Day: November 18, 2014

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

By

Hi, this is a great resource, thanks for devoting so much time to it. I’m coxing a 5km head race in the UK in a couple of weeks. I’ve raced it before, and am feeling quite confident. One thing I’m unsure of is how best to call the end of a power twenty. Our race plan is to push for twenty at the end of each kilometre. I don’t want to call down pressure at the end of the push, to avoid a sharp drop off in boatspeed, but neither do I want not to call anything, and have my crew pushing for longer than the twenty I’ve asked for. Any help you could offer would be great – thanks!

My suggestion is to not aim to call a “power” 20 at the end of each kilometer, rather call it for something and don’t necessarily make everything 20 strokes. During HOCR this year, which is also about 5km, I only called one 20 and it was at the start of the last kilometer.

Related: Race skills: All about Power 10s

At this point it’s very rare that I actually call something for straight power but when I do I remind them to maintain this as soon as we finish the burst, usually in the form of “yea that’s it, now let’s maintain it, we’re sitting at 1:46 right now, stay on it with the legs and accelerate through the water…” and then I go right into calling a couple strokes for acceleration, giving them position updates, and coxing them like normal. It’s not like I’m calling the end of the burst and then completely falling off with my calls, tone, volume, etc. If you do that then yea, there will be a sharp drop off in speed but if you maintain your voice and immediately jump into like what I said up above then you’re more likely to, you know, actually maintain whatever you just did. If the crew is falling off with pressure immediately after then a) you’re not doing your job, b) their endurance is awful, and c) someone needs to clue them in on the concepts of pacing and flying-and-dying.

As far as having your crew pushing for longer than the twenty you asked for … the phrasing of that is bugging me. I really can’t put my finger on which exactly of the five reasons I’ve come up with for why it’s bugging me but there’s something about how you said that that’s just … off. I’m probably/definitely over-analyzing this but just keep in mind that they should be pushing themselves regardless of what you’re saying and you shouldn’t be calling them up or down. Whenever coxswains say stuff like that I imagine them coxing the race like they’re on a roller coaster, going up and down with the pressure and their voice and whatever else and it makes me wonder how they can possibly think that that’s effective.

If you continuously call for 20s to push (and I’m going with the standard definition of pushing in this context to mean “more pressure”) then you will be coxing a roller coaster race and it’s not effective because the crew will likely do what I said before, which is fly and die each time. If you give each burst a specific purpose, limit the number of 20s you use and instead incorporate in some 5s, 10s, etc., and remind them to maintain whatever feels good during those bursts then you’ll be able to have a much more efficient and evenly-paced race.

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

By

Hi, I am a novice cox and was just wondering about what to do during the winter training. Thank you so much.

Check out any (or all) of these posts:

Winter training tips for coxswains…

Coxswains + winter training (Similar titles, different posts, I promise…)

How To Survive Winter Training, pt. 1b: Coxswains

“The Coxswain in Winter”

How do you as a coxswain help your rowers when they are erging in the winter?

Coxing Masters Q&A

Question of the Day

By

So I’m the most experienced coxswain on my juniors team, and was asked to cox a master’s eight. It isn’t a racing boat or anything. Some of the masters just wanted to try sweep. The thing is both of my coaches and a few of the board members for the juniors team will be in the boat, as will my dad. I’m afraid that if I mess up, or if my coach isn’t a fan of my style, it could affect boat placement going into spring. Any advice?

It won’t. It would be really stupid of your coach to keep you out of certain boats just because he didn’t like your style of coxing. I was emailing with another coxswain about a very similar situation a couple weeks ago and a lot of what I told him applies to you too. In this situation, yea it might be awkward to have your dad, your coach, and some of the board members in the boat but when you’re on the water they’re none of those people – they’re just another group of rowers. Something that I’ve noticed with masters rowers over the last few years (both men and women) is that they tend to forget that on the water I (and the other coxswains) don’t look at them the way their employees, colleagues, etc. look at them – they’re not doctors, lawyers, university administrators, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, small business owners, non-profit managers, contractors, advertising execs, etc. to me. They’re just rowers. If it comes off like you’re intimidated by them because of who they are off the water then you open the door for them to put on their manager/department head/executive hat and try to run the show because that’s what they’re used to doing every day. Don’t forget though, you’re used to managing people every day too, the only difference between the two groups being age.

The majority of masters rowers are great and come out just to have a good time with friends so trust me when I say all you have to do is the exact same thing you do during practice with your normal crews. Obviously you should make sure you’re on top of your game (that means steering good lines, not hitting things, communicating clearly and concisely, etc.) but if you excel at all of the basic coxswain skills any other day of the week then you’re not going to have any issues with these guys.

Below is another part of the email I mentioned earlier that I hope will help you out. Remember, you wouldn’t have been asked to do this if someone (your coach, I’m assuming) didn’t think you were capable. Don’t take the situation too seriously and have fun with it!

“The biggest piece of advice I can give you is if you get nervous, keep it to yourself. Act like every single thing you say and do is a deliberate action, not something you debated doing before making a decision. Be confident and have a good time! Coxing masters, even competitive ones, can be a lot of fun. They’ll probably joke around with you which will hopefully lighten the atmosphere a bit so just approach it like you would any other practice. Communicate with the coach, ask questions if you don’t understand something, need it repeated, etc., be clear with your calls to the crew, and use this as an opportunity to learn. Every crew is different so you can probably apply something you’ve done with your high school team to these guys and you’ll probably be able to take something away from this and apply it to your high school practice next week.”