Day: November 4, 2014

Coxing How To Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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How do you suggest becoming comfortable making calls? I was recently moved for the women’s V4+ to our men’s V8+ and I don’t really feel my place in the boat yet. I want to make meaningful calls, not unnecessary ones, and I don’t want to be silent. Today during pieces the guys asked for motivation but I felt like I sounded like a redundant cheerleader. My old girls obviously want different stuff than the guys and I’m having trouble being the mean, assertive cox the guys have asked me to be.

When you switch boats like that there’s definitely going to be an in-between period while you learn their personalities and get comfortable working with a different group of people. That period lasts a little longer when you go from coxing women to men because, like you said, both groups want/need different things and you’ll probably have to adjust your style a bit. At most though this should be like, a week and a half to two week long thing … not something that lasts for months on end. What’s going to help you get more comfortable is to make a serious and genuine effort to get to know the people you’re coxing and talking to them outside of practice to find out what they like to hear, what things their previous coxswain(s) did that they liked or responded well to, etc. and then finding ways to incorporate all of that into your own coxing.

You have to be assertive about it otherwise this probably isn’t going to be much fun for you … and coxing guys is a lot of fun if you approach it with the right attitude. If you think it’s going to be awkward, you’re intimidated by them, or you think they’re gonna think you’re weird or incompetent for asking then you’re only making things more difficult for yourself. Just approach them, speak up, and say “Hey, so obviously I’m the new person in the boat and I need your help getting up to speed. *whips out pen + paper* Tell me some things that you guys have been working on, what calls you like, etc. so I can start tailoring my calls to the boat” [and then write them down because if you don’t you will forget and that’ll put you right back at square one].

Related: TED talks, body language, and … coxing?

Also, check out the post linked above. It’s long but so worth reading and watching the video when you have time. It has nothing to do with making calls or anything like that but the whole premise of the talk might help with you becoming more confident in general which will translate into being more comfortable coxing your new boat.

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hi there! Just a quick question: I’m a coxswain and I can’t do winter training due to a prior commitment. Is there anything I should be doing over the winter to prepare for the spring independently?

If you haven’t yet, I’d have a quick 10-15 minute with your coach just to go over the fall season, discuss your progress, your goals for the spring, etc. and get his/her input on what they’d like to see you work on so you’re ready to go full throttle when spring season rolls around. If you didn’t do fall crew (or your team doesn’t have a fall program) then I’d spend some time thinking about your last spring season, how you did, what you improved on/want to keep working on, the goals you have for this year, etc. and use that to help you prepare for the upcoming season.

Outside of listening to recordings if/when you have some free time, one thing that I’d really recommend doing is spending some time creating a hard copy of all your calls (an Excel sheet or Google spreadsheet would work best for this), particularly if you find that you have trouble coming up with things to say, being repetitive, or knowing what to say in response to certain situations. I’m doing something similar with one of our lightweight coxswains right now and to keep things simple we’re starting out with trying to get 5-7 calls each for the catch, drive, finish, and recovery. I would do something like that (I’d add maybe two calls or so for every year of experience you have – if you’ve been doing this for four years you should easily be able to come up with roughly 10 calls for each category), especially as you listen to recordings and hear things from other coxswains that you like.

The goal is to have a good mix of both tried-and-true calls and new ones that you want to test out once you’re back on the water. Not only will this give you a good variety to work with but it’ll also let you actually see where you tend to become repetitive (less calls = more repetition of those calls) and where you should try to develop more things to say. Outside of that, if you have trouble with understanding certain drills or want to know what drills would be good to do in response to XYZ happening in the boat, doing some basic research on those kinds of things would also be a good way to spend the winter months.

Don’t be afraid to take some time off too and don’t feel obligated to do a ton of stuff just to say “oh hey, look how busy I was during winter training”. I’m definitely a big proponent of coxswains using their time wisely during the winter months but I don’t think they should super-aggressively try to do a ton of things just to be busy for busy’s sake, if that makes sense. If you can spend a couple hours (1-2ish) a week (…a week, not a day…) doing something specifically coxswain-related then you’ll be fine in the spring.

And to be honest, if you do nothing specifically coxswain-related the entire winter season you’ll still be fine in the spring … you just won’t have the leg up that the people who did will have. It’s all about priorities and goals. If you’re just doing crew to participate in something, have a good time, aren’t part of a super competitive team (and you’re OK with that), etc. then obviously you can take a more relaxed approach. If you’re part of a good program with high expectations and/or you have plans to try out for elite summer programs, are planning to cox in college, etc. then yea … you should be putting in a bit of work over the winter.

Coxing Q&A Technique

Question of the Day

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Hello! Sorry if this is a dumb question but I was wondering, what does it mean when coxswains say “cha”? Thank you!

Definitely not a dumb question. I didn’t know what this was for the longest time in high school.

“Cha” is just one of the words we use to help set or re-establish the rhythm in the boat. Some coxswains actually say “cha” or “ja” and really enunciate the “ch/j” sound whereas others say “ssshhhh-uh” and really build into the final “uh” syllable. If you’re trying to actually say that, you don’t say “shh” then “uh” like they’re two separate words, rather you say it as one word with a really sharp, aggressive kick at the end when you get to the “uh” part.

All in all though it’s exactly the same as saying “kick send“, “jump together“, “legs squeeze“, etc. I’m not a huge fan of using it myself (I’m more of a “ssshhhh-uh” person than a “cha” person anyways) but on the rare occasion when I do incorporate it (usually during hard pieces or long steady state rows) I’ll say something like “legs [at the catch], ssshhhh-uh [through the arms + finish]”, which usually gets blended together and comes out as “leeegssssshhhh-uh“, or if I’m calling a five or ten then I’ll say “1 ssshhhh-uh, 2 ssshhhh-uh, 3 ssshhhh-uh…” if I really want them to think about the rhythm. I also use it if I need something to say but don’t know what to say, can’t think of anything, and/or want to break things up if I feel like I’m starting to get repetitive.

Related: Race skills: All about Power 10s

I’ll also use it if I’m trying to focus on the bladework to figure out if I need to make a technical call but don’t want to put too much effort/brainpower into making actual calls while I’m trying to focus on/analyze something else. Normally when I use this though I never call it for more than three strokes in a row at most (unless I’m only calling a five, like I talked about in the post linked above), which is pretty standard for me with the majority of my calls.

Q&A Rowing Technique

Question of the Day

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The other day our coach had all of us move our foot stretchers all the way forward on the tracks. I was wondering what the benefit of doing this is?

Trying not to overthink this too much but my guess is that your coach is just trying to have everyone get a sharper catch angle since adjusting the stretchers has a much greater effect on the catch than it does the finish. The closer to the stern your feet are the closer to parallel the oar will be at the catch and the more shallow of a release angle you’ll have (it’ll be nearly perfectly perpendicular to the boat compared to being at a 20 degree angle or so otherwise).

Just going off what I’ve picked up from coaches and boatmen in the past, I think he’s probably just trying to avoid rigging seats individually (be that out of laziness or because of some other reason, I don’t know). If a longer catch angle is what he’s going for though, I’m not sure if this is necessarily the best way to approach it, although I guess if you’re all novices (and/or short…) then it could be a temporary thing as you work on developing better flexibility and mobility throughout the fall/winter. Still, if he’s trying to go for uniformity with one aspect of the stroke the catch isn’t what he should be going for, it should be the finish since you don’t have to contend as much with individual flexibility issues, amongst other things.