ESPERIA
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ESPERIA TORINO
Neuroscience experiment
With the University of Turin’s cognitive neuroscience team, 14 rowers solved a maths task before and after training on the Po and on an indoor rowing machine, compared with a control group at rest.
EEG, heart rate and perceived-effort scales measured how training affects cognitive efficiency and fatigue.
Focus group
A moderated session with 15 athletes and amateurs from the club explored how they experience rowing in a high-beauty natural setting.
Projective techniques helped participants express the emotions and meanings that rowing holds in their lives.
Platform ethnography
Between May and June 2023, 26 rowers (16 athletes and 10 amateurs) shared photos, videos, audio and stories on a dedicated digital platform.
This revealed how beauty, effort and pleasure intertwine before, during and after training, on the water and indoors.
Esperia is part of ePOsistema, a programme by the Società Canottieri Esperia Torino, supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, to reconnect people with the Po through sport, nature and health.
Our team investigated the value of training in a high-beauty natural setting, integrating qualitative research with an experimental study run by the University’s cognitive neuroscience team.
Rowers describe two kinds of beauty. Contemplative beauty is a fusion with the river and the landscape that brings harmony, presence and, over time, a more solid mental balance.
Sacrificial beauty is total immersion in the stroke: effort and even pain become the path to pleasure, generating flow, euphoria and, in the long run, self-efficacy.
Amateurs lean towards the first, competitive athletes towards the second. The experiment shows that a single training session significantly improves accuracy in a cognitive task and speeds up the brain’s alpha rhythm, a marker of cognitive efficiency, while rest slows it down.
On the river, effort tends to feel lighter than on the rowing machine, especially for amateurs, and those who felt less fatigue showed the greatest cognitive gains. Natural beauty is not decoration: it is a detonator of pleasure that supports personal growth.
