I went ahead and got one. I started this thread in November and I think I ordered it in early January.
I bought it for a few reasons. First off, I was really excited about having a big summer on the MTB. However, I did an ironman in April, so I knew that I wouldn’t really be riding on the dirt in winter/spring. I didn’t want to be totally out of it when I got on the MTB, and I thought that having the RipRow would enable me to do a little MTB specific stuff inside.
Also, this year I’ve been doing a bit more strength training, and the rip is part of that program.
During my IM build I used it very frequently at light resistance/short duration. I basically did it for a few minutes as a warmup for most of my morning runs. I really liked that, it loosened me up (at least I felt like it did).
After the ironman I started increasing the duration and the resistance to build some strength. Unfortunately this summer things got hectic and I didn’t use it quite as frequently as I would have liked. A lot of times I was in a rush to get out the door or on the trainer and I would either forget or I would realize that an extra five minutes wasn’t going to happen right then.
Now my MTB summer is over and cyclocross is starting. I’m going to continue to use it 4-5 times per week, but won’t be doing any super heavy resistance because I’ll be racing every weekend. I know it’s silly to be thinking about 2020 at this point, but I’m not doing IM next year and am planning on using it a lot through the winter.
Okay, that was probably more information that you wanted. End of the day I like it, I’m glad I bought it, and I’m going to keep using it. I had an AWESOME summer of mountain biking (previously everything I did on the MTB was fitness based, I’m trying to improve handling/skills). I can’t say that I was ever thinking ‘oh, I cleared that section because of this specific riprow movement’, but I do think it helped with overall strength and body position. One big thing that I noticed immediately when I started riding in the spring is how much better my legs felt on long descents. My forward quad (that is, the quad on my forward leg) used to BURN after a couple of minutes descending; I used to look for any short mellow section of trail to stand tall and take a break. No more. I can now rip all of my local trails without a second thought, and I spent three days in the Whistler bike park and my legs felt great. I attribute this directly to the rip row and the extra time spent in the descending position.
I don’t think of it as heavy, I think of it as sturdy. It’s definitely well made and over-engineered. It sits in a corner of my office, and I just pull it out, riprow for a few minutes, and then slide it back. That’s on hardwood, it would be definitely more difficult to do that on carpet. I think $1200 is too much (I bought it with a $100 off coupon from the riprow FB page). It would be a steal at $800. I paid the extra $200 (or $150? I can’t remember) for the saddle assembly and the ‘pedals’; that was a waste. I can’t see how the saddle is useful unless you ride without a dropper. The pedals are just pieces of plastic to stand on. I never use them, and if I wanted to, a block of wood would suffice.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.
-Colin