The machine hums at a slow, steady pace as Cory Cook rows back and forth, his eyes focused on the time counting off on the screen in front of him.

In khaki shorts and a gray T-shirt, capped with a Harley-Davidson hat, Cook is in the middle of rowing 4,500 meters, or nearly 4 miles, in a floor full of rowing machines in Cambridge, Mass.

But it isn’t your average machine.

A black vest hugs Cook’s chest tight against the seat, his feet are strapped to foot boards and his legs held in place by two knee braces. Gray electrode stickers encircle his thighs, their wires running to a sensor next to him.

Cook’s fiancee, Colline Drevet-Miller, sits on a machine beside him, sending emails from her phone and crunching on rice cakes.

He’s not tired at the end of his hour and a half of exercise, he says.

“I can’t feel any of it in my legs.”

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