Day: March 20, 2013

Coxing High School Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

By

Hey! As a novice cox for a highly competitive novice high school team, in a group of overflowing (double the amount needed) sophomore/junior coxes, would the coach give the lowest boat to the youngest? I am in eighth grade and everyone says that I am better than a lot of the others yet I always get the lowest boat. Do you think it is because I am just so young? Our boats (in order) 11, 10, 10, 11, 10, 11, 9 , 8. And I can’t do anything about it anymore since my spring season is over and I am repeating novice year in 9th grade and I am not racing again until fall season. What do you think? I am probably not as mature/responsible as them though (I MUST CONCEDE…). Is that why? Any advice for me trying to improve? Is it still worth it coming 6x a week for nothing? I’m not quitting! Just for the rest of this season, I am not racing again and won’t even get boated and if I do, the worst boats. What should I do? Thank you so much!

It’s definitely because you’re the youngest. Don’t take it personally though. Logically, no matter how good you are, there’s no way they’d give an 8th grader one of the better novice boats because like you said, the older girls are (hopefully, given their ages) more mature, responsible, and trustworthy. That’s great though if you’re already getting complemented on how well you’re doing.

I would keep going to practice but maybe on an abbreviated schedule, like only on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays or something like that. Talk to your coach and ask if you can come in the launch with him/her to observe on the days you go and if/when they might need a substitute coxswain, you can fill in. You will learn so much just from observing, trust me. I know it sounds boring but when you’re out there and have the chance to ask the coach questions after he’s told someone to do this instead of that or has said we’re doing this drill to work on this part of the stroke, etc. it’s a really invaluable learning tool. It’ll also show your coach how dedicated you are to learning the sport and making improvements, which will be really favorable for you next year when he’s trying to decide who to put in which boat.

Q&A Rowing Technique

Question of the Day

By

So basically my erg scores are pretty dang good. But my technique on the water … is interesting to say the least. I really want to improve it and have been trying hard to do so, but with little success. Do you have any advice about on the water sweep technique? Thanks so much!

The best suggestion I can offer is to have your coach take some video and go over it with you before/after practice so you can see what improvements are needed. This will help give you specific things to focus on (i.e. getting your shoulders set by half slide) rather than just hearing “stop lunging at the catch”. You can also use whatever you learn from watching that video to do some research on YouTube, Reddit, etc. to see what others have done to work on the same or similar issues.

Related: Good and bad technique on the erg

Also ask lots of questions – what are you doing wrong, what can you do better, how do you fix it, what needs to change, etc. Communication is key and the better you understand what you’re doing and what you need to fix, the easier it will be to actually make the necessary changes. Talk to your coxswains too and let them know what you’re working on so they can make the right calls to help you stay focused on making and incorporating those changes.

Related: You’ve posted before on calling rowers out in practice for what they’re doing wrong (e.g. “Three, you’re late”). Does the same count for technique? For example, my bow seat always opens with his back. Is it appropriate for me, when talking technique, to say something like, “Keep your knees over your ankles so you don’t over-compress and open with your back – that means you, bow seat,” even if I can’t see it actually happening, or does that sound antagonistic?

The last thing is to be diligent about your practice. Don’t just do something right for three strokes and then revert back to old habits. You just put all that effort into making the change so why waste it but going back to how you were rowing before? For awhile, the amount of time and effort that it’s going to take to make the change stick will be way more that what it took to learn it that specific skill in the first place, so that’s something you have to accept. Make an effort every day to do it the right way.

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

By

During my novice boat’s pieces with some varsity boats, I found my point before starting and kept it with minimal rudder use throughout each piece. Despite maintaining a relatively straight course, I noticed a gap developing between my boat’s oars and the closest boat’s oars during some of the pieces. There wasn’t a crosswind pushing us away, just a light headwind. Is it more important to keep a straight course or the boats close together?

Both are important for safety reasons but my coaches always stressed that it’s more important to keep a straight course when you’re doing race pieces. Obviously it’s a little easier to do when you’re on a straight stretch of water vs. having to deal with the bends of the river, but racing/pieces = straight course, always. If you’re just rowing along or doing steady state, keeping the boats together is a little more important than how straight you’re steering just because it’s easier for the coaches to monitor and observe everything and it’s just safer overall.

This is a tough question to answer though because both have to be priorities, regardless of what you’re doing. If you’re steering a straight course but there’s three horizontal lengths between you and the other boat … nobody cares that you steered in a straight line. That’s another thing to keep in mind too, you can steer a straight line and still be off course which is why it’s important to establish a point with the other coxswain before you start your piece.

Related: Hi there! So I’m in my 5th year of rowing (3 years in high school as a rower on a women’s team, in my second year of coxing men’s collegiate right now) and this morning during seat racing I experienced a problem I’ve never had before. We were in fours, and my stroke seat, a port, was out-powering every 3 seat who switched in, but my bow pair were matching up pressure. It was pushing my stern to starboard a bit, but I was steering to port just enough to keep our bow pointed straight. However, we also had a cross-wind coming from port, also pushing us to starboard. The result was that I held the right point, but my course wasn’t straight because we were kind of skidding sideways while we were going forward. In a situation like that where I need to steer a straight course but I can’t actively cox my boat (beyond telling them stroke rate and position) and I can’t ask them to adjust pressure, what can I do beyond just using the rudder? Is there a way to keep my boat straight without sliding sideways across the water like that?

In this situation, if you know you were steering a straight point and your coach didn’t say anything, don’t worry about it. Worry about your boat and let the other coxswains worry about theirs. If your coach is concerned you guys are getting too far apart they’ll say something but until then, just steer your course and don’t worry about the other crews unless their course starts interfering with yours.

College Coxing High School Q&A Training & Nutrition

Question of the Day

By

What differences are there between being a collegiate coxswain versus a coxswain for a high school level team? What would a typical practice session look like?

“Typical” depends on your program. How practices are run, what you do, etc. all differ between programs, sometimes even between boats on the same team. There are big differences between Division 1 schools (where I was) and Division 3 schools too. Your best bet is to talk to the coaches of the schools you’re looking at and ask them what a typical practice entails.

In general though, you’ll probably have somewhere between 7-10 water practices a week and a team lift 1-2x a week. Most teams practice in the morning (usually somewhere between 6-8:30am) every day with the occasional afternoon/evening row (usually between 5-7ish), with the team lifts happening during that same block on the days they’re not on the water. Some teams only practice in the morning, some teams only practice in the afternoon/evenings, some teams have the rowers do weights on their own instead of all at once, etc. It varies.

Practices usually consist of a warmup followed by some drills (sometimes the drills are the warmup) and then either some AT pieces or several miles of steady state. There were also some days where we would do nothing BUT drills or just a warm up and steady state. There are a lot of factors that go into deciding what you do during a practice (the two biggest being the weather and how many people you have = what boats you can take out), so most coaches have a general idea of what they’d like to do but that’s not always what actually ends up happening. Usually the further out they have something planned, the more likely it is to change (i.e. if you get your training schedule for the year in August, what’s on the calendar for April might not be exactly what you end up doing, though it’ll usually be close).

As far as coxing specifically in college vs. high school, I don’t think there are any real differences because you’ve still gotta do all the same stuff. The only difference I can think of is that you’re really expected to be at that next level. The coaches expect you to be more responsible, be more on top of your coxing game, etc. They really anticipate not having to worry about you when you’re on the water too, whereas in high school, your coaches are always terrified you’re gonna hit something or break something or whatever. Basically though college rowing vs. high school rowing is the same as college vs. high school in general – there’s more work involved, it takes up way more time, and for most people it’s way more fun.