Turning 40 Was Awful. This Rowing Machine Helped Me Find Acceptance.

WHOEVER ACTUALLY SAID the phrase “comparison is the thief of joy” must have uttered it the day after their 40^th birthday.

I’d probably heard the phrase in my twenties, but that was when the true thief of joy was a hangover. I know I heard it in my thirties, but that was when the thief of joy was parenting two young children. Disclaimer: I love my kids!

But I only ever felt the phrase—down to the very center of my now surely plaque-ridden heart—after I’d woken up after my birthday celebration and realized that I was 40 years old and one day.

I don’t think I was fooling myself as I approached my forties. I’d been skeptical about articles on how men who embark on “middle age” (a term that has only ever evoked chainmail and broadswords) can feel more confident, empowered, and resolved. Yet I started to compare—not only to the guys I know who had crossed this age threshold before me, but to myself.

Or, more specifically, the 20s and 30s versions of myself who have always viewed a 40-year-old me as “old.” Why aren’t you further along in your career by now? my ambitious 25-year-old snarked. What happened to all your energy? the 32-year-old sneered. You used to be so much fun. Everyone else your age seems to be having fun, so why can’t you have fun? my collective youth repeated in unison.

During those first two weeks after turning 40, comparison had not just robbed me of my joy—it had blindfolded me, shoved me into the back of a used Chevy Astro, and peeled out to a place unknown.

I tried talking about my feelings with some older guys I know. (Not reassuringly they told me they “didn’t even remember turning 40.”) I tried talking it out with my wife. (Though, not yet 40 herself, she seemed skeptical, as I once was.) I tried working it through journaling, but the doom only intensified.

Then, through an unintended birthday gift, help arrived.

Not So Gently Down the Stream

AT FIRST MY Hydrow Wave only made things worse.

I was initially excited to test the indoor home rowing machine largely because I’d started rowing at the gym. As a warmup to my weight workout, I was rowing 3,000 to 4,000 meters, then 4,000 to 5,000, and then finally the row became most of my workout. The idea of having a cutting-edge, internet-connected machine in my basement sounded amazing.

Setup of the Wave took me less than an hour, and soon I was touch-screening my way to technique tutorials, guided workouts with Hydrow’s highly energetic cast of trainers, and non-guided excursions along some of the most beautiful coastlines and inlets in the world.

From the outside, you might think that there was no better way for me to work through a midlife crisis. The machine was far less expensive than a Corvette. (The Wave, with a free month of their full-access membership, currently costs $1,695). The Wave took up only one wall of my basement (L x W x H: 80” x 19 “ x 43”), so I didn’t need to conduct a full-scale man cave renovation. And if I ended up not loving the thing as much as I thought I might, it wasn’t as permanent as a tattoo.

But then there was the damn leaderboard. On the vast majority of rows, there it was, running vertically down the right side of the 16-inch HD screen. A stacked hierarchy of fellow Hydrowers luring my eyes away from the instructor whose form I was supposed to be mirroring and the stroke metrics they were telling me to monitor. What distracted me wasn’t only my position on the leaderboard, but who was around me. And, more specifically, how old the people were.

Every man I saw in his 40s I made my personal enemy. If a 40M was ahead of me, even by a meter, I cursed him out and cut him down. Oh, up yours RowingDad4Life. Don’t you know I’m in my very early 40s? That’s basically 39.

In my vindictive state, I’d pass the guy, but my posture would slouch, my shoulders would tense, and my breathing would gasp and stutter out of rhythm. Instead of finding my flow—something I loved about rowing at the gym—the leaderboard would toss me into a torrent.

“I recognize the pros and cons of the leaderboard,” says Mike Dostal, 46, a Hydrow athlete and nationally ranked rower and kayaker. “When I used to jump on the Hydrow, I was super competitive. I was like, ‘I’m paid to do this. I should probably be right at the top of this leaderboard—and if I’m not, I’m going to kill myself to do it.’”

Was super competitive. Dostal says he joined the Hydrow team around when he turned 40, and he had to move from the intensity of his long athletic training sessions to coaching virtual users through 15-minute workouts. Dostal told me that his 40s didn’t so much slow him down as they did help found balance, a settling of sorts.

