Author: readyallrow

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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Last season (my junior year) I coxed the JV boat all fall and most of spring and a week before championships my coach handed out ranking sheets to the rowers and they chose who they wanted as their coxswain. Half of the girls in the JV boat wanted me and half of them wanted another girl who has a year less experience than me. My assistant coach made an “executive” decision to put the other girl in the JV boat. This summer I had lunch with one of my close friends who was a rower in that JV boat, she told me that after the ranking day some of the other rowers texted her and talked about how they didn’t pick me because they didn’t like me as a person. I asked her what that meant and she said they meant that I was “too sassy and demanding” with them. Now this fall season it’ll be me and the same girl going after the varsity boat and I really want that spot. What do I do about the fact that the rowers don’t like me as a person? Do I just kill them with kindness or what? I honestly have no clue what to do. I’ve had several people come up to me and tell me personally that I am a much better coxswain than the other girl so I don’t understand why people have to use the fact that they don’t like me against me. How should I approach this season?

Ranking sheets? Is that the same or different than coxswain evaluations? Straight ranking sheets sound like … a bad idea.

Here’s the thing with coxing women … anytime you’re in a position where you’re giving directions or telling other women what to do you have to watch how you do it because the slightest hint of anything in your voice is going to be mistaken as you being a bitch. There’s nothing wrong with being demanding, especially in the position we’re in, but you have to make sure that your demands are realistic and actually achievable by the people you’re working with. If you have varsity heavyweight men’s 8+ expectations of a JV women’s 8+ then yea, that would be too demanding. If you have varsity women’s 8+ expectations of a JV women’s 8+ and their abilities indicate that those expectations are reasonable then that’s fine. If you’re constantly pushing them harder than they can reasonably tolerate, physically or psychologically then that would/could cause problems.

How you give direction is another thing you’ve got to be aware of. There’s always got to be some sense of self-awareness on our end as to what we’re saying, how we’re saying it, how it could/is being perceived, etc. so that we can be sure we’re building the rowers up and not tearing them down. Think about how you say things and ask yourself how you’d respond if someone said the same thing to you in the same tone of voice. Would it rub you the wrong way or would you not think twice about it? Try to be objective and not biased towards yourself, if that’s possible. Basically, don’t just assume you’re not doing anything wrong and that the rowers are just being bitches for no reason. If you’re brave enough you should talk to the ones that don’t like you, for whatever reason, and ask what you can do better this season with regards to communicating with them. They don’t have to like you and it shouldn’t be your goal to get them to like you. That isn’t your responsibility. I doubt every soldier liked George Washington but they respected him enough to follow him into battle. That’s the mentality that you should have. Rowers don’t have to like their coxswains but they do need to respect them enough to follow them into battle. That goes for coxswains as well – to earn respect you’ve got to give it. Making an effort to figure out how you can improve as a coxswain by getting feedback from the people you’re working with is a good way to start earning it. In return, you should take their feedback and actually use it to help you going forward.

Should you be nice to them? Yes, because that’s just common courtesy. Should you kill them with kindness? Eh…my personal opinion is no because ultimately what’s that going to do for you? Granted it could work out well but it could also come off as really, really fake, which will just piss them off even more. There’s a big difference between liking you as a coxswain and liking you as a person and my theory on why rowers use how much they like you as a person “against” you is because with the amount of time you’re going to be spending together, why wouldn’t you want to be with someone you genuinely like? I don’t necessarily agree with it but I do understand it. In a perfect world all coxswains would be chosen based on their abilities and not on popularity but that is never going to happen. Popularity is always going to play a small part, especially in high school, especially when you’re coxing women.

In addition to talking to the people in that boat and doing some self-reflection on your own, talk to your assistant coach. Ask her if she can share why she ultimately chose the other coxswain and what she based her decision on since it seemed like the votes were evenly split between you and the other girl. I wouldn’t straight up say that some of the girls prefer you because you’re the better coxswain but I would just say that you want to know what you can do to improve because you want the varsity boat, obviously, and as the senior coxswain with four years of experience you feel like you deserve a shot at it because of X, Y, and Z. There’s nothing wrong with saying you feel like you deserve a certain boat as long as you’ve done the work ahead of time and actually do deserve a shot at it. Seniority alone isn’t a reason, as much as we’d like to think it is. Your cohesiveness with the rowers, how likely it is that they’ll listen to you, your ability to control things on the water, etc. are all things I think any good coach would look at.

