The Stats tab estimates your FTP (functional threshold power) from rows you've already done, with no separate test to go and do, and uses it to work out a set of training zones and a couple of other numbers. This page explains what each one means and where it comes from.
FTP is roughly the highest power you could hold for about an hour without your effort falling apart. Row harder than it and you're spending a limited reserve that runs out; row at or below it and you can keep going for a long while. It's the same name and the same idea cycling and other endurance sports already use - this is that, for rowing.
Every row you save already feeds the "Power curve" card just above this one on the Stats tab: the best power you've ever held for 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 20 minutes, and so on, out to your longest row. FTP is fit through the points on that curve between 3 and 20 minutes - the range where a hard effort mostly reflects sustainable aerobic power, rather than a sprint at one end or a multi-hour pacing strategy at the other.
A real all-out hour is not a realistic ask, so FTP here is estimated the way most training tools estimate it: from shorter maximal efforts, using the Critical Power model (Monod & Scherrer's two-parameter model):
power = CP + W′/duration
CP is what this card calls FTP. W′ is a second value the same fit produces - a reserve of work above CP that drains on hard efforts and refills on easy ones - which explains the shape of the formula but isn't shown as its own figure here. Turn duration into 1/duration and the formula is a straight line, so fitting it to your best-effort points is ordinary line-fitting: no different in kind from drawing a trend line through any other set of points, just applied to this curve.
That's why it needs more than one hard row to appear at all: a single point can't be fit into a curve. A hard 5 minutes and a hard 15 minutes, rowed on different days, are enough to get started. The more different lengths you've rowed hard, the steadier the number - and it updates on its own whenever a new row beats a previous best anywhere in that range, not only after a specific "FTP test".
It stays hidden until it has enough spread to trust: at least three efforts of different lengths, with a good enough fit between them. If your rows tend to be similar lengths, the fastest way to unlock it is to row one considerably shorter and one considerably longer than usual, both close to all-out.
The zones table turns FTP into training bands, each a share of it - a common way to describe training intent without arguing over exact pace every time:
| Zone | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Recovery | Easy movement, active rest between hard sessions. |
| Endurance | Long, easy steady-state rows at a conversational effort. |
| Tempo | Comfortably hard - sustainable for a long while, but noticeably working. |
| Threshold | The edge itself: hard, sustainable for tens of minutes and not much more. |
| VO2 max | Hard interval efforts a few minutes each, with rest between. |
| Anaerobic | Short, very hard efforts, around a minute. |
| Sprint | All-out, over in seconds. |
Pair a heart rate strap (Connections tab) and each row also gets a watts-per-heartbeat figure: average power divided by average heart rate. It doesn't need a hard effort - an easy steady row works fine, arguably better, since the point is comparing the same kind of effort against itself over time.
Rising over weeks and months means the same effort is costing your heart less: a sign your aerobic fitness is improving, even before your race pace has moved. Falling can mean fatigue, heat, dehydration, or just an off day - one low reading isn't a verdict, the trend over time is what matters.
Without a strap paired, this card stays empty. Nothing else on the Stats tab needs heart rate data.
None of this comes from a lab test or a fixed protocol - it's fit from your own rows, so it's only as good as the variety of efforts behind it, and it will drift if your rowing habits change (every row lately being about the same length, say). Treat it as a useful, moving estimate to pace training by, not a certified number.
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