Summer has arrived and so has a new version of the Quiske Rowing App with many usability improvements and support for a new format of Virtual Racing. This blog explains what's new and invites to the first Virtual Rowing Challenge!
Quiske Rowing App renewed
Route View
In addition to strokerate, speed, distance and time the Quiske Rowing App records your rowing route. This enables Virtual Racing in new ways: the Quiske Virtual Rowing Challenges require a route which returns to the starting point, and the sharing of the route shape. The Quiske Virtual rowing races can include time, distance, and route-shape combined with average speed.
The rowing route can be shared easily as a screenshot right from your phone.
Technique View
A summary of your rowing metrics right after your recorded session shows your stroke rate, average split, distance, oar angle and, most importantly, the boat acceleration curve. The shape of the acceleration curve gives lots of insight into your technique (read more below).
Both the Route and Techique Views are available in the Sessions (main screen). The new App allows keeping the sessions locally on your phone even after uploading them to the cloud. The Route and the Technique views contain the most relevant data of each session, but to drill into more detail you can upload your session and analyze it in the Quiske cloud.
What does the Acceleration data mean?
Quiske breaks rowing data into stroke-sized chunks, with each chunk starting at the point of minimum acceleration, which occurs roughly at the catch. The rowing stroke consists of four phases: catch, drive, finish, and recovery and they quality of each is visible in the boat acceleration curve.
Let's take a look at how to interpret the rowing acceleration curve. The below shows the typical acceleration of our own Pentti (60y LW male rowing a Coastal C1X) during one full rowing stroke (catch, drive, finish, recovery) :
The vertical axis shows the acceleration of the rowing boat, which is positive when above zero (green region), and negative (i.e. deceleration) when below zero (red region). The horizontal axis indicates the time, and the curve shows the acceleration during one full rowing stroke (e.g. at strokerate 30 the time it takes to complete one full stroke cycle is 2 seconds):
Catch (1): big deceleration of the boat, important to have a quick catch-> lock the blades to the water to reverse the slow-down and instead start picking up speed.
Drive (2) and Finish (3) : when the blades are pushing water make sure to use the power of your legs first to quickly speed up the boat (first blue arrow) and then engage your trunk to create a large peak in the acceleration (second blue arrow).
Recovery (3 and 4): a clean finish prevents the boat from slowing down at the end of the drive, allow the boat to flow as you recover your hands, swing your body and finally slide up to approach the catch. The re-distribution of your mass with respect to the boat as you slide up creates a surge in the acceleration (final blue arrow) during the latter part of the recovery.
Catch (5 and 1): the entering of the blades in the water makes the boat slow down and the catch should be done as quickly and lightly as possible.
The time spent at the red regions of negative acceleration should be minimized, it's ok to have a large deceleration as long as you manage to revert to positive acceleration quickly. In other words, the steeper you manage to make the gradient of the curve in region 1 the better. If the acceleration curve in region 1 isn't steep it most likely means that there is room for improvement in the catch.
The shape of the acceleration graph is influenced by many factors such as:
- the rower's weight
- the strokerate
- the shape and size of the oar blades
- oarhandling skills
- boattype
The acceleration curve is like the signature or the fingerprint of a rower: it's unique (and very difficult to modify). If you're used to rowing with a certain style it takes thousands and thousands of strokes to unlearn it.
Below the acceleration curves from four different rowers (two women, two men, all in coastal boats strokerates 25-28) . The acceleration curve clearly varies a great deal from rower to rower.
What does your acceleration curve look like?
If you haven't yet measure it why don't you do it with the free Quiske Rowing App ;-)
Welcome to the Quiske Heart Challenge!
The first Virtual Challenge consists of rowing a heart.
The challenge is scored by
- the shape of the heart
- the average speed
In a nutshell: row a good looking heart as fast as you can!
Here's how to enter: Choose unlimited as a time interval, hit start, row a heart shape and end the recording when you have returned to the starting point, i.e. the heart route needs to start and end at the same point.
Choose peaceful waters for the challenge so you can complete it safely.
Take a screenshot of your route view and submit it either to contact@quiske.fi or enter by posting on instagram with #quiskeheart or #Q<3 and tag @quiskerowing. Also let us know your boattype.
The heart challenge runs until midsummer (27th of June) and results will be announced on 28th of June. The winner receives 6months of Quiske Cloud.
We hope you enjoy the new App features and that you'll join the Heart Challenge!
Quiske team
PS.
Heads up for upcoming Virtual Rowing Challenges:
- July: Q6= 6minute U-shaped route
- August: Q10km= U-shaped route
- September: Q30=U-shaped route
The requirement for the route is that it starts and ends roughly at the same spot. Highest average speed wins (separate categories for men and women, and for different types of boat)