Month: July 2013

Coxing Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

By

As the summer comes to an end and fall season comes up, I’ve been a little rusty on my coxing. While there have been some rowers that go to the local aquatic center and have been rowing, I’ve realized that I’ve been spending my summer primarily on school work and I haven’t been able to get out there and practice. But now that the summer is ending and in the last few weeks there are rowers planning on going over to the AC to take out some eights, I was thinking about joining them. My only fear is that this is my first year on varsity and I’m a tad nervous. I want to practice my steering but I’m afraid that if I’m getting rowers that have been rowing all summer long in my boat, that they’ll want me to throw in technical calls and whatnot. Any advice?

I was talking about this same topic through email with a coxswain the other day – a collegiate coxswain, actually. They just finished their first season and will also be coxing with their team’s varsity program in the fall. Here’s what I said to them:

” … Your expectations of yourself should be realistic as well – don’t overwhelm yourself trying to impress everyone or prove you should be there. Just go out there, do what you did in the spring, and let your actions speak for themselves. Coxing is like riding a bike, once you get in the groove of it you never forget how it’s done. There’s no real way to “fall behind” or anything, especially because so much of what makes coxing what it is is based on inherent stuff, like your personality, drive, intelligence, etc. Other than continuing to educate yourself and learn about the sport, there’s not much to do in the summer. Not everyone has access to a boathouse or anything when school’s not in session so it’s OK if you take a couple months off. I think it’s important to do that anyways just so you don’t get burned out.”

If you’re going out with rowers that have been rowing over the summer, chances are they probably have a list of things that they’ve been working on with their own technique, which means they should ideally be able to give you a list of things that they’d like you to focus your calls on. Have your notebook on hand and ask them individually if they’d mind giving you a couple things things that they’d like you to watch for with them, such as washing out, their timing, etc. Whatever they’ve been working on this summer should be the stuff you try and focus on because that’s where they’ve been focusing their efforts, thus getting feedback on it is pretty important. Take that information home and start thinking of what calls you can associate with each thing. I’d say have at least three different calls for each thing that way you can vary what you’re saying and keep the rowers engaged instead of just saying the same thing over and over and having it lose it’s effect.

Tell them also that you want to practice your steering so that’s going to be your technical focus while you’re out. They’ve got theirs, you’ve got yours. The best time to practice your steering is during longer pieces, not drills, for obvious reasons, so tell them ahead of time that for the first few minutes you want them to internalize their strokes, think about their seat, feeling the boat move, etc. and then after that you’ll start bringing it all together, making some technical adjustments, bringing up the power, and taking some harder strokes. So for example, if you do a 10 minute piece you can break it down like this:

0-3:00 || No talking, just rowing. To keep things interesting you could have them row eyes closed, feet out, or eyes closed and feet out. During this time you should be focusing on your steering, since that’s your “thing”, while at the same time paying attention to the bladework. Remember – you want to make minimal adjustments with the rudder. Small changes when necessary but that’s all. Pick a point and every 3-5 strokes check where you are. Eventually you want to get to the point where steering is an auto-pilot response so pay attention to where you are and where you’re going but don’t focus 99.9% of your brainpower on it.

3:01 – 6:00 || Technique – what did you notice during the first three minutes? Talk to each rower equally and individually, point out something they’re doing well and something they can work on. Give each rower at least 5 strokes so before moving on to the next person.

6:01 – 8:00 || Once you’re through each individual look at the whole package. What do you see? How does the boat feel? Are you getting a good amount of run or is there some check happening? How’s the rhythm? Talk to your stroke about this – communication with them is crucial, for on-the-water and off-the-water purposes.

8:01-9:00 || You’ve spent a good amount of time working on finesse stuff, now it’s time to start putting some power behind the blade. If you were rowing at 75% pressure, take it up to 90%. Low stroke rate (20spm or so), powerful drives. Less calls about technique, more about power now. Leg drive, connection, posture, etc.

9:01-10:00 || You’ve got technique and power, now add in speed. Every 20 seconds take the stroke rate up 2 beats while maintaining the same good rowing you’ve held for the last nine minutes. There should be a shift in intensity here, both with their strokes and your calls. Remind them to move the boat, not the water.

This entire time you should have been focusing on steering and holding your point. Doing pieces like this where there’s a “focus” throughout it forces you to multi-task and learn how to juggle doing two, three, four, five very important things all at the same time. Don’t let it overwhelm you, just go with it. To improve with something as finicky as steering you’ve got to push yourself out of your comfort zone a little. In the end it’s always worth it though.

Don’t be nervous. Easier said than done, I know, but you truthfully have no reason to be nervous. The summer is the best time to make mistakes because there’s zero pressure from anyone. Go out there confidently, communicate with the rowers, have goals for yourself, execute everything to the best of your abilities, and reflect on every practice once you’re off the water. What went well, what did you improve on, how did that improvement happen, what do you need to do to maintain that change and make it a habit going forward, and what do you want to keep working on in the future? Keep a notebook handy so you can write all of this down.

