Quick Start
Welcome to CrewNerd - the "on the water" training tool designed for rowing and paddling! CrewNerd is a great tool for everything from recreational outings to training for world-class competition. In this article, we'll give you just enough information to get ready for your first session on the water.
To get prepared, we recommend looking at the following articles (links available at the end of this article).
- Phone protection and mounting - learn about best practices for mounting and waterproofing
- Sport settings - select your activity type and units of measure. Note: setting your activity correctly is critical for detecting strokes and for making the timer's "auto start" feature work well.
CrewNerd's user interface is made up of four primary tabs (or screens):
- Home - the default screen, where you can select a workout to start a practice, or review your recent practices
- History - shows all of your recorded practice data for viewing or exporting
- Settings - use this screen to change app settings, access our documentation, or contact customer support
- Tracking - for managing the Live Tracking feature
Note: Be sure to give CrewNerd permission to access your location so it can measure your speed and distance. If you plan to use a heart rate monitor or other Bluetooth accessory, you'll need to grant permission for that as well.
On the Home screen you'll see:
- A button you can press to quickly start a practice using a "Just Go" workout.
- A list of custom courses you can select to start a practice.
- Press "hide" to collapse the list or "View All" to see all of the available custom courses.
- A list of custom workouts you can select.
- Press "View All" to see all of the available custom courses (or to create a new one).
- A list of your two most recently-completed practices.
- Select one of the practices to view or export your data, or press "View All" to see all of your practice history.
Starting a practice
To start a practice, press the "Just Go" button or select one of the available custom courses or custom workouts. If you select one of the custom workouts, CrewNerd will ask whether you want a 15- or 30-second countdown (or no countdown at all). A countdown just gives you the option to start rowing or paddling before the actual workout begins.
When the workout (and optional countdown) are selected, CrewNerd switches to the active workout display, containing a status bar (with the workout name and other buttons), one or more rows showing performance data, and two buttons at the bottom to control the timer, or end the current workout.
To start your workout, press the "Start" button. The status bar will change from red to yellow to indicate that the timer is ready, but paused. When you begin rowing or paddling, the bar will change from yellow to green to indicate that the timer is running. When you stop rowing or paddling, the timer will automatically stop and the status bar will turn yellow again.
By default, the "auto start/stop" feature is enabled. If you disable this (on the settings page), then the status bar will turn green as soon as you press the "Start" button.
Ending your practice
When you finish the selected workout, press "End Workout". CrewNerd will give you three options:
- Start a new workout
- Start a new custom course
- End practice
If you're done with your session, press "End practice" to review the data for your session. You can add information about the boat you used, who you were with, or anything else you'd like to note about the practice. You can view a map of the practice, export your workout data, or drill into more detailed information about each workout in the session.
Now that you've completed a practice, you will probably want to customize the appearance of the Row/Paddle screen. CrewNerd's display settings allow you to see more or fewer data fields, and select the data shown in each field. If the display was difficult to read, you may want to switch to the high-contrast sunlight mode.
See the related articles below to learn how to fine-tune CrewNerd for your needs, and don't hesitate to reach out to our customer support if you have any questions!