Month: November 2014

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I’m living with one of my captains and we’re having issues. Even though she works hard and her erg scores are consistently top 8 she’s in the 3V and our coach won’t tell her why. She was reasonably upset and she had every right to be and I was there for her. This was around mid to late September. A little while later, she started seeming annoyed, I tried being nice, and I tried giving her space, either way she’s been very snippy. More recently we went away for a race and only our 1V and 2V went. When I got back I tried to be quiet about it and not bring the trip up. I talked about these issues a couple times with another girl I’ve been rowing with since high school who also lived with her last year. She gave me some advice and I was planning on following it.

That night though she had another breakdown because she was so frustrated and upset because she didn’t even go as an alternate. I felt really bad and knew if I was in her position I would feel the same way, why do I work so hard if I’m not getting anywhere, but it also feels like she wants me to say that she deserves to be in the 1V over all 8 of us. She also has been making me feel really shitty about myself, the other day for example we were given a workout to do on our own because our coach could tell we were tired and was giving us the chance to sleep in and do a steady state work out. I decided the night before I was going to go at 7 but when my alarm went off I realized exactly how tired I was and decided to go after class. When she got back from doing the workout I went to ask a question but she got really sassy saying “So much for going at 7”. I tried to explain but she shut the door on my face before I could say anything. I only have a little over a semester left with her but I feel like I’m walking on egg shells around her and don’t know how much more I can take.

Yeaaa, situations like this are when rooming/living with friends really come back to bite you in the ass.

Here’s the thing. Your eight best aren’t always the best eight. She might have one of the top eight times but that doesn’t mean she has what it takes to be in the 1V, at least by your coach’s standards. Obviously your coach should be a little more transparent with her so that she at least knows what areas she could improve in but at the end of the day, all of that has nothing to do with you. I totally get wanting to be the supportive friend and being sensitive to the fact that this is bothering her but you shouldn’t have to tip toe around just to avoid setting her off. If she’s really a friend (forget the whole captain thing for a second) she shouldn’t be making snide remarks about when you do an on-your-own workout or be trying to get you to validate her by saying meaningless shit like “of COURSE you should be in the 1V“. I can get asking that in a “tell me I’m not being crazy here” kind of way where actual feedback/constructive criticism would be accepted and appreciated but given the context I feel like it’s coming off in a more “I deserve this over all you bitches” kind of way because of either seniority, being a captain, or whatever else.

I could really go on and on about what she should be doing but you probably know all of that already and again, it would just be reiterating the point that none of this has anything to do with you. It’s not fair that you’ve somehow gotten pulled into it but I think the best thing you can do in this situation the next time something comes up is to say that as her friend you want to be there for her but as her teammate things have gotten to the point where your relationship outside of practice is being negatively affected (elaborate as necessary) and that if she really thinks she deserves that spot she needs to stop talking/making passive aggressive comments to you about it and go discuss it with your coach. After that, be done with it. She’s either going to take the hint or keep being rude about it and if she goes with the latter, well, that’s her issue to deal with. You and the other eight people in that boat all earned your spots so don’t let someone, regardless of whether they’re a friend or not, make you feel bad about being there.

Coxing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Coxswains you should know and admire

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So, this week’s VOTW is a little different. I’m all for looking up to people with gold medals and whatever else but I also think it’s important (more so, even) to have role models within our sport who aren’t known simply for their athletic achievements because as much as we’d like to think that rowing is the end all be all to life, it’s not. The majority of you that are reading this right now probably won’t continue with crew in college, even fewer will do it all four years, and even fewer will make a run at the elite level. A couple of you might eventually try your hand at coaching but pretty much all of you will do something else entirely. That’s just the way it is which is why it’s important to think about “what’s next”.

I got to know Eden earlier this year and she’s an amazingly talented person, not to mention a kick-ass coxswain as well. She walked on to Princeton’s lightweight women’s team her freshman year, coxed the Canadian national team’s women’s development eight to a win at Henley and at Holland-Beker in 2012 (two years after she started coxing – TWO YEARS), and coxed Princeton’s varsity eight to a 5th place finish at IRAs this year. Oh, and she dropped out of college following her sophomore year after being awarded $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation.

The reason I’m posting this even though it has little to do with actual rowing is because I wanted to highlight someone awesome within our sport that has accomplished a lot outside of rowing while using many of the applicable-to-real-life skills she learned as a coxswain along the way. It’s important that throughout your time as a coxswain or a rower that you develop those skills so that when it comes time to apply for college, go on job interviews, pitch your ideas to potential investors, etc. you can actually put them to use and demonstrate how being a coxswain/rower taught you XYZ and be able to offer some legitimate, non-cliche examples of how you’ve used those skills off the water.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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How does one handle a coach that is too aggressive? My coach is too intense and I can’t read him at all. What can I do to have him ease up on the team? I’m not the only one feeling this.

I’ve had coaches/professors like that and most of the time it’s just their personality and they don’t realize how intense they come off or that they’re coming off too intense for the current audience. I mean, don’t get me wrong, sometimes they’re actually just jerks but usually saying something wakes them up to the fact that their approach is coming off, as you said, too aggressive. I’d talk to your assistant coach (or head coach if the coach you’re talking about is the assistant), explain the situation to them, and see if they can say something. In my experience coaches tend to take stuff like this more seriously when it comes from one of their peers vs. from someone who could be their son or daughter. If you know other people on the team feel the same way then I’d go as a group (three people max is sufficient) to talk with your assistant coach just so they can better understand the depth of the issue.

