Monitoring your heart rate may improve your overall health and performance, so my suggestion to anybody trying to nail down their MHR is to use multiple methods and monitor your results.
Though simple in theory, if you haven’t been taught the one skill (the rowing stroke) properly, it’s easy to butcher it and make all sorts of crazy mistakes.
The intensity of the workouts will help you to maintain your overall strength and power, even though the level of perceived exertion will be kept within a safe range.