The Correlation Between Pre-Competition Training, Stroke Power Monitoring, and Race Time in Indoor Rowing

The purpose of this study is to provide data-driven training optimization tools for indoor rowing coaches and athletes, provide quantitative reference for training monitoring and performance analysis in a controllable environment, and help improve the scientific level of competitive performance and training management. To address the absence of quantitative analysis regarding the relationship between rowing power load and competition time during pre-competition training, this study introduces a sequential attention pooling with monotonic constraints (SAP-MC) to systematically analyze data from the rowing power sensor system. The results show that the model effectively captures the negative correlation between power output and competition time. Specifically, when the average power is increased from 230 W to 290 W, the competition time is reduced from 435.2 s to 409.6 s, resulting in a significant reduction of 25.6 s (p < 0.001). When the coefficient of variation of power output (cv_power) increased from 0.08 to 0.18, the competition time was prolonged by 14.2 s (p < 0.01). In addition, when the acute-chronic load ratio (ACWR) exceeds 1.2, compared with the optimal range (0.9–1.1), the competition time is increased by about 6.8 s (p < 0.05). The overall analysis shows that the average power output and power stability are the most critical variables affecting the change of competition time, followed by training load balance and segmented pace optimization. The research results validate the scientific significance of power monitoring and provide a reference for quantitatively analyzing the correlation between training load and race time in a controlled indoor rowing training environment.