Month: September 2017

How to shorten the learning curve

Coxing How To Novice

How to shorten the learning curve

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Around this time of year is when I start getting questions from coxswains (both novice and varsity) about how they can learn everything they need to know faster … which I totally get, you want to get up to speed and not feel like you’re the behind the eight ball. That’s valid but … you have to respect the process. This stuff takes more than a single practice (sometimes more than a single season) to really nail down and that’s OK as long as it’s not taking an inordinate amount of time simply because you’re not willing to do the work. (“The work” isn’t listening to recordings every free second of your day either, for all the coxswains out there who think pouring over YouTube videos is the best/only way to get better.)

Below are a couple tips that I’ve picked up over the years from my coaches, coaches I’ve worked with, other coxswains I’ve talked to, or just from completely unrelated things I’ve read or seen online that can help you shorten the learning curve and gain the knowledge/confidence you need to be an effective coxswain.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

This is something I’ve had to remind myself of many times since I started my job at Columbia. Don’t be stubborn about asking for help. You can save so much time (and stress) by talking to someone who’s already done the thing you’re trying to do and using their insight/advice as a framework to go off of. “Model those who have already forged the path” is how I saw one article describe it. For me, that’s meant heavily relying on the head coaches to explain the processes they already had in place so that rather than coming up with something entirely new on my own, all I have to do is tweak what they’ve done to fit what works best for me or, if I do need to scrap it, use what they’ve done as a template to create something that fits my/our needs better.

The same goes for coxing. An example is when I was a novice, I leaned hard on the varsity coxswains to help me learn how to steer because I knew it was a skill I needed to pick up quickly. I asked a ton of questions (the same ones multiple times to each of the older coxswains) and used bits and pieces of the advice they gave me to shape my approach to steering … and that’s held fast for the last 15 years. I’ve integrated new things over the years as I’ve gotten ideas from other coxswains but the foundation is an aggregate of my teammates experiences in learning that same skill. This probably saved me weeks (and a few busted bow balls) because rather than starting completely from scratch and trying to do it all on my own (without actually knowing where to start), I modeled the coxswains who’d already been where I was at.

Seek feedback

If you wait for feedback you’re only ever gonna get it when you’ve fucked up. That’s just a fact of coxing. It’s not a bad thing when someone points that out either but you’re going to be able to process it a lot better (emotionally, strategically, whatever) when you acknowledge it yourself and ask for advice on how to improve vs. an annoyed, frustrated rower actively seeking you out to say “dude, you did XYZ wrong…”. This is also why I stress the importance of coxswain evaluations any chance I get because you will not get better if they are not part of your approach to self-improvement.

Related: Making mistakes

You can’t go on the water just to cox either … by which I mean you can’t go out there and just go through the motions because you have to be there and you assume that somehow by osmosis, just sitting in the boat will make you better. That’s not what “putting in the time” means. You’ve got to go out with a purpose (beyond whatever the team’s actual plans/goals for the day are) and be able to go to people at the end of the week and say “hey, I’ve been working on trying to call the drills better this week and incorporate more technical feedback into my calls, do you have any feedback on how that’s gone, if there was any calls you thought worked really well or didn’t work at all, etc.?”. Less generality, more specificity when it comes to soliciting feedback.

Take advantage of every opportunity

You just started coxing last month and you hear the masters that row out of your boathouse need a coxswain this weekend for practice. Volunteer to cox them. Your coach wants to switch another coxswain into your boat for the day and have you ride in the launch. Instead of blankly staring at whatever the boat’s doing for 90 minutes and silently fuming about being switched out, engage and have an actual conversation with your coach about what you’re seeing, what he’s seeing, his goals for certain drills/pieces, stuff you’ve been working on yourself, your personal goals for the season, etc. Your boat (the 1V) is doing a land workout today and the 3V coxswain has a dentist appointment so their boat might get stuck on land too. Ask if you can take them out since you’ve never coxed that crew and you haven’t been on the water with your assistant coach in awhile.

The more opportunities you seek out, the more they’ll be presented to you in the future and the more chances you’ll have to practice and refine your skills. Don’t just cox the crews you’re assigned or the ones you’re comfortable being with and do not avoid volunteering to cox a crew because you think they’re beneath your skill level. None of us are that good that we can’t take out the 5V for a day. There’s something to be learned from every boat you get in and if you limit yourselves to just the lineups your coach puts you in, you’re really restricting your capacity for getting better.

