Test Your Rowing Power with the 7-Stroke Max

Archive post from 1/4/21

When rowers ask me about testing one-rep maxes to gauge progress from strength training, I usually try to steer them to the seven-stroke max (7SM) evaluation instead. The 7SM evaluates the general physical adaptations that we’re attempting to gain with strength training, but in a more rowing-specific manner and without the injury risk or training impact of testing 1RM lifts.

The 7SM is better for assessing rowing peak power and physical changes from strength training than a 10-stroke test or a 60-second test because the shorter duration stays within the range of the phosphagen system, using adenosine trisphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine (PC) to power high intensity output for short durations. After about 10 seconds, we’re transitioning out of the phosphagen system and into the glycolytic system, using sugar to fuel performance in the range of 30 seconds to two minutes. Seven strokes gives us a nice sweet spot of enough strokes to smooth out small variations in power, but not so many strokes that we push into longer durations and out of the peak power phosphagen energy system range.

These aren’t just my ideas. Rowing researchers Nugent et al. evaluated this protocol in their 2019 article, “Within-Session and Between-Session Reliability of the Seven-Stroke Maximal Effort Test in National Level Senior Rowers.” They did five 7SM test sessions with 10 male competitive rowers (6:27 average 2km erg), with three in one single session to evaluate within-session reliability and then one each in a second and third session to evaluate between-session reliability. They found similar results across tests, concluding that the 7SM test is a “reliable, practical, and readily available” method of testing rowing power.

Here are some short key points for doing the test yourself. The big key point in any testing is consistency. We want the results of the test to be influenced by physical or physiological changes, not by strategy, altering technique, or other gimmicks to artificially increase performance. Whatever you choose from the below options, just keep it consistent from test to test.

Warmup: As you usually would for a training session or erg test, then keep this consistent for 7SM testing sessions.

Drag factor: Whatever you want, just keep it consistent from test to test (Nugent et al. used 140, other studies have used 200, plenty of rowers have used 110/120 if that’s what they train at).

Rate: Unrestricted to focus on power output with near-zero cognitive load.

Starting sequence: Start from a dead-stop and row full-slide strokes with no starting sequence.

Technique: As close to normal erging as possible. Full stroke length on each stroke. You might get a few extra watts from over-compressing, early arm-bend, or long laybacks, but who cares? We want test results to be influenced by physical changes, not strategy or altered technique.

Erg screen: The biggest snag here is the lack of a 7-stroke or 10-second function on the C2 performance monitor, since the test goes very quickly and ideally the rower can’t see the screen to be influenced by the results. You’ll need a recorder (video and/or assistant) and a spreadsheet. Record the watts for each stroke, plot these in the spreadsheet, then average them out if you want to track average watts as well as peak watts. You can use a workaround within the C2 Erg Data app (set it up to sync to online logbook) or third-party apps like RowHero or Remote Rowing Coach. Read more specifics here.

Three trials: Perform three 7SM tests with four minutes of rest between each one. You won’t feel aerobically challenged by this test and you may be tempted to cut the rest time short, but the full time is necessary for the ATP to recharge for the next effort, and to allow the erg flywheel to come to a complete stop.

Peak/Average: You can analyze the data in a few different ways to inform your training. You can look at both peak watts achieved on just the highest stroke, average watts from the highest score of each trial, and/or average watts achieved across all seven strokes. All numbers offer insight and should improve with training.

Re-Test: Every 4-6 weeks using as similar conditions as possible. A shorter time frame won’t be enough to make physical improvement to demonstrate in the test results.