For me, I’d also be looking at how much drama I’d be setting myself up to deal with if I knowingly put you in a boat where there’s friction between you and some of the rowers. Drama in some instances is inevitable and that’s fine. Everyone is equipped to deal with it to an extent. It’s part of the game, so to say. But, as a coach I don’t want to have to deal with a mutiny in the middle of the season simply because there are a million other things that I need to worry about. Whoever I ultimately chose as coxswain would need to be able to make it work with everyone in the boat, regardless of their friendships or lack there of off the water. Looking back on the previous season and seeing that there were personality clashes, no respect being given or received, etc. it would take a lot of convincing for me to put that coxswain with those same rowers, regardless of their skills. Their skills could be amazing and they could be a great coxswain but I’d be delusional to think that personality doesn’t play a part in being a good, effective leader. Like I said, they don’t have to like you but they do have to respect you and there can be no question as to whether or not that will happen.

In this order, look at how you’ve handled things in the past and how you’ve interacted with these women previously, then talk to your coach, then talk to the rowers. Start thinking about your goals for the season and use them and the feedback you get from everyone to help motivate you to make some improvements throughout the start of the season. I won’t lie to you, it sucks having to making adjustments to your attitude, personality, etc. just to avoid pissing people off but I will promise you this: in the end, it’s worth it. All those stupid situations in school where your teachers are like “oh, working on this group project is going to teach you how to deal with people in the future”…no. We all know they don’t. What teaches you how to deal with different personalities in the future is having conflicts with people and figuring out the best way to interact with them going forward. Sometimes that requires changes on our end and it requires taking the time to figure out what you’ve done in the past that you could do differently, more effectively, or just plain better going forward.

Coxing How To Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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Okay. I know you have gotten questions like this before but how do I get people to respect me as a coxswain? I mean I’m fairly knowledgeable, I know how to correct people’s technique and how to work with them to improve. I do most of the workouts with the team but I feel like there is something about me that makes them not respect me. I’m a camp counselor over the summer and I feel like the campers don’t really respect my authority either.

There are two ways to approach this. Do you think they don’t respect you because you’re not authoritative at the right times or do you think they don’t respect you because your attitude rubs them the wrong way?

Making an effort to get to know the rowers, being friendly with them, etc. is a good thing but it can end up hurting you a bit if you are too friendly with them because they’ll see you more as “one of them” instead of someone in a leadership role. I’m not saying you can’t be friends (or even best friends) with your rowers but you have to be able to separate yourself from those friendships when practice rolls around. If the rowers see you as their friend all the time it’ll be harder for them to take you seriously when you’re telling them what to do.

Related: RESPECT and the follow-up email to that post from a collegiate men’s coxswain

The flip side is if you’re too authoritative all the time and try to throw your weight around just because you’re in a position that has some degree of power, all in an attempt to make the rowers respect you. One of the things that can be tough to master with coxing is telling someone what to do without being bossy or bitchy. This is where your tone of voice comes into play. Think of how you say things and then put yourself in the shoes of the rowers. If someone was saying to you what you’re saying to the rowers in the same way you’re saying it, how would you interpret it? Would you take it as someone who knows what they’re doing and is trying to help you improve or as someone who is trying too hard to get people to respect her, overstepping her authority, and not being an effective communicator?

Related: How NOT to piss off your rowers

I don’t have the secret to earning someone’s respect. It’s going to be different with every person you meet and every crew you cox because there are different personalities to contend with. The first step towards gaining the respect of your teammates though is to make an effort to figure out why they don’t respect you. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt since I obviously don’t know the entirety of your situation and say that it’s possible that they don’t disrespect you but they don’t fully respect either because they don’t know you that well. Make an effort to get to know them, figure out why they’re there, what their goals are, what they need from you, etc. and use all of that to not only work on the respect thing but to also improve yourself and your boat.

Definitely check out the “respect” tag too, there are tons of questions in there that you should be able to pull some good advice from.

Coxing Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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As the summer comes to an end and fall season comes up, I’ve been a little rusty on my coxing. While there have been some rowers that go to the local aquatic center and have been rowing, I’ve realized that I’ve been spending my summer primarily on school work and I haven’t been able to get out there and practice. But now that the summer is ending and in the last few weeks there are rowers planning on going over to the AC to take out some eights, I was thinking about joining them. My only fear is that this is my first year on varsity and I’m a tad nervous. I want to practice my steering but I’m afraid that if I’m getting rowers that have been rowing all summer long in my boat, that they’ll want me to throw in technical calls and whatnot. Any advice?

