Best app for school rowing team

[joe james]

Hi there, I am going to suggest bringing on board a team statistician for my sons high school rowing team. We have about 50 active rowers and the team is highly placed. I know we could easily gather each individuals data from the ERG app by C2 but what I would like to do is to have a braniac math student gather all the erg data, stroke length , average stroke rate, HR, etc... basically use this data to drive improvements and to make suggestion for coach to consider. What do you all think the best way to approach this is?

[Tsnor]

Hi there, I am going to suggest bringing on board a team statistician for my sons high school rowing team. We have about 50 active rowers and the team is highly placed. I know we could easily gather each individuals data from the ERG app by C2 but what I would like to do is to have a Brainiac math student gather all the erg data, stroke length , average stroke rate, HR, etc... basically use this data to drive improvements and to make suggestion for coach to consider. What do you all think the best way to approach this is?

If you want to have the math student reinvent the wheel (or create a brand new wheel) Grab the data into a spreadsheet. C2 log export ALL of its data as CSV. CSV data can be read right into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are easy to manipulate, and can be used to build great reports. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are free and have spreadsheets that import CSV data.

That said, there are a number of rowing apps that consume C2 data. I don't use them, but your may find for your team it makes more sense to use a commercial product then to custom built one. At a minimum you should see what they offer so that you know what to ask your Brainiac math student to create. Here's one: https://analytics.rowsandall.com/

Strongly suggest you also look at modern coaching best practices. Data that says that rower A is getting stronger and rower B is gettering weaker is not helpful unless it gives insight into what to change to get rower B back up to speed. Often rower B needs to do less work or different work. Very rarely is "work harder" the right answer. And yet that is the most common answer to "how to I get better?"

[Ombrax]

what I would like to do is to have a braniac math student gather all the erg data, stroke length , average stroke rate, HR, etc... basically use this data to drive improvements and to make suggestion for coach to consider.

Who's the real "rowing/training expert" here, if the statistician is going to gather, process, understand, draw conclusions, and summarize the data which will then be used to make suggestions to the coach? Presumably s/he is "just" a math or spreadsheet expert, and doesn't know a whole lot about rowing. Is it the OP?

I understand that the coach may be too busy to crunch the numbers, but I don't see a rowing exercise physiologist in the picture, who IMO would be the right person to guide the data processing and interpret what it says.

[jamesg]

What do you all think the best way to approach this is?

I'm told there are places where angels fear to tread. This could be one of them. You go first.