat between intervals to ease the pressure – turns out not everyone does this. Towards the end of the workout, my sit bones would be protesting even louder than my legs, lungs and heart.
For a long time, I knew about the Citius Remex but was nervous of the price. I used a regular foam pad for a few years, and then tried bolstering this with a folded towel. No good. Eventually I gave in and coughed up for the Remex, and I’ve not looked back.
Despite the initial oddity of a pad that feels more like a bike seat than a boat seat, the benefits were immediately obvious. The way the pad distributes my weight more evenly has significantly reduced the pressure on my sit bones, and I can pull harder for much longer before my sit bones have anything to say about it. This has massively improved my comfort and allowed me to focus more on performance.
This was exactly what I’d hoped for. Another positive I hadn’t anticipated, though, was the general improvements to my posture delivered by the moulded shape of the seat pad. It encourages a more upright position at all the right moments of the stroke, and I’m sure this will improve my efficiency and, over time, help to stave off some injuries. By now, any sense of the pad feeling odd is long gone, I don’t even notice it’s there. And for the amount of time I spend on the rower, the cost is pennies per session – easily worth the outlay.
One final question you might have is: High or Low?
I got lucky with an excellent supplier at www.Fwd2row.co.uk who let me try out both. It was a tough call, but I settled on the Low version. The mouldings on the High are significantly more pronounced (see the pictures).
This served to do an even better job of relieving the vertical pressure on my sit bones – but the Low does a great job of relieving the pressure too, and I felt it was likely to be a better long term fit for my physiology. My brother has the High and he’s delighted he stuck with it.
In conclusion, the Citius Remex pad has hugely improved my experience and enjoyment of rowing, and I now wouldn’t row without it.
Highly recommended.