SPONSORED FEATURE
Now consider the drive phase: by
Making Every Stroke Count
WORDS DES JACOBSEN
The founder of Oar Inspired was frustrated by the lack of detailed analytical equipment for the rowing stroke, so he decided to invent some himself
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f you just received a copy of this magazine at a regatta, watch a few races and ask yourself this question: why do crews, coxswains and race announcers focus on strokes per minute when the winning
crew is often rating two or three points lower but still pulling away? I returned to rowing after a 16-year
absence and found myself in a Masters “C” eight that was just not competitive. We had the physical size of the other crews, we seemed to have the same fitness and we could definitely out- rate them in the last 250 metres but in comparison, our boat speed just was not there. Crew debriefs became a series of “it felt like” and “I think” or “we should have” statements as every crew member (including the coxswain and coach) gave their best guess as to what we needed to do differently. It became obvious that with a lack of any useful measurement, we had no way of really knowing why we
did not have the boat speed, or how to improve it. Winning races is not about counting
every stroke, it’s about making every stroke count. If we simplify the race for a moment and say there are 200 strokes, and then simplify each stroke into the catch, drive and finish, we will leave the recovery out of our equation and assume the boat is level and the oars are not dragging on the water. Improving the efficiency of the catch, getting the blade in sharply and the power on a fraction earlier we could probably find an extra two to three cm (an inch) of run. Given the length of typical stroke two to three cm is not much at all.
not over-driving the legs (yes we know it makes impressive puddles), and transitioning the power through to the arms to accelerate the boat as long as you can, a further improvement in boat run of two to three cm is possible. A further two to three cm is achievable
at the finish, by extracting the oar cleanly and not checking the run of the boat. Now do the maths; (3cm + 3cm + 3cm)
x 200 strokes = 1,800cm. That’s 18 metres. If you are in an eight, that’s a boat length. Being in a crew that is not as
competitive as it should be is frustrating. Frustration can drive you crazy. I often think I must have been, to leave my well- paid job with a large software company and start my own company to develop performance measurement technology for competitive rowing. However, thirteen years later, and after an investment that I don’t want to calculate as it would make me cry, I have a last achieved what I set out to do.
Oar Inspired IntelliGate® The heart of the Oar Inspired solution is our patented IntelliGate®. Replacing the standard Oarlock or Rollick, our IntelliGate® measures the sweep angle, force, depth and timing of each oar. With measurements taken approximately 1000 times per second, an on-board processor then calculates the key data points like reach, catch, and power on angles and securely transmits the data as soon as
Des Jacobsen, Managing Director and Solutions Architect
ROW360 // Issue 001
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