There I was jamming on the handle of the Hydrow as I attacked any 40M on the leaderboard. “Did you have a good workout?” my wife would ask as I would emerge from the basement, my shirt soaked through with sweat. “I finished in the top 100,” I’d say through gasps, a response I only now realized didn’t answer her question.

Balance be damned, maybe tomorrow I’d crack the top 50.

SHOP THE HYDROW WAVE ROWER

How I Learned to Love the Leaderboard

ALONG WITH PUSHING myself up in the rankings, I also started doing longer rows. While Hydrow’s programming features a ton of 5-minute warm-ups, 10-minute sweats, and 15-minute interval sessions, you’ll also find more endurance-focused 30-, 45-, and even 60-minute-plus rows. (Not to mention their cool-down rows, yoga, and strength-training offerings, which I dabbled in.)

After rowing every day for three weeks, my upper and lower body felt considerably stronger, my stamina was way up, and I was looking leaner and more tapered overall. But none of that mattered as I continued to base my performance according to where I landed on the leaderboard. Longer rows tended to have fewer competitors, so that’s where I was putting in the work.

Then hubris, age’s oldest friend, hopped in the boat with me. I forget exactly which row I was deep in the middle of—maybe a 40-minute tour of Town Cove—but I was struggling. I’d come off the dock strong and was pulling into the top 10 percent of the leaderboard when around minute 25 I started to feel the drag. My glutes went numb. Sweat burned my eyes. I couldn’t hold my form.

As I slowed my strokes-per-minute, my leaderboard position slipped. I watched 40Ms and 50Ms topple my ranking. What’s the point? I remember thinking.

Then I witnessed a 60M pass, followed by a 70M, and suddenly my world cracked open. The point, Paul, isn’t how you compare to all these other guys—it’s that all these guys are doing this with you.

With me.

All these guys in their 40s, and well beyond, had made the choice to buy a Hydrow and use it. They were all cranking out and racking up meters—some had badges indicating they’d rowed a collective 1, 3, or 5 million—all in the name of staying fit and healthy. The fact that a user in his 70s had passed me wasn’t demoralizing, it was inspiring.

After this mid-row epiphany, my workouts started to change. I paid less attention to the leaderboard and focused more on my form. My split times came down naturally. I still felt competitive, but I also felt camaraderie.

Or, as one of my favorite Hydrow athletes, Aquil Abdullah put it during one of his sessions: “The leaderboard is there to push us and support us.”

Abdullah, 52, is an absolute legend in rowing. He’s won numerous championships and competed in the 2004 Summer Olympics. When I told him about my leaderboard change of heart, he said he understood.

“It reminds me of something that a coach said to me. He said that ‘Every other team on the starting line is just the foil—the race is against yourself.’” Abdullah says. “It’s easy for us to get distracted by what other people are doing, both in competition and in life, but when we can center on what it is that we are trying to achieve, we get closer to achieving that goal.”

Abdullah says that the antidote to leaderboard letdown is intention. “Every workout is not a race,” he told me. Some days, a workout is a steady Zone 2 drumbeat. Some days, it’s a stress-testing interval gauntlet. And, sure, maybe some days it’s a blast-atop-the leaderboard surge. My rows had started falling off the wheels because I never determined where I wanted to go. Now I had the right attitude and a plan.

Wide Open Waters

IN THE WEEKS after I talked to Abdullah, before I even activated my Hydrow’s touchscreen, I’d set an intention for my workout. I even (gasp!) started deactivating the leaderboard on days when I wanted to do a long, non-guided endurance row. During those workouts of solitude, I began to notice things.

The rhythmic, whisper-quiet hush-hush-hush of the rower’s handle on its glide path. The touch of my shoulder blades kissing as I reached the top of my pull. Two—no three!—white herons threading through wetland, their reflections reversed on the water’s glassy surface. Little things that were also big things because they pulled me from my 40s and into a specific point in time.

These moments of acuity grounded me and made me realize something: Comparison is the thief of joy, but—through intention and presence—I could steal it back.