Don’t think that just because you’ll be with the varsity in the fall that you’ve got to start commanding them now like you will be in two months. Stay relaxed and have a good time. You’ll have plenty of time to be super disciplined in the fall. For now, just enjoy the water and getting to know the guys you’re rowing with.

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Rowing to Kabul

By

If I had to pick a country that seemed to be the least likely to have a national rowing program, Afghanistan would definitely be in my top five, and not just because of current world politics or anything like that. Matt Trevithick, a BU alumni, is working towards building up the Afghan rowing program in order to potentially, hopefully be able to compete in Rio. FISA and ANOC (Association of National Olympic Committees) have pledged their support, as have local government officials who are planning to help get a boathouse built for the team.

A boathouse … and a rowing program … requiring thousands, nay millions of dollars in funding … in Afghanistan. I find it hard to process not because I think something like this is impossible or that the people there are undeserving but because nearly every day since I was in 8th grade all I’ve seen of Afghanistan is video and pictures of what amounts to nothing more than a sand pit completely encased in poverty and war. It seems crazy because of how dangerous you’d think being in that area would be more than anything else.

This is where they’ll be training…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rii9KS2gvCo

…and this is the route that was driven to bring boats from Germany to Afghanistan. Can you imagine driving nearly 3,500 in three days? That’s about 500 miles less than the distance between Boston and San Francisco and I can’t even begin to imagine driving that in just three days. I like road trips but that’s pushing it.

Oh, and don’t think they’ll be rowing those shitty boats that you typically see novices rowing … oh no. In addition to the quad and double that Matt was already able to get, he was able to talk Filippi into donating some shells to the program. Can you imagine if you were just starting up a rowing program and were able to get one of the best boat manufacturers in the world to donate some shells to your team?

Here’s a great article from the Bostonia about the whole project.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By

I graduated this past spring and I was recruited to cox in college. I was always the top coxswain at my high school club and the coaches now look at me as a mini-coach. They want me to pass on as much knowledge as I can to the other coxswains before leaving but I’m having a hard time reaching them. I’m not sure if they’re intimidated by me (I’m really not scary…) or they really don’t know what the heck I’m saying. Tips? Thanks!

That’s pretty cool you got asked to do that. It’s possible that they are intimidated a little, not by you necessarily but by your experience and the fact that you’re coxing in college, but it’s also possible that they might just not be around and/or are busy with jobs, family, etc. Try reaching out to them on Facebook and invite them to go get ice cream sometime next week. Keep it short and simple and just say that before you leave for school your coach wanted you all to get together to talk about the upcoming year, coxing stuff, etc. If for whatever reason you end up not being able to get together, write everything down and make a how-to guidebook for them.

If they’re smart, they’ll take advantage of your offer but don’t feel like you’re obligated to go out of your way to meet up with them. Like I said, they might be busy or they might just not care … which sucks, I guess, but ultimately isn’t your issue to deal with. Put together some notes and give it to your coach and if they want to read through it in the fall, it’s there for them to do that.

Note to all the coxswains out there, seriously, reach out to the coxswains from your team who are coxing in college or who just graduated and pick their brains on anything you can think of. They’ll most likely be willing to share their tips and tricks with you but you’ve gotta ask first.

Ergs Q&A Training & Nutrition

Question of the Day

By

Hi. As fall season is coming up, one of my rowers is getting ready for 6K testing and prepping for them. After a summer break, he’s feeling a little out of it and he really needs to work on stamina. I was wondering if there are any pieces on the ergs that could help him with that because I’m low on ideas. Thank you!

Steady state, steady state, and more steady state.

I scribbled this down sometime last fall from something I read online (and of course now I don’t remember where I read it). It’s basically what a week of workouts in the mid to late summer looks like knowing you’ve got a 5k or a 6k coming up once fall season finally rolls around. All the interval stuff should be done at your at or around your goal pace and your steady state pace should be 6k+12ish.

Monday: 5x1500m, 5 minutes rest in between
Tuesday: 10k SS at 18-22spm
Wednesday: 2x6k, 3 minutes rest
Thursday: 12k SS at 18-22spm
Friday: 4x2k, 5 minutes rest
Saturday: 10k SS at 18-22spm
Sunday: Off

Essentially what you want to do is do 2-3 days of intervals and 2-3 days of long steady state. Other intervals I’ve seen are 8x1k 4x2k, 4×10 minutes with 4-3-2-1 minute rate changes and 5 minutes rest between pieces, 4×15 minutes with 3 minutes rest, 3×20 minutes with 4 minutes rest…it goes on and on.

