Best stroke
The Strokes envelope draws every force curve from a piece as a hairline, the median in red, and one stroke in ink. That ink stroke is the best stroke — the one whose drive held its force closest to its own peak, start to finish.
What it is
Every other stroke fades into a hairline behind it. The best stroke is the one drive that spent the most of itself near its own maximum, rather than spiking and dropping off. It's a shape judgment, not a power judgment — picked from the strokes that were already doing real work, not the whole piece indiscriminately.
The rule
Only strokes at or above the median watts of what's on screen are candidates — the whole workout, or the selected interval when you've picked one — so an easy stroke can't win regardless of its shape. Among those, each stroke scores its average drive force divided by its peak drive force; the highest ratio wins. A stroke that spikes to a high peak and falls away scores badly by construction, even if that peak is the biggest number in the piece.
What it's not
Not the hardest stroke — the highest-watts stroke of the piece can lose to a flatter one with a lower peak. Not a technique grade — it says nothing about catch angle, sequencing, or anything the force curve's shape alone can't carry. It needs a PM5-captured workout with a stroke-by-stroke force curve; results synced from Concept2 don't have one. And with fewer than three usable strokes, nothing is drawn — one or two curves isn't enough to call a best.
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