Erg Playlists

Music to erg to, pt. 63

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I love the post-DST fall season, winter, the snow, the cold, etc. but man am I getting excited for this winter training trip. Part of my preparations for that are getting two weeks worth of posts lined up so I don’t have to spend our downtime working on blog stuff so if anyone has ideas, things they want to see, stuff you want me to cover, etc. shoot me an email. I’m open to pretty much anything and am always happy to push back my own stuff to post what you guys want so any ideas you have, feel free to send them my way.

College High School Novice Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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What are some good team bonding exercises to do at practice? Our novices are moving up to varsity and we are looking for ways to bring the two groups together. Thanks! Love your blog!

Check out the two posts linked below. They all touch on “team bonding” in one way or another so there might be some ideas in there that you can use. The “secret motivator” one was a ton of fun for everyone so I definitely recommend that one as you get farther into the season.

Related: Hi, we have states in two weeks and we have boat gifts – is this a sport-wide tradition? If so, what are good gifts to buy/make? Thanks a bunch.

When I coached at Marietta in the spring I was still trying to learn everyone’s names after about a week of being there and I noticed that a lot of the freshmen didn’t know any of the varsity girls names either so one day while they were warming up I had everyone get in a circle and go around one by one and say their name and grade. The catch was that you had to also say the names and grades of the people that went before you, which got progressively more amusing the farther around the circle we got. It was a good way to introduce everyone and break the ice, in addition to being a sneaky way for me to learn the names/grades of the people I didn’t know yet.

Related: I feel like I can’t really relate to any of the other girls on my team. I know that crew itself is really close-knit, but I can’t help but feel like there’s a huge separation from me and the rest of the rest of the team where I don’t really know how to associate with them and they don’t really know how to associate with me just because I’m friends with an entirely different group of people than they are. Any advice?

From there the “bonding” kind of happened on its own. Carpooling, boat dinners, traveling, silly activities like the name/grade thing, etc. all facilitated some of it but I’ve always been of the opinion that you can’t really force stuff like that, you’ve just kinda gotta let it happen naturally. If people are friendly and make an active effort to get to know one another then the two groups will merge into one pretty quickly.

Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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Hi Kayleigh, my team has demoed a couple types of boat makers this fall and I was wondering which boats you think are the best?

I’m not an expert on boats by any means but the ones I think are best are the ones that…

…have the most comfortable coxswain’s seat, meaning that I can comfortably fit in them (length and width-wise, because if I can’t fit no one can…) and am not sitting at weird heights or angles. I’m extremely picky about this because it’s where I spend all my time so the way rowers are with oar handles and stuff like that is how I am with coxswain seats … times ten. I could get super detailed about what I look for in that whole area but the bottom line is that you should take into consideration what the coxswain thinks because if he/she is physically uncomfortable, has a hard time seeing the cox box from wherever its positioned, etc. then that’s probably not a shell you wanna go with. You know the saying “happy wife, happy life”? Same thing goes for coxswains and practices/races. Happy coxswain –> smooth practice. Unhappy coxswain with a really sore back because the coxswain seat is really low in the boat and angles backwards to the stern (not naming names or anything but it rhymes with Shmesolute), amongst other things –> shitty practice.

…have the smoothest/least annoying steering because there are few things worse than a shell that doesn’t respond to anything other than “no pressure starboards” to go around a simple gradual turn that I should be able to do with minimal taps on the rudder.

…don’t make me feel like I’m sitting in a bathtub or a canoe fashioned from a hollowed out tree trunk. If I feel like I’m in a fiberglass version of something that Lewis and Clark would have traveled down the river in then there’s a good chance that the rowers are gonna say something about not liking the shell (usually because of how excessively heavy it feels, outside of general rigging adjustments) before I get a chance to.

So far the only two that I’ve really liked are Vespoli and Hudson (despite being notoriously tricky to set up). I’m not a fan of Pococks at all. We had them at Syracuse and they were the worst. Resolutes are OK – half of the ones I’ve been in had poor steering and were absolute bathtubs but the others weren’t so bad so I’m pretty neutral on them.

At the end of the day you’ve gotta look at the needs of your program, take into account the opinions of the people who will actually be using the equipment (this season and in the future), and make a decision from there. Definitely ask around to other programs and find out what their likes/dislikes are with the brands you’ve narrowed it down to but keep in mind that boats in general are a rather tempestuous topic of conversation. Some coaches have very strong, nitpicky, and occasionally downright snobby opinions on why one brand is better than the other and others don’t really care and just want whichever one is the right price. I’d consider myself to be part of the latter camp. I have strong opinions on the shells from the perspective of a coxswain but outside of that, I really couldn’t care less what boat I use. I’m not gonna sit around and debate the effectiveness of one type of rigger over another or how the fluid dynamics of a certain shell is going to effect our chances at IRAs in the spring (both of those are actual conversations I’ve witnessed). If the coxswain likes it, the rowers like it, and the price is reasonable … what’s the point in overthinking everything else?

One piece of advice that I’ll give you though with regards to price and product is to think long term, not just in the immediate future. That was an issue that my high school team had when I was a junior and they’re sort of paying the price for it right now. Our coaches wanted to upgrade our varsity boats to ones that would last the team for a good number of years but the executive board decided to put the money towards a cheaper shell that the coaches weren’t totally on board with because they didn’t think they would get more than 8-10 years out of it, if even. Well, here we are 10 years later and it’s well beyond being on its last leg. If you aren’t a super wealthy program that can afford to get new boats every couple of years then this is something to consider. It’s worth spending the money on a shell that’s going to last you a long time if you need it to (with the proper maintenance and care, obviously) rather than one that you’re only going to get a couple years out of before you have to do this all over again.

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.