Stroke profile

The stroke profile is a map of your strokes on a fixed grid of power against stroke rate. Shaded by count, it shows where you row. Shaded by a stroke reading, it shows how you row there. Tap a square to see every stroke in it.

The gridCopy Anchor Link

Power runs up in 25 W steps from 100 W. Stroke rate runs across in 2 spm steps from 18 spm. Strokes below or above the grid land in the open squares: under 100 and 500+ for power, <18 and 36+ for rate.

The grid is the same for every athlete, every window and every machine of a kind, so a square never moves. Watts are worked out from each stroke's own pace. Strokes faster than the machine's pace floor are dropped as glitches. On the RowErg that is 1:00 per 500 m.

On the BikeErg the grid is power against cadence, and the map shows counts only.

Stroke countsCopy Anchor Link

Every stroke counts, whether it came from the Concept2 Logbook or from a piece you rowed with Ergon. Squares are shaded in five steps on a log scale, up to the busiest square in the window. The legend shows the counts each step covers. Any square with a stroke is shaded.

Length, Peak at, Ratio and ForceCopy Anchor Link

These maps shade only from strokes rowed with Ergon, because only those carry a force curve. Logbook strokes have none.

Each map has a scale in five steps.

• Peak at: 30 to 55% of the drive, the same for everyone. Published figures for where the peak falls sit inside this range.
• Drive ratio: 0.40 to 1.00, the same for everyone. That runs from a steady 1:2.5 to a race pace 1:1, so steady rowing sits in the low steps.
• Drive length: centred on your own median drive length on this machine, with each step 3% of it.
• Peak force: centred on your own median peak force on this machine, with each step 12% of it.

Drive length and peak force depend on your height and size, so one scale for everyone would give most athletes a single shade. Their centre is your median over the last 90 days of strokes rowed with Ergon, whichever window the map shows. It is rounded to 1 cm or 5 lbf. Changing the window never changes a square's shade. Until 300 strokes rowed with Ergon are behind that median, those two maps show outlines and dots only.

A square needs 15 strokes with that reading to be shaded. A square with 15 or more strokes in all, and fewer than 15 with force curves, is drawn as an outline. The legend keys it Concept2 only. A small dot marks a square with a few strokes rowed with Ergon, too few to shade.

The reading in a square is the median of its strokes. The red mark on the legend shows the tapped square's value on the scale.

The tapped squareCopy Anchor Link

The tapped square has a red outline. The page opens on the square with the most strokes rowed with Ergon in the window. With none, it opens on the busiest square.

The header gives the square's power and rate, how many strokes landed there and how many of them have force curves. Below it, every force curve in the square is drawn over the others, with the median in red. At most 600 curves are drawn, thinned evenly. The four readings under the chart are the window's medians for that square: drive length, drive ratio, peak at and average over peak force.

A square with strokes but no force curves shows No force curves here yet, and its four readings are dashes.

What it cannot tell youCopy Anchor Link

• Technique. A force curve can be consistent with a fault. It cannot name one.
• How you compare with another athlete. Drive length and peak force are scaled to you. The fixed ranges for peak at and drive ratio come from published figures, but they are not norms.
• Anything about strokes the monitor never logged. The map holds what reached the Logbook or was captured by Ergon.