Deconstruct the skill you’re trying to learn

When it comes to getting through my to-do list, I break each task down to its individual components so I can get a better sense of what that task entails and how long it’ll take to complete (based on the number and/or complexity of each of its components). It also helps ensure that nothing is overlooked along the way. I do this all the time, especially now, (you would not believe how many moving pieces there are to scheduling an official visit…) but I did it a lot while coxing too. I say “respect the process” a lot and this is one of those things that helps you become comfortable doing that, even if it is a little daunting at first seeing every. single. thing. written out in front of you.

Related: Top 20 terms (these posts are a good example of this “deconstruction”)

For example, saying you want to “get better at steering” is fine if you just want to alert yourself that it’s something you need to do. If you’re trying to actually develop a plan of attack to improve that skill though, you have to break it down to each of the things that goes into maneuvering a 53 foot long piece of equipment, ranging from how you’re positioning yourself in the boat (broken down further to how you sit and how you position your hands) to understanding how your point is effected by a technical issue (and what to say/do to fix that first) or the elements. Once you know all the individual components that make up steering in general, then you can pinpoint the ones you didn’t know played into that, the ones you already know you need to improve, etc. and start working on them one by one. As you improve each of those things, you’ll notice over time that your steering is getting better … not because you’re just broadly “working on your steering” but because you’ve determined and are addressing each of the underlying elements that comprise “steering” as a whole.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

This is the only time I’ll tell a coxswain that being repetitive is a good thing. If you want to learn how to do something, that requires doing it often and persisting in doing it over and over and over and over and over again until it becomes second nature. “Expert-level performance is the result of expert-level practice”. Rarely, if ever, is a coxswain good at something purely due to innate talent. It might be like, 3% of it but the bulk of their success and mastery of a particular skill is more a result of their stubborn dedication to committing each of its fundamental components to muscle memory than it is anything else.

This is one of the few things that doesn’t fall under the “it’s worked for me but it might not work for you” caveat that I try to remind people of with the advice I give. Each of those things up above will work for you if integrate them into your routine. Like I said at the beginning, you’re not going to pick up all the nuances of steering or how to cox a 2k in a single practice but if you’re following the advice I laid out above and making it work for you, the learning curve, especially as a a novice, won’t feel nearly as steep.

Image via // @nickmdanielson

Erg Playlists

Music to erg to, pt. 154

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Hope you guys are enjoying the new look of the blog! If you haven’t yet, check out the “work with me” page – it’s probably the biggest addition to the new site and what I’m most excited to get up and rolling. Any questions, feel free to shoot me an email!

Yesterday I posted a new “coxswain skills” post on tips for running a smooth practice. Like a lot of what’s on the blog, it’s all simple stuff that is easy to overlook because it’s so simple. Varsity coxswains, I really encourage you to spend time over the next week while we’re still in the early part of the season to go over this stuff with the new coxswains on your team and review it with anyone who just moved up from novice to varsity so that they’re familiar with how your coaches run practice, what the expectations are, etc. so you can hit the ground running when the pace of practice starts picking up.

Coxswain skills: Running a smooth practice

Coxing Novice

Coxswain skills: Running a smooth practice

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There’s a lot of things you can do to make yourself invaluable to your team and one of the highest ones on the list (top five, easily) is being able to run a smooth practice. Since most of us are only a few days into the fall semester and haven’t been on the water too many times yet, now is when you should be communicating with the other coxswains and coaches about how practices are gonna run this year so that you can maximize the amount of time you have on the water. Varsity coxswains, you should be familiarizing the new coxswains on your team with whatever your “best practices” are for running/managing practice so that they’re up to speed and can start getting used to the way things work on your team (rather than trying to figure it out on their own because they’re afraid they’ll look stupid if they ask).

Below are some quick bullet points on what you should be doing on a daily basis to ensure practice runs efficiently. I’ve touched on or elaborated on several of these in a variety of previous posts so if you want to check those out you can visit the “practice management” tag.

Have a practice plan before you launch

If you don’t know what the plan is, ask your coach. Ideally if/when possible you should arrive a few minutes before the rest of the team so you can talk have a few uninterrupted minutes with your coach to go over what you’ll be doing that day and ask any questions you have. The practice plan should entail where you’re meeting once you launch (especially important if multiple crews are going out together), the primary focus/purpose of whatever drills you’ll be doing (this is a good opportunity to get clarification on how the drill is executed if you’re unsure or unfamiliar with it), what pieces you’ll be doing, and anything in particular from the last few days of practice that you should be watching for or carrying over (i.e. incorporating in the technical work you did yesterday into your calls during the steady state piece today).

