Although it is one of the oldest sports in the world, dating back to 1430 BC, rowing continues to garner an innovative spirit. The latest innovation is being driven from upstate New York by a former international rowing coach and now successful entrepreneur.
Meet Michael D’Eredita, co-founder of Vedä Sport. D’Eredita has created a revolutionary rowing machine that claims to provide athletes with “the experience of rowing on the water…on the land.”
The machine’s true innovation is found at the intersection of cognitive behavior and physiology. For example, because the rower feels on the machine what they would feel on the water, a process of learning occurs at the same time as physical fitness goals are achieved. Additionally, the machine requires less coaching while in use. It is for both of these reasons that D’Eredita believes nothing else like this exists.
We had the pleasure to sit down with D’Eredita last week for an in-depth interview.
Sport Techie: Tell us a little about yourself. When was the Vedä Sport idea first formed?
Mike D’Eredita: I’ve been rowing and coaching rowing for 25 years. It’s been my sandbox for much of my life and a source of cherished relationships and experiences. My formal training is in Physics (B.S.), Cognitive Psychology (PhD, with a focus on learning, expertise and high performance) and both Social Cognition and Technology (as a faculty member of the iSchool at Syracuse University). Vedä was born out of the intersecting of these streams and is an idea that evolved over many years.
Vedä aligns with the fundamentally human and holistic nature of sport. Across the past decade, I coached rowing in the U.S., Finland, Portugal and Guatemala. Vedä is motivated by a deep desire to explore and expose the limits of collective human potential and incorporates the lessons I learned across these various rowing cultures.
At Vedä Sport, we believe that to be a successful athlete, you must innovate and Vedä was designed with the athlete-innovator in mind. I have always been a student of rowing technology. I wanted to take what the innovators of the past few decades taught us and apply it to a learning tool–one that was less of a “good enough replacement” on land or simply a “tool for measurement”–and more of a tool that enhanced the performance of a crew, regardless of skill level. I wanted to build an affordable physical platform technology that allowed both the athlete and the coaching community to continuously build upon it and learn. That’s why Vedä is designed with varied–and unexpected–interpretations in mind. We welcome users to iterate on this machine. Any user can morph the machine to meet their specific needs–it is purposefully designed to be that flexible.
Specific events in my life motivated me to invent this machine and I haven’t looked back since. A full video interview of the process can be found here.
Sport Techie: Vedä Sport is truly a one-of-a-kind product. Your motto is, “It’s the experience of rowing on the water…on the land.” What was the engineering process behind this?
M.D.: Our approach can be summed up with a statement that one member of our team often responds with when we are debating a new idea–whether the idea is ours or a user’s–“try it.”
The process involves synthesizing thousands of educated guesses, getting as much user feedback as possible, and testing. This process will never end. We quote Edison on our site because we are Edisonian in our approach–with a little bit of Steve Jobs thrown in there from time to time. We wanted something innovative–beyond what people might even expect or know was possible–but it needed to be above all else, practical.
We were well aware from the beginning that it would be a challenge to develop a mechanical solution to something that was inherently organic and fluid. We leveraged as much research about boat dynamics, physiology, human cognition and previous solutions as we could–and there is a lot of it–then we just started building and iterating. The goal was to engineer the best product possible, but just the idea of Vedä put us on uncharted waters. We leveraged both state-of-the-art CAD design and fabrication as much as we could, but the number variables and interactions amongst them often makes it too complex for a formal analysis (this is similar to the way it is out in the wild, on the water). So, it was often more efficient to simply build and test before ultimately refining the design.
Sport Techie: How has the rowing community responded to your product to date?
M.D.: Positively. For example, we started an email campaign a couple weeks ago. The goal was to target a specific number of potential customers within a well defined geography. Data suggests that the word is spreading as hundreds of people all over the U.S. and the world are viewing the site and contacting us with questions. They want to find out where they can try it. We are creating a travel schedule now that includes some of the premiere rowing institutions as well as various conferences geared specifically to the rowing community.
Sport Techie: When did you officially make it “to market”? What was your single biggest challenge along the way?
M.D.: In the winter months of 2011 – 2012 we worked with some of the more innovative coaches from Upstate New York. We eventually rented out a few machines as they were being used, but this time period was more about getting them into other training environments and incorporating more feedback.
The biggest challenge–as it is with any new technology–is finding the early adopters, those who are willing to partake in the innovative process, those who are willing to “try it.” Data shows that the percentage of people in any market willing to adopt an “unknown” is very small. We are a young company with a technology that is a few steps beyond what others are offering. We are unfamiliar. Yet to us, it remains less about the technology (or “the product”) and more about the relationship; finding out how we can better serve their needs. How can we help them get more fit … faster … collectively smarter … to the podium. Building this level of trust will take some time. We are humbly entering the market with respect for both the people involved and the innovative process.
Sport Techie: How can Vedä Sport help rowing athletes compete at the highest level?
M.D.: Most land-based training tools center on fitness. At the highest level, however, fitness is assumed. Vedä centers on learning because that’s what gets people on the podium.
Muscle memory is a misnomer. Memory is a brain function. Learning a specific movement starts with adaptation in the brain as it solves specific kinesthetic problems, which then leads to its ability to reliably produce movements that are–at least–effective and–at most–efficient.
A sample of the top tier of any sport will often reveal similar vital capacities across the field. Much of the variance in performance at the highest of levels can be attributed to the number of hours of sport specific training–or what some top researchers in Expertise call–deliberate practice. The more you practice, the more you learn. Learning results in a predictable exponential curve, but perhaps more important to performance is that this curve is accompanied by an exponential increase in reliability. Athletes at the top level are not only able to perform beyond what most others are capable of, but they are reliably able to do so.
The coach and athlete are required to figure out how to best orchestrate the movement of body joints … the complexity and challenge of this is often underestimated not only in terms of the number of joints involved in any given movement, but the dynamic relationship of these joints. In the sport of rowing, this problem becomes exponentially more complex as crews are charged with figuring out how to orchestrate the movement of multiple joints across multiple athletes. The development of this collective mind requires the same time and attention as it does with any individual … and research has shown that the learning curve of a team is similarly exponential in nature.
Vedä was designed with all of this in mind. It provides a controlled learning environment that directly translates to the on-water environment. It is purposefully controlled and mechanical because these types of environments allow for cues to be more easily emphasized by coaches while being felt–and deeply experienced–by athletes. It also allows the cues being created by any single athlete to be readily recognized and adapted to by the other athletes in the crew.
For example, the drive mechanisms are connected to each other upon coupling the machines. So any given athlete not only “feels the load” but they feel how the load is dynamically being moved by the rest of the crew. Vedä not only provides an environment in which they can more readily “figure it out,” but also one that allows them to do it together for the time necessary to become a reliable crew.
Sport Techie: Who can readers contact with further questions?
M.D.: Mike D’Eredita at mike@vedasport.com or @MDEredita. You can also receive the latest updates by following @Vedasport. I very much welcome your feedback and participation. Let’s find the limits of human potential … and then go a little beyond.
Sport Techie: Thanks, Mike!
Additional photos posted with permission from Vedä:
