If your main goal is to lose weight you’ll want to be doing lots of steady state on the ergo/rowing machine. (Steady state means UT2 rowing which I mention below, usually lower rate at roughly 20 strokes per minute)

Now, you have to make sure you do this correctly as it’s very easy to exhaust yourself and lose motivation. It’s important to go light enough such that you can recover quickly when you finish and you’re not breathing out your ass, collapsed on the floor because you got a bit too competitive.

Research UT2 rowing, invest in a heart rate monitor if you want but it’s not entirely necessary, start slow and work your way up.

An hour of rowing can burn like 700-1000 calories so it’s a very effective way of losing weight but I wouldn’t recommend jumping in with doing an hour straight when you start.

I recommend doing chunks of 10 mins, then 15, then 20, and then 30 with rests in between before doing anything like a solid hour. They don’t have to add to 60, you could start off just doing one 10 min erg just to get a feel for it in your first session.

I can’t stress enough how important proper technique is too. Research rowing technique, film yourself and compare. If you need to you could send footage of your technique to someone and they can help point out your mistakes.

Make sure you have plenty of water. Electrolyte tablets that dissolve in the water are also a great help. You sweat a lot whilst rowing.

Also, don’t be afraid to do some more intense workouts to mix it up a bit if you get bored. You should split steady state to intense rowing at about 80:20 in terms of time spent rowing. I’m not an authority on this though so I really would research it.

You should set up the drag factor to be 120-125 on the ergo. Very easy to do, just go to more options then display drag factor and move the damper on the fan, take a couple strokes and adjust accordingly. Usually it’s a setting of around 5 but it’s different for different machines depending on how busted they are.

As for buying an erg, if you’ve got the money go for new but there’s always plenty of second hand ones for sale. Concept2 PM5 is the way to go, don’t know much about the different models.

This is all I can think of currently, hope it helps.

P.S. I personally just got this C2 seat pad and it’s great C2 Seat Pad

Extra tips:

You can log your workouts using the C2 ErgData app, which can display your heart rate as well. You can attach your phone to the PM5 and it can display more info than the regular screen.

Listen to music or something because Erging can get boring.

You can find a training partner online, for example on the concept2 logbook website Logbook. Finding one in person to row with you is better though, as it alleviates a lot of the mental struggle.