I was talking about this same topic through email with a coxswain the other day – a collegiate coxswain, actually. They just finished their first season and will also be coxing with their team’s varsity program in the fall. Here’s what I said to them:

” … Your expectations of yourself should be realistic as well – don’t overwhelm yourself trying to impress everyone or prove you should be there. Just go out there, do what you did in the spring, and let your actions speak for themselves. Coxing is like riding a bike, once you get in the groove of it you never forget how it’s done. There’s no real way to “fall behind” or anything, especially because so much of what makes coxing what it is is based on inherent stuff, like your personality, drive, intelligence, etc. Other than continuing to educate yourself and learn about the sport, there’s not much to do in the summer. Not everyone has access to a boathouse or anything when school’s not in session so it’s OK if you take a couple months off. I think it’s important to do that anyways just so you don’t get burned out.”

If you’re going out with rowers that have been rowing over the summer, chances are they probably have a list of things that they’ve been working on with their own technique, which means they should ideally be able to give you a list of things that they’d like you to focus your calls on. Have your notebook on hand and ask them individually if they’d mind giving you a couple things things that they’d like you to watch for with them, such as washing out, their timing, etc. Whatever they’ve been working on this summer should be the stuff you try and focus on because that’s where they’ve been focusing their efforts, thus getting feedback on it is pretty important. Take that information home and start thinking of what calls you can associate with each thing. I’d say have at least three different calls for each thing that way you can vary what you’re saying and keep the rowers engaged instead of just saying the same thing over and over and having it lose it’s effect.

Tell them also that you want to practice your steering so that’s going to be your technical focus while you’re out. They’ve got theirs, you’ve got yours. The best time to practice your steering is during longer pieces, not drills, for obvious reasons, so tell them ahead of time that for the first few minutes you want them to internalize their strokes, think about their seat, feeling the boat move, etc. and then after that you’ll start bringing it all together, making some technical adjustments, bringing up the power, and taking some harder strokes. So for example, if you do a 10 minute piece you can break it down like this:

0-3:00 || No talking, just rowing. To keep things interesting you could have them row eyes closed, feet out, or eyes closed and feet out. During this time you should be focusing on your steering, since that’s your “thing”, while at the same time paying attention to the bladework. Remember – you want to make minimal adjustments with the rudder. Small changes when necessary but that’s all. Pick a point and every 3-5 strokes check where you are. Eventually you want to get to the point where steering is an auto-pilot response so pay attention to where you are and where you’re going but don’t focus 99.9% of your brainpower on it.

3:01 – 6:00 || Technique – what did you notice during the first three minutes? Talk to each rower equally and individually, point out something they’re doing well and something they can work on. Give each rower at least 5 strokes so before moving on to the next person.

6:01 – 8:00 || Once you’re through each individual look at the whole package. What do you see? How does the boat feel? Are you getting a good amount of run or is there some check happening? How’s the rhythm? Talk to your stroke about this – communication with them is crucial, for on-the-water and off-the-water purposes.

8:01-9:00 || You’ve spent a good amount of time working on finesse stuff, now it’s time to start putting some power behind the blade. If you were rowing at 75% pressure, take it up to 90%. Low stroke rate (20spm or so), powerful drives. Less calls about technique, more about power now. Leg drive, connection, posture, etc.

9:01-10:00 || You’ve got technique and power, now add in speed. Every 20 seconds take the stroke rate up 2 beats while maintaining the same good rowing you’ve held for the last nine minutes. There should be a shift in intensity here, both with their strokes and your calls. Remind them to move the boat, not the water.

This entire time you should have been focusing on steering and holding your point. Doing pieces like this where there’s a “focus” throughout it forces you to multi-task and learn how to juggle doing two, three, four, five very important things all at the same time. Don’t let it overwhelm you, just go with it. To improve with something as finicky as steering you’ve got to push yourself out of your comfort zone a little. In the end it’s always worth it though.

Don’t be nervous. Easier said than done, I know, but you truthfully have no reason to be nervous. The summer is the best time to make mistakes because there’s zero pressure from anyone. Go out there confidently, communicate with the rowers, have goals for yourself, execute everything to the best of your abilities, and reflect on every practice once you’re off the water. What went well, what did you improve on, how did that improvement happen, what do you need to do to maintain that change and make it a habit going forward, and what do you want to keep working on in the future? Keep a notebook handy so you can write all of this down.

Don’t think that just because you’ll be with the varsity in the fall that you’ve got to start commanding them now like you will be in two months. Stay relaxed and have a good time. You’ll have plenty of time to be super disciplined in the fall. For now, just enjoy the water and getting to know the guys you’re rowing with.

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Rowing to Kabul

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If I had to pick a country that seemed to be the least likely to have a national rowing program, Afghanistan would definitely be in my top five, and not just because of current world politics or anything like that. Matt Trevithick, a BU alumni, is working towards building up the Afghan rowing program in order to potentially, hopefully be able to compete in Rio. FISA and ANOC (Association of National Olympic Committees) have pledged their support, as have local government officials who are planning to help get a boathouse built for the team.

