![The handle on the Hydro Pro Rower [left] and the attached screen [right], with a background of water](https://www.insidehook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/hydrow2-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800)
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A couple years ago when I still belonged to a gym, I craved the feeling of walking up the stairs out of the multistory facility and into the fresh air. After 90 minutes of weights and cardio, followed by a sauna or dip in the hot tub and then a rainfall shower with this semi-addicting, highly rejuvenating lemon-lavender soap that they stocked, I felt like a new man. Cliché phrase, but true every single time.
The problem was the feeling I had before I drove to the gym: that I never actually had enough time to do that full workout routine. Tack on a 15-minute drive each way (I live in a gym desert), and I was looking at a two-and-a-half-hour block of time if I wanted to work out in my ideal way (and get the most bang for my buck; this wasn’t a cheap membership!). That ended up not being sustainable for me, and if you’re not getting the minimum recommendation of 150 minutes of aerobic activity and two strength-training sessions a week, you may have found that long gym sessions may not be workable for you, either.
What’s a hard-working, time-crunched person to do in this situation? In the last couple years, a new concept has emerged for this cohort: the “exercise snack.” As Tanner Garrity described in his guide to short workouts, exercise snacks are bursts of high-intensity physical activity that can be under a minute long, but it’s a flexible term that can incorporate any vigorous exercise in a short period of time, up to 10 or 15 minutes in duration. Essentially, you’re trying to unleash maximum effort for a couple minutes, get the blood pumping and the muscles firing, and thus compact your daily fitness quota into a short enough timeframe that you can actually fit it into your busy day.
Hydrow Pro Rower Review: I Didn’t Expect to Love It This Much
Treadmills, bikes and ellipticals are the traditional home-fitness heavyweights. But don’t overlook the rowing machine, especially this model.Exercise Snacks Power Long-Term Fitness
There are plenty of exercises you could “snack” on, including many that don’t involve any equipment. But I’ve been testing a fitness machine that has unexpectedly been an exercise snack hero: the Hydrow Pro Rower.
When I reviewed the electromagnetic rowing machine earlier this year, I noted that my ideal workout with the screen-enabled rower was 35 to 45 minutes long: a five-minute warm-up row, followed by a 20- to 30-minute workout, and then a 10-minute cool-down, usually stretching (which is included in their suite of content). Since then I’ve been branching out and trying Hydrow’s various workout collections, and they now offer a series of “snack rows,” which are high-intensity classes between five and 15 minutes long, all taught by Hydrow athlete Aisyah Rafaee (who also happens to hold the title of Singapore’s first Olympic rower).
“These ‘snack rows’ help to improve cardiovascular health, increase energy, improve your mood, and enhance muscle strength,” Rafaee tells InsideHook. “They shouldn’t replace your long, low-intensity work, as that is where the real foundation is built. Exercise snacks can be done to supplement your fitness. If you’re on vacation or short on time to work out, exercise snacks are a great way to stay consistent and get your workout in.”
That’s the crucial piece here: exercise snacks shouldn’t make up the entirety of your fitness regimen, but for me, they’ve taken on the important role of fostering consistency. Before when I wasn’t able to make it to the gym for a week, I was more likely to keep putting it off. But hopping on the rower in my basement for five or 10 minutes whenever I can fit it in — before work, after my kid goes to bed (it’s super quiet), when I’ve got a little downtime between weekend errands — means I’m able to shake off the cobwebs and the exercise bogeyman, and get the blood pumping again.
Exercise Snacks on the Hydrow
To be honest, it wasn’t Hydrow who really inspired me to consider the benefits of short rowing workouts — it was John Walker, the co-founder of Athletic Brewing. When I interviewed him about his personal and work routine last December, he extolled the virtues of his home rowing machine when it came to his time-strapped life.
“I like efficiency,” Walker told me. “Like getting ready in the morning: my daughter has to brush her hair, so I know that that’s 15 minutes that I can get on the rower. I’ll try to squeeze that in.”
If the COO of an $800 million brewing operation can fit in a 15-minute workout on the rower, so can you (and so can I). But there are a few things to keep in mind.
While Rafaee said there are “no rules about when you can squeeze them in” — right away when you wake up, right before bed, whatever works for you and your schedule — she said that for those worried about jumping right into and out of max-effort exercise, you should consider a short warm-up and cool-down paired with your quick workout.
“A cool-down helps your body return to resting state (aka homeostasis), aiding in recovery and reducing post-workout soreness,” she says. “Warm-ups can include a five-minute row with some accelerations to get the heart rate up or dynamic stretches and mobility on the mat, while a cool-down can be a gentle five-minute row or some stretches and yoga to thank your muscles and joints!”
A quick filter of Hydrow’s classes on the app shows they have 259 five-minute warm-up options and 570 five-minute cool-down options. Plus, besides the six snack rows they’ve compiled into a collection, the company also offers 766 high-intensity classes (as part of their Drive category) that are 15 minutes or less. In other words, you’ve got options!
In an ideal world where I have unlimited time and unlimited money to devote to my physical fitness, you’d find me at the bougie gym 15 minutes away from my house five days a week tossing medicine balls, running intervals on the treadmill while watching Wheel of Fortune and relaxing in the spacious hot tub after. In the real world where exercise is consistently relegated to “optional” on my to-do list for the day, at-home exercise snacks on the Hydrow are something I can realistically commit to. And when I unhook my feet from the straps, guess what? I still feel like a new man, just without the lavender-lemon scent.
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