How your rowing scores are calculated
A guide to the numbers on your analysis
Every rowing analysis produces two headline numbers and three supporting ones. This guide explains what each measures, what feeds it, and how much each input counts, so you can read a report without guessing. It describes the scoring in general terms — the reference ranges themselves are not published, because a score you can aim at directly stops measuring the thing it was built to measure.
01·0–100, shown alongside a letter grade from A to D
Technique score
How closely each stroke matches the reference rowing positions.
What it measures
The technique score compares the positions your body reaches at the key points of the stroke — the catch, the drive, the finish and the recovery — against reference positions drawn from published rowing biomechanics. It answers one question: is this stroke shaped the way a well-rowed stroke is shaped?
How it is built
Each stroke is scored on every technique check that could be measured in your footage, and each check contributes according to its weight below. The stroke scores are then combined into the session score you see at the top of the analysis. Checks that could not be measured reliably — a joint the camera could not see, for example — are left out rather than guessed at, so a session filmed from a poor angle is scored on less, not scored wrongly.
What feeds it
| Input | Weight |
|---|---|
| Catch | |
| Forward body angle How far the trunk hinges forward from vertical at the catch. Sets the length of the stroke. | 1.5× |
| Shin angle How close the shins are to vertical at the catch — the marker of full compression without over-reaching. | 1.2× |
| Arm extension How straight the arms are at the catch. Bent arms pull early and take the drive away from the legs. | 1.0× |
| Knee compression How deeply the knees are bent at the catch, which sets how much leg drive is available. | 1.0× |
| Drive | |
| Drive sequence The order the body segments accelerate: legs, then back, then arms. The single heaviest check, because opening the back early both leaks power and loads the lower spine. | 2.0× |
| Leg–back connection Whether the seat runs away from the handle early in the drive — the fault usually described as shooting the slide. | 1.3× |
| Handle path How level the handle travels between the catch and the finish. | 1.0× |
| Finish | |
| Layback How far the trunk leans back past vertical at the finish, and whether that lean is controlled. | 1.5× |
| Leg extension Whether the legs finish their drive before the back and arms complete the stroke. | 1.0× |
| Trunk swing Total trunk rotation from catch to finish — how much length the trunk adds across the whole stroke. | 0.8× |
| Recovery | |
| Recovery sequence The order of the recovery: hands away, then body over, then knees. Leading with the knees crowds the recovery and rushes the catch. | 1.5× |
| Body set Whether the trunk stays where it was set during the recovery rather than drifting on the way to the catch. | 1.2× |
| Slide rhythm The ratio between the time spent driving and the time spent recovering. | 1.0× |
What the number means
| Score | Grade | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 90+ | A | Excellent Positions hold close to the reference across the session. At this level the useful work is refining rhythm and holding the shape under pressure, not correcting it. |
| 80–89 | A− / B+ | Solid A sound stroke with a small number of specific things to tidy. The fix list on the analysis is short and worth working through one item at a time. |
| 60–79 | B / B− / C | Developing The stroke works but at least one position is consistently off, and it is likely costing both speed and comfort. This is the most common band for newer rowers, and the one where technique work pays back fastest. |
| 0–59 | D | Needs work Several positions are well outside the reference, or the footage was too unclear to score them properly. Check the filming guidance first — a bad angle produces this band on a good stroke. |
What it will not tell you
It measures shape, not power. A rower can hold near-perfect positions and still pull a slow split, and a strong rower can score modestly. It also cannot see what the camera cannot: a joint hidden behind the body for most of the stroke is excluded rather than estimated.
02·0–100, with a confidence figure alongside it
Performance score
How well the stroke held together across the whole piece.
What it measures
Where the technique score asks whether your stroke is shaped correctly, the performance score asks whether you held that shape. It is built from how repeatable your strokes were, whether they degraded as the piece went on, and how efficiently the stroke was put together.
How it is built
It combines the three pillars below in fixed proportions. It needs several strokes before it can say anything at all — a handful of strokes cannot show a trend — so short clips show the pillars without a composite. The confidence figure beside the score reports how much measurable data went into it.
What feeds it
| Input | Share |
|---|---|
| Pillars | |
| Consistency How repeatable the strokes were. Weighted highest because repeatability is what makes any other improvement stick. | 40% |
| Durability Whether the stroke held up as the piece went on, or drifted as fatigue arrived. | 35% |
| Efficiency How well the stroke was put together — rhythm, connection and the absence of wasted movement. | 25% |
What the number means
| Score | Reading |
|---|---|
| 90+ | Excellent The stroke was repeatable, held up to the end of the piece, and was efficiently assembled. |
| 80–89 | Solid The stroke largely held. Look at which of the three pillars is lowest — that is where the piece was actually lost. |
| 60–79 | Developing Something moved across the piece: either the strokes varied, or they changed shape as you tired. The pillar breakdown says which. |
| 0–59 | Needs work The stroke changed substantially across the piece. On a hard test this often means pacing rather than technique. |
What it will not tell you
It says nothing about how fast you went. A rower can hold a very consistent, very durable stroke at a pace well below their capability and score well here. Read it next to your split, never instead of it.