A boathouse … and a rowing program … requiring thousands, nay millions of dollars in funding … in Afghanistan. I find it hard to process not because I think something like this is impossible or that the people there are undeserving but because nearly every day since I was in 8th grade all I’ve seen of Afghanistan is video and pictures of what amounts to nothing more than a sand pit completely encased in poverty and war. It seems crazy because of how dangerous you’d think being in that area would be more than anything else.

This is where they’ll be training…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rii9KS2gvCo

…and this is the route that was driven to bring boats from Germany to Afghanistan. Can you imagine driving nearly 3,500 in three days? That’s about 500 miles less than the distance between Boston and San Francisco and I can’t even begin to imagine driving that in just three days. I like road trips but that’s pushing it.

Oh, and don’t think they’ll be rowing those shitty boats that you typically see novices rowing … oh no. In addition to the quad and double that Matt was already able to get, he was able to talk Filippi into donating some shells to the program. Can you imagine if you were just starting up a rowing program and were able to get one of the best boat manufacturers in the world to donate some shells to your team?

Here’s a great article from the Bostonia about the whole project.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I graduated this past spring and I was recruited to cox in college. I was always the top coxswain at my high school club and the coaches now look at me as a mini-coach. They want me to pass on as much knowledge as I can to the other coxswains before leaving but I’m having a hard time reaching them. I’m not sure if they’re intimidated by me (I’m really not scary…) or they really don’t know what the heck I’m saying. Tips? Thanks!

That’s pretty cool you got asked to do that. It’s possible that they are intimidated a little, not by you necessarily but by your experience and the fact that you’re coxing in college, but it’s also possible that they might just not be around and/or are busy with jobs, family, etc. Try reaching out to them on Facebook and invite them to go get ice cream sometime next week. Keep it short and simple and just say that before you leave for school your coach wanted you all to get together to talk about the upcoming year, coxing stuff, etc. If for whatever reason you end up not being able to get together, write everything down and make a how-to guidebook for them.

If they’re smart, they’ll take advantage of your offer but don’t feel like you’re obligated to go out of your way to meet up with them. Like I said, they might be busy or they might just not care … which sucks, I guess, but ultimately isn’t your issue to deal with. Put together some notes and give it to your coach and if they want to read through it in the fall, it’s there for them to do that.

Note to all the coxswains out there, seriously, reach out to the coxswains from your team who are coxing in college or who just graduated and pick their brains on anything you can think of. They’ll most likely be willing to share their tips and tricks with you but you’ve gotta ask first.

Ergs Q&A Training & Nutrition

Question of the Day

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Hi. As fall season is coming up, one of my rowers is getting ready for 6K testing and prepping for them. After a summer break, he’s feeling a little out of it and he really needs to work on stamina. I was wondering if there are any pieces on the ergs that could help him with that because I’m low on ideas. Thank you!

Steady state, steady state, and more steady state.

I scribbled this down sometime last fall from something I read online (and of course now I don’t remember where I read it). It’s basically what a week of workouts in the mid to late summer looks like knowing you’ve got a 5k or a 6k coming up once fall season finally rolls around. All the interval stuff should be done at your at or around your goal pace and your steady state pace should be 6k+12ish.

Monday: 5x1500m, 5 minutes rest in between
Tuesday: 10k SS at 18-22spm
Wednesday: 2x6k, 3 minutes rest
Thursday: 12k SS at 18-22spm
Friday: 4x2k, 5 minutes rest
Saturday: 10k SS at 18-22spm
Sunday: Off

Essentially what you want to do is do 2-3 days of intervals and 2-3 days of long steady state. Other intervals I’ve seen are 8x1k 4x2k, 4×10 minutes with 4-3-2-1 minute rate changes and 5 minutes rest between pieces, 4×15 minutes with 3 minutes rest, 3×20 minutes with 4 minutes rest…it goes on and on.

Make sure you’re not forgetting to do core, some kind of lifting, and lots of stretching and rolling out. Doing all the work on the erg isn’t going to do you any good if you forget to do the other stuff too.

Q&A Rowing

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I had the shittiest practice ever today … I was so offset and I’m the slowest rower on the team and my coach won’t even follow me with his launch, that’s how far behind I get. I thought I had good technique but there’s a few basic things I don’t do properly and when I get corrections it’s so fucking hard for me to make those corrections and I can feel my coach giving up. I hate feeling so stupid after working so hard and idk like why the hell am I doing this, I’m not even strong. UGH I need a hug.