Make sure you’re not forgetting to do core, some kind of lifting, and lots of stretching and rolling out. Doing all the work on the erg isn’t going to do you any good if you forget to do the other stuff too.

Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

By

I had the shittiest practice ever today … I was so offset and I’m the slowest rower on the team and my coach won’t even follow me with his launch, that’s how far behind I get. I thought I had good technique but there’s a few basic things I don’t do properly and when I get corrections it’s so fucking hard for me to make those corrections and I can feel my coach giving up. I hate feeling so stupid after working so hard and idk like why the hell am I doing this, I’m not even strong. UGH I need a hug.

I’ve had shitty practices like that too – they’re the worst because you know you’re trying or you can see the people in your boat trying and for whatever reason things just aren’t clicking. It’s more mentally exhausting than anything else.

When we’ve fallen behind our coach or the other boats sometimes I would end up running my own practice. More often than not our coaches would make me push them to stay with the other boats, which is a good thing, you need to push yourself and be pushed like that, but other times I think they recognized that the neurons just weren’t firing that day so trying to push them to keep up would have only made things worse.

We’d usually stop rowing for at least two or three minutes, just to give everyone a mental break. We’d talk about whatever wasn’t feeling right and begrudgingly we would start over from the very beginning except much slower. If we were doing a drill or something, we’d break it down even further or if we couldn’t do that, we’d start off by pairs instead of fours or fours instead of sixes. We’d go through everything much slower until we had it down at that stroke rate, then we’d bump it up a beat or two and do it again, from the beginning, until we had it down at that stroke rate.

From there we’d cycle through all the pairs/6s before taking another break for a minute to figure out what went better that time and what we need to take away from it so we can keep doing it that way in the future. I don’t think there was ever time where doing it this way made things worse. Granted it took up a lot of time and sometimes we didn’t accomplish whatever the actual goal of practice was that day but the stuff we did accomplish from taking things slower and focusing more on our issues tended to, in some small way or another, be more helpful to us than whatever else we had planned on doing.

Related: What do you like to do to cheer yourself up after a lost race or tough practice?

Talk to your coach when you’re on land, preferably when you’ve cooled down, and explain the problems you’re having. Tell him how you’re frustrated because you’re having problems grasping the technical changes that you need to make and that you feel like he’s giving up on you because you either don’t understand what you’re being asked to do or are having trouble making the changes. Ask him, either then or before your next practice, if he can get on an erg with you and explain exactly what the changes are that he wants to see you make, what they should look like, and how what it should look/feel like compares to what you’re doing right now. If you don’t know or understand why something you’re doing is wrong, ask.

Also talk to him about what happens if you fall too far off the pace and end up further behind everyone else. Tell him that it’s frustrating for you but you don’t want the rest of practice to be wasted so does he have any suggestions of things you can do on your own (drills, steady state pieces, etc.). Also ask him if he’d be able to double back every so often to check in. It’s not safe for you to be completely without a coach, especially if you haven’t been rowing that long and/or are out there by yourself (I’m assuming you were in a single), so asking him to check on you for safety purposes alone is the least he can do.

You shouldn’t feel stupid after having a bad work out. Weaker people than you have gone through the same things and quit because it’s too hard so just by being persistent you’re already doing better than most. Bad practices happen. Are they infuriating as hell? Of course they are. The thing is though, you can almost always take something away from them that will ultimately make you a better, stronger rower in the long run. For me I’ve found that the best way to avoid letting crew mess with my head is to leave everything that happened on the water on the water until I’m calmed down enough to look at the situation from a more logical and objective perspective. When you’re pissed off you never see things how they actually are.

After a few hours, think back to practice for a few minutes and try to figure out what went wrong. What were you having trouble with, why was the technique stuff so hard today, etc. Jot down two or three things (and only two or three things so as to not overwhelm yourself) that were particularly difficult and come up with a plan to combat those things over the course of your next two practices or so. Whether it’s giving yourself a two minute break to take a deep breath and clear your head when you find yourself getting flustered or focusing all your energy on moving the legs and arms together on the drive so that it’s more powerful and consistent, give yourself a plan. If you’ve got something to work towards you’ll be able to focus more when you’re out instead of going out and trying to just blindly accomplish things to the point where you get so frustrated because nothing is working that you start doubting yourself.

Don’t use not being strong as an excuse. You can always get stronger, either by going to the gym or by pushing yourself to do better right at the point where you want to give up the most. If you do a 1000m piece and your brain starts telling you to quit at 800m but you push through it, sprint hard, and finish the piece, you got stronger. If you do 8x500m and you decide to quit after seven because you’re tired, you got weaker. If you make lifting a priority, you will get stronger. If you start thinking about the stuff you’re doing well and committing yourself to working harder to improve the things you’re not doing so well, you will get stronger. Any time you unnecessarily beat yourself up over something you’re backtracking on any progress you’d made up to that point. Sometimes you do have to kick your own ass and that’s fine, but know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not.