03·0–100 · 40% of the performance score
Consistency
How alike your strokes were to each other.
What it measures
Consistency measures how much each stroke varied from the next across the session. It looks at the same positions the technique score uses, but asks a different question: not whether you hit the position, but whether you hit the same position every time.
How it is built
For each measurable position, the spread across your strokes is scored, and those are combined into the pillar score. A rower who is consistently a little off scores better here than one who alternates between right and very wrong — deliberately, because a repeatable stroke can be corrected and an unrepeatable one cannot.
What feeds it
| Input |
|---|
| Measured across strokes |
| Position spread How much each key position varied from stroke to stroke. The analysis lists the three most variable. |
| Rate hold How steady the stroke rate was across the piece. |
What the number means
| Score | Reading |
|---|---|
| 90+ | Excellent Strokes are close to interchangeable. This is what makes coaching changes stick. |
| 80–89 | Solid A repeatable stroke with some drift in one or two positions. |
| 60–79 | Developing Noticeable stroke-to-stroke variation. Rate work and steady-state pieces move this number fastest. |
| 0–59 | Needs work Strokes vary enough that any single stroke is a poor description of the session. |
What it will not tell you
Consistency is not correctness. A stroke can be flawlessly repeatable and repeatably wrong — which is exactly why the technique score is reported beside it rather than merged into it.
04·0–100 · 35% of the performance score
Durability
Whether the stroke survived the piece.
What it measures
Durability looks for drift: positions that were fine early and slipped later. It is the pillar that tells you whether the stroke you were coached on is the stroke you actually row at the end of a hard test.
How it is built
Each measurable position is tracked from the first stroke to the last, and steady movement in one direction is scored as drift. Where the analysis can identify the stroke at which the stroke shape changed, it marks it so you can jump straight to that point in the video. It needs a longer piece than the other pillars before it reports.
What feeds it
| Input |
|---|
| Tracked across the piece |
| Position drift Steady movement in a key position from the start of the piece to the end. |
| Break point The stroke at which the shape changed, where one can be identified. |
What the number means
| Score | Reading |
|---|---|
| 90+ | Excellent The last strokes look like the first. Fitness and technique are matched to the piece. |
| 80–89 | Solid Minor drift late in the piece — normal under real load. |
| 60–79 | Developing The stroke measurably changed shape. Worth checking whether this is fatigue or pacing. |
| 0–59 | Needs work The stroke broke down during the piece. The break point on the analysis shows where. |
What it will not tell you
Drift is not always a fault. Deliberately building rate or changing pressure through a piece reads as drift here, so read it against what the piece was meant to be.
05·0–100 · 25% of the performance score
Efficiency
How well the parts of the stroke work together.
What it measures
Efficiency scores the stroke as a mechanism rather than as a set of positions: whether the sequence connects, whether the rhythm is right, and whether movement is being spent on anything other than moving the boat.
How it is built
It draws on the phase-spanning checks — sequencing, connection, handle path and slide rhythm — rather than on single-instant positions. Some of these are inferred from movement patterns rather than measured directly; the analysis marks how each contributor was established, and inferred ones count for less.
What feeds it
| Input |
|---|
| Contributors |
| Drive and recovery sequencing Whether the body segments move in the right order in both directions. |
| Leg–back connection Whether leg drive transfers into the handle rather than into the seat. |
| Handle path Whether the handle travels level rather than looping. |
| Slide rhythm The balance between drive time and recovery time. |
What the number means
| Score | Reading |
|---|---|
| 90+ | Excellent The stroke connects and the rhythm holds. Little is being wasted. |
| 80–89 | Solid A well-assembled stroke with one contributor lagging. |
| 60–79 | Developing Sequencing or rhythm is costing you. Usually the highest-return thing to fix on this list. |
| 0–59 | Needs work The stroke is not connecting. Slow, low-rate technical work moves this faster than hard pieces do. |
What it will not tell you
Several contributors are inferred from movement rather than measured directly, and the analysis says which. Treat a low efficiency score as a strong hint to review the footage, not as a settled verdict.
How repeatable is this score?
Measured on 57 real sessions: re-analysing the same footage moves the score by 0.6 points on average.
- Typical repeat spread
- 0.6 pts
- Mean across 11 groups of repeat analyses of the same clip, each put through an independent pose pass.
- Worst repeat spread
- 3 pts
- Down from 24 before the scoring rebuild. That worst case is one clip analysed five separate times.
- Identical input
- 0 pts
- Given the same pose data the grader is exactly deterministic — verified on every repeat pair in the corpus.
- Evidence base
- 57 sessions
- 745 strokes and every checkpoint reading in them, re-scored from stored pose data.
Every analysis keeps the pose data it was graded from, so the entire history can be re-scored offline whenever the scoring changes. Repeat analyses of the same clip are compared directly, and a committed set of reference results fails the build if any past session's score moves unintentionally.
Repeatability is not accuracy. These figures say the same footage gives the same answer — not that the answer matches what a coach would say. Filming matters too: the score is measurably more reliable when the camera is square to the boat and the feet are in frame.