I’ve had shitty practices like that too – they’re the worst because you know you’re trying or you can see the people in your boat trying and for whatever reason things just aren’t clicking. It’s more mentally exhausting than anything else.

When we’ve fallen behind our coach or the other boats sometimes I would end up running my own practice. More often than not our coaches would make me push them to stay with the other boats, which is a good thing, you need to push yourself and be pushed like that, but other times I think they recognized that the neurons just weren’t firing that day so trying to push them to keep up would have only made things worse.

We’d usually stop rowing for at least two or three minutes, just to give everyone a mental break. We’d talk about whatever wasn’t feeling right and begrudgingly we would start over from the very beginning except much slower. If we were doing a drill or something, we’d break it down even further or if we couldn’t do that, we’d start off by pairs instead of fours or fours instead of sixes. We’d go through everything much slower until we had it down at that stroke rate, then we’d bump it up a beat or two and do it again, from the beginning, until we had it down at that stroke rate.

From there we’d cycle through all the pairs/6s before taking another break for a minute to figure out what went better that time and what we need to take away from it so we can keep doing it that way in the future. I don’t think there was ever time where doing it this way made things worse. Granted it took up a lot of time and sometimes we didn’t accomplish whatever the actual goal of practice was that day but the stuff we did accomplish from taking things slower and focusing more on our issues tended to, in some small way or another, be more helpful to us than whatever else we had planned on doing.

Related: What do you like to do to cheer yourself up after a lost race or tough practice?

Talk to your coach when you’re on land, preferably when you’ve cooled down, and explain the problems you’re having. Tell him how you’re frustrated because you’re having problems grasping the technical changes that you need to make and that you feel like he’s giving up on you because you either don’t understand what you’re being asked to do or are having trouble making the changes. Ask him, either then or before your next practice, if he can get on an erg with you and explain exactly what the changes are that he wants to see you make, what they should look like, and how what it should look/feel like compares to what you’re doing right now. If you don’t know or understand why something you’re doing is wrong, ask.

Also talk to him about what happens if you fall too far off the pace and end up further behind everyone else. Tell him that it’s frustrating for you but you don’t want the rest of practice to be wasted so does he have any suggestions of things you can do on your own (drills, steady state pieces, etc.). Also ask him if he’d be able to double back every so often to check in. It’s not safe for you to be completely without a coach, especially if you haven’t been rowing that long and/or are out there by yourself (I’m assuming you were in a single), so asking him to check on you for safety purposes alone is the least he can do.

You shouldn’t feel stupid after having a bad work out. Weaker people than you have gone through the same things and quit because it’s too hard so just by being persistent you’re already doing better than most. Bad practices happen. Are they infuriating as hell? Of course they are. The thing is though, you can almost always take something away from them that will ultimately make you a better, stronger rower in the long run. For me I’ve found that the best way to avoid letting crew mess with my head is to leave everything that happened on the water on the water until I’m calmed down enough to look at the situation from a more logical and objective perspective. When you’re pissed off you never see things how they actually are.

After a few hours, think back to practice for a few minutes and try to figure out what went wrong. What were you having trouble with, why was the technique stuff so hard today, etc. Jot down two or three things (and only two or three things so as to not overwhelm yourself) that were particularly difficult and come up with a plan to combat those things over the course of your next two practices or so. Whether it’s giving yourself a two minute break to take a deep breath and clear your head when you find yourself getting flustered or focusing all your energy on moving the legs and arms together on the drive so that it’s more powerful and consistent, give yourself a plan. If you’ve got something to work towards you’ll be able to focus more when you’re out instead of going out and trying to just blindly accomplish things to the point where you get so frustrated because nothing is working that you start doubting yourself.

Don’t use not being strong as an excuse. You can always get stronger, either by going to the gym or by pushing yourself to do better right at the point where you want to give up the most. If you do a 1000m piece and your brain starts telling you to quit at 800m but you push through it, sprint hard, and finish the piece, you got stronger. If you do 8x500m and you decide to quit after seven because you’re tired, you got weaker. If you make lifting a priority, you will get stronger. If you start thinking about the stuff you’re doing well and committing yourself to working harder to improve the things you’re not doing so well, you will get stronger. Any time you unnecessarily beat yourself up over something you’re backtracking on any progress you’d made up to that point. Sometimes you do have to kick your own ass and that’s fine, but know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not.

You’re not the first person to have a bad practice or feel like this and you’re definitely not going to be the last. Something to remember: you’re not defined as an athlete by how well or poorly you perform at one practice – what defines you is whether you show up the next day clear headed, focused, and ready to do work, regardless of how the previous day went.