Day: February 5, 2014

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

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So as a novice, I’ve been coxing for about 5 months. My learning curve was very fast and I quickly became our top novice coxswain, yet I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I’m not getting any better yet everyone else is improving faster and my top spots are very threatened right now. How do I get better after hitting a plateau? (btw: We don’t have winter training, we are on water all year round) Thanks!

I think the best way to get over a plateau is to find new ways to challenge yourself. When you’ve hit a plateau that typically means that your body, brain, whatever has adapted to the challenges you were presenting it before and now that it doesn’t perceive them as actually being challenging anymore, it’s bored. You’re bored. To become un-bored and get over the hump, think about all the things you’ve learned how to do in the last five months and then think about how you can start fine-tuning each of those skills. You’ve got the broad concepts down so now it’s time to start focusing on the details. If you’re having trouble thinking of stuff, talk to your coach(es). Since they’ve seen you on the water they’ll know exactly what you’re doing really well and what you can improve on. Get some feedback from them and then sit down and create a plan for yourself. Have a list of goals (small, medium, and large ones) that list out what you want to accomplish.

Small goals would be things like incorporating in three new calls for the catch into your vocabulary in the next two weeks (followed by three new calls for the finish in the following two weeks, etc.).

Medium goals would be smoothing out your docking technique over the next month (i.e. gauging when you need to drop down to fours, then pairs before weighing enough and leaning away so that the boat never comes into contact with the dock – this was one of the things I did and is probably the skill I’m most proud of. I’m a freaking amazing docker.).

Large goals usually encompass the whole season but can be tricky for novices, especially novice coxswains, to come up with. I guess one thing you could do is record a practice or race now and then record another practice or race at the end of the season and then compare the two. This would actually be a great way to hear the progress you’ve made with pointing out technique issues, increasing the efficiency of your calls, working on your tone and intonation, and just improving your overall communication skills with your coach and crew while you’re on the water.

Don’t think of this period as a plateau because that gives it a negative connotation and just makes you feel like crap. Think of it instead as that period between levels when the game is still loading. You’ve leveled up but you’re waiting for the next set of challenges to be put together and presented to you.

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Hi, so I’m coxing a race this weekend and its a bit of a funny course. Its raced 2 X 1800m stints so I am unsure how to cox it? As two separate pieces? Or as the full 3.6k? How tired should they be at the mid point, as they get a good few mins rest?? I am also racing the course later in a crew so it would be interesting to know your take on racing such an odd head. Sorry for all the questions, Thanks a lot! 🙂

Personally, I think I would try to cox it as a combination of a head race and a sprint, with the starts being head-race style and the bodies being sprint race style … ish.

A few things, first…

I’m assuming this is set up more like a head race course and less like a sprint race course. I’m also assuming that in between each 1800m you’ll want/have to keep the crew moving (meaning no one completely weighs enough). If you do get to weigh enough, pretty much everything I said in orange doesn’t apply (except for the park about making sure they all drink something).

Break the two pieces up like you would a head race – the first third is all about technique, pace, and rhythm, the second third is starting to incorporate in some motivational calls (sparingly), and the final third is mostly motivation while still keeping them on pace. With this race, your middle third is going to be the end of one piece and the beginning of another so you’ll probably end up doing calls that center around “clean strokes, finish out the first piece strong” and “let’s re-establish that rhythm we had in the first piece, *compliment them on something that felt really good that you want to carry over to the 2nd piece*”.

Make sure you and your crews stretch before you go out, drink plenty of fluids, and eat something small within 30min of your race. Also, don’t forget to go over your race plan one final time with them before you launch. Keep the warmup conservative but if you have room and time to spare, try to get at least one good practice start in at at least 3/4ish pressure. Don’t take too many hard strokes though, you don’t want to tire them out before you even get to the starting line.

You’re right, this is a really odd race but I think the key to racing it successfully is having a coxswain who knows how to pace his or her crew. The rowers also need to know how to pace themselves but I think it’s a lot easier to do that when you’ve got one person saying “this is when we’re gonna go hard, this is when we’re gonna stay relaxed, in 50m we’re gonna hit it, etc.” If you’ve got eight people that are rowing as eight people instead of one crew, you’re not going to be able to pace yourself and you’re going to burn out really fast.

I would say how tired they are probably depends a lot on their individual fitness and stamina but if I had to make a really rough guess, I’d say if they were working hard and you paced them properly they should probably feel like they just did a 2k at about 85-88%, give or take. They should be tired and feeling it but not so tired that they can’t do it again after 3-5 minutes.