You’re not the first person to have a bad practice or feel like this and you’re definitely not going to be the last. Something to remember: you’re not defined as an athlete by how well or poorly you perform at one practice – what defines you is whether you show up the next day clear headed, focused, and ready to do work, regardless of how the previous day went.

Coxing High School Masters Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By

Hi! I am a coxswain who has coxed on my school’s team for 5 seasons. I seem to do better when put in a boys boat (I’m a girl). In the past, I have attributed this to the fact that the girls on my team are incredibly immature and difficult to deal with. It’s gotten to a point where no cox on my team wants to cox a girls boat. How would you approach this? Also, I have recently gotten an opportunity to cox for a local club’s masters women’s boat. How would you adjust to a such a different group?

That’s rough. It sounds like something your coaches need to address (or should have) rather than something the coxswains should be forced to put up with/suffer through or handle on their own. Have you guys tried talking to the coaches about the issues you have coxing them? Are they difficult to deal with because they don’t listen, are unnecessarily combative, and just straight up bitches or are they difficult to deal with because they’re teenagers and doing typical annoying teenager stuff? Regardless of the reason, I think it’s worth bringing up and discussing with the coach so that they can do something about it. It’s also possible that they might not know what’s going on or that the coxswains feel this way so they never realized there was a problem needing addressing. Until then though, if you get put in a boat with them try not to get frustrated. Avoid displaying any outward signs of being irritated that you’re coxing that boat because that’ll either piss off the rowers and give them even more reasons to make things difficult or it’ll just amuse them and give them a reason to antagonize you.

Regarding coxing a masters boat, the biggest difference for me in going from coxing people my own age to coxing people who are closer to my parents’ age was coxing them with the same amount of intensity. It felt weird coxing them like I coxed college or high school crews because they’re so much older than me but once I talked to them about it they said they want to be coxed hard like that, so that’s what I started doing. After a few practices it didn’t feel weird any more. I’d suggest just talking to them and finding out what they look for in their coxswains. Are they a competitive team who expects to be coxed as such or are they just out there to have a good time and get away from the stress of daily life, so they don’t need to be coxed as hard? Don’t be intimidated by them and don’t feel like you can’t call them out on any technique problems like you would a normal crew. They want to be corrected so they can improve just like rowers your own age so make sure you’re talking to them and giving them the same feedback that you’d give your regular crew.

College Q&A Recruiting

Question of the Day

By

I’m a junior starting to look into the recruiting process. What would a good first email to a coach be formatted as? What should I include? How long should it be?

I think the emails I wrote to coaches were fairly short and to the point. I had already narrowed down the schools I wanted to apply to so I don’t think I emailed more than four or five coaches at most. I definitely recommend getting an idea of the schools you want to go to first and the program you want to study instead of blindly emailing places that have decent rowing programs but potentially only so-so academics. Being able to say that you’re interested in this school and this program let’s the coach(es) know that you’ve done your research and are actually interested in the university as well, not just the crew team.

Anyways, I introduced myself, said where I was from, the team I rowed for, and that I was interested in the university and potentially joining the team as a coxswain. I emailed them after I’d already made plans to visit the schools so I said that I would be taking a tour of the university and the exercise science department on this day at this time and would there be any chance that we could meet, either at the boathouse or their office, to talk about the program. Two of the schools I wasn’t able to meet with because they weren’t going to be there when I visited (I think it was during spring break but I can’t remember) and two others I did meet with (Syracuse and Virginia). From there I said that I’d attached my rowing resume for them to look at and I hoped to talk with them soon, sincerely, me.

Example:

Dear Coach (last name),

My name is (your name) and I row/cox for (team name) in (city/state). I’m interested in attending (university name) to study (name of your potential major) and am looking to join the crew team while I am there. I plan on visiting (university name/abbreviation) on (date) to attend their prospective student information session and take a tour the campus and (name of your major/program) department. Would it be possible to meet up at either the boathouse or your office to talk more about the program?

Attached you’ll find my rowing resume with my relevant information and results from the past (#) years. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks!
(Your name)

Simple, straightforward, and to the point.

With regards to doing unofficial visits like this, the only time you’re not allowed to visit is during the NCAA’s dead period, which is when coaches aren’t allowed to have face-to-face contact with any prospective student-athletes or their parents. You can still communicate through email and phone calls though.

Check out these posts too, they might help you out down the line.

What questions to ask coaches during the recruiting process

What NOT to ask coaches during the recruiting process

Waiting for responses from coaches

Getting the attention of coaches

Making a beRecruited account

Rowing scholarships

How to stand out when on an official visit

The “recruiting” and “contacting coaches” tags