Very interesting, I would certainly be ready to try it, in case you manage to get the interest, thanks for sharing👍
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Sander_Roosendaal - if you have some thoughts on this, especially wrt the impending integration of Rowsandall and Intervals.icu, I’d be very happy to hear them here or via PM. 
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I’m the lead developer of OpenRowingMonitor, and we mimic both the PM5 and FTMS. As far as I can tell, FTMS does not provide a structured workout push at all. The PM5 can, but it is a sloppy protocol. I documented my findings here: openrowingmonitor/docs/PM5_Interface.md at main · JaapvanEkris/openrowingmonitor · GitHub
Let me kniw if you are ready with your app, and I’ll test it with ORM as well.
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To be honest, in my opinion, ictrainer.com offers the same (and even more).
Sounds awesome - totally agree that rowing is quite a bit behind cycling. I’m a coach and a masters rower. I set training plans for our club and getting people to do long slow distance slow enough is a constant challenge. I’m very interested i anything that helps people with pacing different sessions.
I love the idea of the W’ meter - it must be possible for people to use something like this in their interval training - possibly in test pieces as well - just in being able to gauge when things are going to get a bit “lungy”.
Happy to help with testing or just giving it a go when you have something live to play with.
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The w’ meter is still mostly for entertainment value while I try and make its calculations more accurate and less battery draining. We’ll see if it makes it but it is fun.
Are you on iOS? I think I’d like to distribute the app via TestFlight in the next few weeks and your profile sounds like my target audience.
Yes, I’m on iOS. I do have a work profile on my phone that sometimes prevents techy things working properly so I’d have to see if test flight worked with this. Happy to join in testing though.
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Very interesting! I’m a rower guy, been in the sport for many years and recognize your frustration with the “old” way our sport has trained and been coached. About 10 years ago, inspired by Allen and Coggan’s “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”, I made the transition to power-based rowing and haven’t looked back. Your “player” app looks a little like Golden Cheetah’s Train mode which I used to use on the bike but could never get it to work on the C2 erg. I’m a believer in the value of monitoring W’ and MPA so your "live W’ balance looks very interesting. All told, yes please, sign me up. I’m on Android and would be happy to help any way I can.
In the replies, somebody suggested getting with @Sander_Roosendaal. That would be a great idea. His web app rowsandall.com is excellent but is going end-of-life soon. He’s transitioning his users to Intervals.icu and your app might be just the thing to enhance that project. Also, something for your to-do list: add the ability to upload workouts to the Concept2 Logbook. Thanks.
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Mike let me know that my name was mentioned here. The app sounds awesome, and I’d love to test it and play with the W’ value. Regarding the sunsetting of Rowsandall and the integration with intervals.icu, David and I are still in the planning phase. I think Intervals.Row is orthogonal to that.
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It’s good to know you like the look of it - I think it’s a bit hard for most rowers to see the long term vision but we’ll get there. 
I think the element of this I’d most like your input on is output file formats so it works with everything you and Mike end up implementing for Intervals.icu. Whenever you have some guidance there I’ll get the work done to make sure we get all the data we can into here. 
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OK, this is pending a decision with David on which measured quantities (“metrics” in ugly sport data science language) will be supported in intervals.icu.
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I’ll start producing an MVP with fit files and the usual data classes then. Force curve analysis in intervals would be delightful though!
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See discussion in Support for rowing data / migrating from rowsandall.com
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Just as a little update:
The Workout UI is entering into final draft territory. All elements of rowing workouts work as expected - at least with the stress testing I can do. Just finalising features around how the app exports rowing fit files and we’re at MVP for rowing workouts.
Also added a ‘Power EQ’ feature, which I’ve not seen before either. This essentially modifies FTP-based workouts to your specific physiology archetype… Important since most 2k rowers will be using 2k times for FTP calculations and will never have a 30-40m+ TTE for their FTP so they need most stuff z4 or below tuned down a little.
