JNT High Performance Team U19 8+ Time trials

I think I’ve posted a couple of Dustin’s recordings (this one in particular is great for this time of year) but I really recommend checking out his YouTube channel and giving some of the stuff he’s got posted a listen. He’s one of the few coxswains who I wholeheartedly endorse as embodying everything it means to be a good coxswain.

Related: Tips for coxing a time trial

Time trials seem like they’ve started becoming more of a thing over the last year or two so this is another example of how to call one if you’re unsure of what your strategy, tone, etc. should be. They definitely require a bit of a different approach since they’re not quite a 2k and not a quite a head race but this recording is a good example of how it’s done.

One thing that I cannot stress enough – and I hear this from rowers all. the. time. – is you have to make sure you tell them when they’re on like he does here at 1:48ish. You can’t get so caught up in the build that you forget to tell the crew when they’ve crossed the line. How he executes that entire starting sequence is pretty solid too, both with his calls and tone.

At 2:44, this is a good way to call a quick 5 (or anything really with regards to what the burst is for) – “in two we go for five, we place the blades quicker, we engage the legs … on this one“. That’s another thing to pay attention to throughout this piece – how he calls their moves.

Similar to calling when you cross the line at the start, the importance of nailing the number of strokes left to the line at the end cannot be overstated. This is so easy to practice too, you don’t have to be racing or doing pieces to do it, just pick something that’s in front of you (like a boat docked along the shore, a bridge, whatever…) and run through the calls in your head like you would as you’re coming to the line. This was one of the things that helped me get better at judging distances too, not necessarily in the “50 meters to the line” sense but just in judging how many strokes it takes to get to X landmark. The better you are at judging the distance by eye the easier it’ll be for you to say with confidence “seven strokes to the line” and have it actually be seven strokes to the line.

Wellesley College WV8+ 2016 National Invitational Rowing Championships

This is another coxswain who I’ve posted a couple recordings of – you can check the others out here and here.

A question that came up a lot throughout the fall was how to call out your rowers during a race and I think Ale does a great job of showing how to do that here. You can hear her call out Amelia at 1:05 and 1:32, Sahar at 1:47, Molly at 2:13 and 3:13, and Katie at 3:01 and 5:18 … everything she says is super simple, very direct, and not anything that takes away from the overall point of whatever technical or strategic thing she’s trying to get the entire boat to accomplish, which is something you should be keeping in mind whenever you make individual calls like this.

Other calls I liked:

“Pry into their 6-seat…”

“In two, we sharpen our knives…”

“There are no questions, we stride with our confidence…”

“In two, we trust our training…”

“We suspend, we move … we suspend, we move…”