If you’re going out with another crew, keep the boats together

Communication with the other coxswains is imperative so that you’re not getting too far ahead or behind or drifting away from each other. From a pure safety standpoint, your coach should be able to see you in his direct line of vision if he’s behind both crews in the launch – one of you shouldn’t be 300m to the left of the launch and the other 100m to the right. It’s impossible to actually watch the crews and coach when the boats are really spread out so make it a priority to work together and communicate so that you know where the other is pointed. If you’re doing drills or something and one crew gets really far ahead or behind, know what the protocol is for that – does your coach want you to keep going, if you’re really far ahead do they want you to drop the drill and replace it with a pause so the other crew can catch up, if you’re the one behind do they want you to row continuously at 3/4 pressure until you catch up and then continue on with the drill … etc. All that stuff needs to be ironed out and communicated amongst the coxswain corps before you launch. Ideally it should be a start-of-the-season “this is how we’re gonna handle XYZ situation” type of conversation but it never hurts to discuss it amongst yourselves again each time you go out together.

Shut up

You would be amazed how much you learn and accomplish when you stop. talking. The mic is a privilege, not a right. Listen to your coach, don’t be having side conversations when they’re trying to coach (adjusting your point and other safety issues are obviously the exception to the rule), and whatever calls you’re making, make sure they’re something that will have a positive effect on the rowers and the boat. That especially applies to novice coxswains. You do not have to and should not talk for the entire practice. There’s a lot that has to be learned and understood before your calls will be effective so don’t be afraid to just focus on your steering and soak in the knowledge bombs your coach is dropping throughout practice. You’ll pick up the nuances of coxing a lot faster that way.

Be in control

Safety is your first priority. Think out your actions before you do them and always be looking and thinking ahead of where you currently are. Follow directions but don’t pass go, do not collect $200 if you don’t understand what you’re being asked to do. You’ll save more time asking for clarification than you will by making assumptions. Make your calls clear and concise, communicate commands immediately, (i.e. when your coach says “OK let’s get started”, don’t spend 30 seconds monologuing to the crew about whatever you’re about to do before you actually say “sit ready”), and speak with authority. Own your fuck ups as soon as they happen and move on. You will make mistakes and that’s fine, just don’t make the same one twice and don’t be that person that says “it wasn’t my fault”. It might not have been but it’s your crew, your equipment, etc. and you’re the coxswain, thus whatever it is is your responsibility.

Ultimately a smooth practice is a collaborative effort between you, the other coxswains, and your coach(es), which means a) you’ve all got to be on the same page and b) you’ve gotta be able to adapt at a moment’s notice if/when something changes or derails the original plan. This is where being in control and maintaining your composure can really make you stand out in a positive way, not just to your coach but your crew as well. “How do I earn my boat’s respect” is a frequent question that I get asked and one piece of that 1000 piece puzzle is being able to do all the things above really well.

Image via // @bill.bcqt

In rowing, the transcendent moment is called "swing" and those of us who have rowed for lifetimes have maybe experienced swing three or four times. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it really is a different dimension. It's where all eight bodies in the boat are absolutely in sync and every stroke is as perfect as it can be and then all of a sudden the race is over and you don't remember anything about the race except that you ended up two boat lengths ahead. It's an extraordinary kind of experience, really quite an oxymoron, it's a physical out of body experience or a mental out of body experience. It's part of that transcendence.

Coxing Masters Novice Racing

Question of the Day

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Hi – I’m a relatively new coxswain (~6 months) for a master’s team in my city. We have a few head races coming up late August/early September, and I’ve been asked to cox the super novice master’s team. I haven’t coxed a head race before, and while your existing posts are really helpful, I was wondering if you could give advice specifically for coxing a less competitive boat (not necessarily less competitive in spirit, but definitely in rowing ability)? I worry that there will be a lot of boats passing during the 5k course and that I won’t be able to make any calls off of other boats without them ending poorly (like if a boat is coming up from behind, I know to make calls about pushing off of them etc., but if those boats keep passing us regardless of what we do, I don’t know how productive those “pushing off” calls will be if nothing comes of them). How would you approach coxing a race like this?

Also, do you have any good coxswain recordings where the coxswain is both doing a good job and the boat isn’t winning? I feel like a lot of the exemplary recordings on this website are of boats that are able to be super competitive and while there is obviously some transfer of tips/knowledge from that type of recording to my current coxing, it also doesn’t always feel relatable to my own coxing situation (where I’m coxing super novice masters rowers). I’m excited to have a chance to cox my first head race with lower stakes but I still want to do right by the rowers and prep just as seriously as any other cox in any other boat, which is why I’m getting nervous about having the right calls!

