Built by Rowers, for Rowers

Polar Industries was founded in 2024 in the United Kingdom with a single goal: give rowers a training tool that actually understands their sport.

We are a team of rowers who spent years logging sessions in generic fitness apps. Those apps are built for runners, cyclists, and gym-goers. They treat rowing as an afterthought -- a second-class activity bolted onto platforms that were never designed for it. Concepts like split time, drag factor, stroke rate curves, and UT2 pacing have no home inside tools that think in terms of miles, elevation, and cadence.

Watta exists because rowers deserve better. We built the app we always wanted: one that speaks the language of the erg, captures data without friction, and gives you meaningful insight into every session you do.

Most fitness apps force rowers into workflows designed for other sports. You finish a hard 10k on the erg, and then you are expected to manually type your distance, time, and split into a form that has no idea what a split even is. No context, no analysis, no progression tracking that matters.

Bluetooth connectivity helps in theory, but in practice it requires pairing, compatible hardware, and apps that actually know what to do with rowing data once they have it. Most do not. They store your numbers and move on.

The result is that millions of erg sessions go unrecorded, poorly recorded, or trapped inside apps that cannot offer rowing-specific feedback. Training patterns go unnoticed. Progress stalls without the athlete understanding why.

Watta starts with the simplest possible data capture: take a photo of your PM5 screen. Our AI OCR engine extracts distance, time, average split, stroke rate, and interval breakdowns automatically. No manual entry. No Bluetooth pairing. No extra hardware. Just finish your piece, snap a photo, and your session is logged.

Every workout is then scored with our proprietary Effort Score, a composite 0-100 rating that combines four dimensions of performance: Cardiac Load (40 points, based on time spent in heart rate zones weighted by intensity), Work Output (35 points, total watts normalised against your baseline), Pacing Strategy (15 points, measuring split consistency and negative split detection), and Economy (10 points, power output per heartbeat). The Effort Score gives you a single number that captures how hard you actually worked, not just how far or fast you went.

Heart rate analysis uses the Karvonen method, which factors in your resting heart rate to produce five personalised zones. For trained athletes, Karvonen zones are significantly more accurate than simple percentage-of-max calculations, because they account for your aerobic fitness level. This matters for UT2 training, where the difference between Zone 2 and Zone 3 determines whether you are building your base or drifting into intensity.

Every erg counts. Whether it is a 20-minute steady state before work or a full 2k test, every session adds to your picture as an athlete. No workout should be lost to a forgotten logbook or a skipped manual entry.

Training data should be accessible. You should not need a sports science degree to understand your own performance. Watta's Effort Score distils the complexity of multi-variable workout analysis into a single number that makes sense at a glance.

Rowing communities deserve purpose-built tools. Clubs, university boat houses, CrossFit boxes with ergs, HYROX athletes -- all of them have specific needs that generic fitness platforms ignore. Watta's clubs and squads are designed for how rowing communities actually organise and train together.

Technology should reduce friction, not add it. A training app should take less time to use than the workout it records. That is whyWatta starts with a photograph and handles everything else automatically.

Have a question, feature request, or need help with the app? We would love to hear from you.

• Email: [email protected]
• Help Centre: Help & FAQ