Improved determination of mechanical power output in rowing: Experimental results.

In rowing, mechanical power output is a key parameter for biophysical analyses and performance monitoring and should therefore be measured accurately. It is common practice to estimate on-water power output as the time average of the dot product of the moment of the handle force relative to the oar pin and the oar angular velocity. In a theoretical analysis we have recently shown that this measure differs from the true power output by an amount that equals the mean of the rower's mass multiplied by the rower's center of mass acceleration and the velocity of the boat.