I think accepting that they’re a super novice team that is probably going to get passed a lot is important. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have a similar approach to coxing a normal crew but if our definitions of “super novice” are the same, you kinda have to match the complexity of your race plan to the skill level of the crew … which is to say you should basically go out with the goal of doing a few 10s/20s throughout the race but mostly row it for yourselves rather than as a competitive piece like you otherwise would, if that makes sense. I know that sounds kind of dismissive and negative but that’s the reality of coxing crews that are way below the skill level of the other people you’re racing against. You don’t have to change anything as far as intensity or spirit goes, like you said, but you do have to adapt your strategy and be realistic.

When I’ve coxed or coached novice crews in the past, being honest and up front with them has always been the key to them going into the race with a good mindset. If you say “yea, we’re probably gonna get passed a lot because we’re the least experienced ones out there” or “OK here’s the race plan (and then lay out something super unnecessarily detailed)” then they’re going to feel deflated, overwhelmed, or both before they even get in the boat. If you frame it as “yea, we’re the slow guys but we’re faster than we were a few weeks ago and we’re all getting our blades in at the same time now so let’s go out there and row our race … we already know other crews are gonna pass us and that’s fine but the primary goal is to focus on our boat and try to beat our 5k time from practice last week.” then they’re more likely to feel energized about the piece because you’ve neutralized the whole getting passed thing and given them something tangible to work towards (more tangible than passing another crew, finishing in XYZ position, etc.).

As much as I hate to say “be positive” because of how cheerleader-y it sounds, that is the tone you have to have when you have that conversation. (Keep in mind there’s a big difference between being positive but realistic and sugarcoating it because you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. That’s not productive at all.) I’m not really an overly peppy person in that sense but I have a sarcastic, dry enough sense of humor that I can say “we’re slow AF” and still get people to loosen up and go into it with a smile on their faces. Whatever your personality dictates in those kind of situations, just roll with it.

You’re right that those “pushing off” types of calls probably won’t be super effective, especially if/when you know the crew is going to pass you. Them “ending poorly” is probably unlikely – at most you’ll have an undesired effect if the energy falls off – but again, it’s all in how you frame it. If you say “Sarasota’s walking, let’s hold them off, push them back, etc…” and then they walk through you in five strokes then yea, that’s pretty demoralizing. If you say “Sarasota’s coming up behind us, eyes on the guy in front of you, let’s keep it internal and make ’em work for it…”, again, that gives them tangible things to focus on and work for. If/when they’ve moved through you you can say “solid effort there guys, finishes looked cleaner and Sarasota had to call another five on top of their move just to get past us, way to fight…”.

When I coached my high school team a few years ago we’d have the novices do pieces against the lightweights and one of their goals was making it take longer for the lightweights to walk through them this time than it did last time – i.e. if it took them 18 strokes to walk through them last time, this time we’re gonna dig in and make it take 20. They knew they were gonna get walked through but their primary focus was less on holding them off and more on digging in, testing their own limits, and staying in their boat rather than getting caught up with what this other crew was doing. How long it took the lightweights to move through them was a secondary goal.

Don’t worry about the calls. Worry about steering effectively first and following the rules of the course. The nice thing about coxing a novice crew for a low-stakes race is that you really don’t have to prep as much or as hard as you would if you were coxing like, the Princeton 2V at HOCR. Basically my point is don’t overthink this. Look at the course maps ahead of time, familiarize yourself with the starting area and any tricky spots (i.e. anything marked by a buoy), and have a general plan (i.e. a couple spots where you wanna do 10s/20s) and a rough idea of the calls you wanna use based off of what’s been working during practice. Don’t listen to other recordings and try to implement calls you hear/like because it’s unlikely they’ll be right for a crew that’s “super novice masters rowers”. If you can adapt it to make it work, by all means go for it, but test it out in practice ahead of time so you know if it has the desired effect and if it’s worth using during the race. Don’t try to memorize a bunch of calls that sound cool because you will forget them, which will just cause you to freak out during the race because you’re drawing a blank and can’t think of what to say.

Related: Coxswain recordings, pt. 11

There’s probably others but the recording I immediately thought of is this recording of GW’s freshman eight in the petite finals at IRAs in 2013 (also found in the post linked above). I don’t believe they were ahead at any point in the race but he still coxes it really well and you can tell at the end that they’re not bummed about where they finished (5th ahead of Dartmouth, 11th overall in the field). I get what you’re saying about some stuff not feeling relatable but a) you’re coxing (super novice) masters so that’s to be expected (nothing against masters but it’s to be expected) and b) the relatable stuff shouldn’t be winning, losing, competitiveness, etc., it should be tone, execution, and communication. 10th grade tennis players probably can’t relate to Federer or Serena but the fundamentals of their game are still the same and that’s the important stuff to pay attention to and incorporate into your own style of play (or in this case, coxing).

