The coordination and consistency of rowers in a racing eight

Abstract

Recordings of force developed simultaneously by four rowers in a good club-standard eight over a 20-min training run were analysed in terms of mean and variability. The average force-time profiles showed small but distinctive differences between rowers that were maintained as force declined through the run. The variability was examined further in terms of time-series of features extracted from single force-time profiles, including the peak force, duration and interstroke interval. There were consistent positive correlations between rowers in interstroke intervals even after removal of low-periodicity components (trends) in the time-series.