I also added strength workout running functionality that is synced to intervals.icu. It stores and tracks workouts and 1RM for all exercises on intervals.icu as a single source of truth. It supports the majority of the Liftosaur weight lifting scripting language - aside from custom progression logic. Just copy and paste Liftosaur code into a library workout and you can have auto-calculating 1RM progressive overload workouts. In fact, most of this part of the app is heavily inspired by Liftosaur, which is an excellent AGPL app but just lacks intervals.icu integrations (although my implementation is only marginally better in this regard).
Working on something similar for mobility training as well, so we can schedule everything and run everything for rowers in one interval.icu hooked-up app.
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This looks amazing! I would be very interested in trying it out (and financially supporting), I do 4-5 workouts on the ergo or berg per week and track them all with Ergdata + Intervals.icu currently.
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This looks excellent. I would imagine that quite a bit could also serve SkiErg workouts hopefully? Perhaps not optimal but likely better than Ergzone at least & meshing into Intervals which Ergzone doesn’'t. Ideally if the workout type would allow an option to change to nordic skiing from rowing then it should work pretty well with Intervals probably. If so then I am definitely on board with my $5 pm.
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I don’t have a ski erg but if it just plugs and plays with the bike erg then I imagine it would work fine. 
Will test at some point and report back.
I must admit though I do need to scope limit this project to just Rowing so I don’t go insane. 
From what I can tell it should be almost the same needs as for rowing. The PM5 monitor is the same, reporting the same metrics to the same apps (e.g ErgDate & ErgZone). The workouts can be the same in many cases e.g. C2’s WOD (workout of the day) is the same for rowing & SkiErg and double distance for BikeErg. But a way around that anyway would be to form an Interval’s SkiErg group where users can share libraries of specific workouts. This is basically what ErgZone seems to be doing. And now we have lots of excellent AI coaches meshed into Intervals they can do the heavy analytic lifting of the data that your app could supply & formulate Plans etc.
In terms of your focus you can just say that using it for SkiErg is an “off-patent usage” & you will offer limited dev support in that regard. So, essentially, it seems to me that just having SkiErg as an activity option (so that it sends it to Intervals as Nordic Ski rather than row for those that do both & so need seperate FYPs/zones set up) is the main need for it to initally work for most purposes. Then dependent on take up you can decide how much extra support/adaptation you feel is warranted or feasible from your perspective. Perhaps a post on the Concept2 SkiErg Forum or r/skierg (Reddit) is worth it to scope exactly what is involved in case I am being naive (quite possible as a newbie SkiErger).
As a final sales pitch for you creating Intervals.SkiRow, I will point out that the athletes with the highest VO2 Max tend to be cross country skiers & VO2 Max is highly correlated to life expectancy. So a huge bonus for skiers & their families; & any subscription costs for your app will probably be far exceeded by the extra pension or investment income people gain from those extra years of life. So you would be potentially extending their lives for free &/or a potential profit.
| Sport | Elite Male (ml/kg/min) | Elite Female (ml/kg/min) |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-Country Skiing | 80–90+ | 70–80 |
| Road Cycling | 75–85+ | 65–75 |
| Running (Marathon) | 75–85 | 65–75 |
| Rowing | 68–75 | 60–70 |
| Triathlon | 70–80 | 60–70 |
Well, I’ve set up the app so it’s quite customisable already. It filters for specific activities with some sensible defaults for rowing, but there are already settings options that let you display any intervals.icu activity type you wish to.
For the activity profile/ftp, that is set to rowing or virtual rowing, but it should be simple to put the same user-chosen options for which profile is being selected. So I’m mostly sure one could already use the app with a SkiErg mostly fine.
Ultimately, this is an app I’m making for rowers though so I’m probably going to avoid the work that makes using a SkiErg/BikeErg a smooth and sensible experience - at least for phase 1.
I’m also dubious about your cost/life expectancy argument at the end but I appreciate the effort. I also think I’ll just release this for free with a donation option so they will likely not need to invest - thus infinite value!
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Sounds great. When i am the first 100 year old at the Virtual SkiErg World Championships I will send you my age group winner’s medal like with Trump’s Nobel Peace Medal as you will probably be reason I got there.
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