Teammates & Coaches Video of the Week

Video of the Week: “SAW WOOOOD CITY”

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If you know me then you know I am all about relating current events and pop culture to whatever point I’m trying to make about rowing or coxing at that moment, which is why I was pumped to read this article about Craig Amerkhanian and see that those two things are staples in his pre-practice speeches (and a part of his overall coaching strategy). “He combines the athletic with the big picture, fully realizing that the sport will not, and should not, define the lives of his rowers.”

Welcome to the new Ready all, row…!!

Uncategorized

Welcome to the new Ready all, row…!!

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I’m not sure if I’ve ever truly understood what “labor of love” meant until now. All of this started over a year ago in July 2015 and it is finally done.

*Cue the biggest sigh of relief ever*

So, what’s new? Besides, well, everything, here are a couple of notable changes.

Coxswain recordings

All the recordings posts have been completely redone and updated – if you had any of the old posts bookmarked, delete them! Before there were 32 posts and now there are 43, all of which you can see here. The reason why there are more is because I deleted a lot of individual recordings and spread the remaining ones out over more posts, that way there are only 2-3 recordings per post instead of 4 or 5 like there was for the first couple years. I love how they turned out and think it’ll be much easier for you guys to take something away from them now, especially since each one has a very defined “calls I liked” section. That was a much-requested addition to those posts that I started doing about a year ago but now every post has that included.

Patreon/”Work with me”

If you remember my post from back in May about the ideas I had for the blog, you’ll remember that I asked if you’d be interested in supporting Ready all, row… via donations on Patreon. The positive feedback I got from that was the boost I needed so, if you’re interested, you can check that out and pledge your support here.

On the main menu bar you’ll see a new tab that says “work with me“, which is where you’ll find the Patreon link housed (there’s also one at the bottom of each page), as well as a sign-up section if you’re interested in working with me one-on-one or doing a virtual clinic with some of your teammates over Google Hangouts. You don’t have to be a Patreon supporter to do either of those (although a 30 minute one-on-one is part of one of the reward tiers) so if you’re interested, let’s set something up!

Resources

I’m a big proponent of venturing outside the rowing bubble when looking for reading material on coaching, training, etc. In this section I’ve started curating articles that have a good message or solid info that I think is applicable to rowing even though majority are written by, for, or about athletes and coaches from other sports. I still have a ton to add so make sure you check in regularly to see what’s new – all the new articles will be posted at the top of their respective sections.

I have a lot of rowing and coxing-specific resources that I’ll eventually post as well – things like erg calculators, course maps, etc. – that will also be included in this section.

“Contact”

The other thing you’ll notice on the menu bar is the “questions” tab is gone. You can obviously still ask me questions but rather than leaving them as a comment, now you can fill out the contact form, attach your audio if you want me to listen to a recording, and it’ll go straight to my inbox. This is ultimately more to help me stay organized than anything else but it just looks cleaner too, which I’m all about. As always, if you want your question to remain private and off the blog,  just let me know otherwise I’ll default to posting them on here like usual.

I’ve still got some back-end stuff to do but it’s all relatively minor stuff so you (hopefully) won’t notice many changes from here on out. If there are any major updates I’ll make sure to post about them so you can get as much functionality out of the site as possible. There’s at least one more that I’ll be working on this weekend but if there’s something you think is missing, you come across a dead link, etc., just let me know. Some links might still go back to the old site but that’ll stop once everything begins redirecting on October 1st.

Also, don’t forget to update your bookmarks/RSS feeds and to subscribe to the blog if you’re not already so you can be notified anytime a new post goes up. The subscribe button is up there in the top right of the page – you can’t miss it! If you’re already subscribed via email you’ll continue to receive notifications as usual (let me know if you don’t) but WordPress.com followers will only see new posts in their Reader. You won’t receive email updates unless you subscribe to receive them on the new site or add the new site to your RSS feed.

This has been such a major project for me so I really appreciate everyone being patient this summer when I wasn’t posting anything and was (very … very) slow to respond to emails. Now that 98% of the new site is done and I’ve settled into a groove with everything at Columbia, I’m ready to get back to regular posting and emailing starting next week. Definitely let me know what you think of the site (hopefully you love it as much as I do!) and again, thanks for all the motivation and support!