An aggregate resource for all those riding in the 9th seat
How long can a cox box go without dying? (If it’s fully charged to start with.)
If it’s fully charged you can probably get around 3-4 hours out of them with normal use. Not having the volume turned up all the way for an entire practice is a great way to save battery – you shouldn’t need it more than half to three-quarters of the way up anyways. The older the batteries in them get though the harder it will be to hold a charge so some older cox boxes might not last as long compared to newer ones.
Hey, This past spring season was my first season and I am a novice coxswain. Now I am training with mostly varsity kids for the summer. I want to be be able to get them to respect me but I am really short and weak. I have already tried working out with them. Is there any other way to get their respect? Also, what are some drills that I can do on the water when I am waiting for my coach so my rowers aren’t just sitting around? Thanks for the help!
Don’t use being “short and weak” as an excuse. I’ve been trying to break that stereotype my entire life and it really irritates me when other people use that to justify why people don’t respect them. I’m 4’11” and 95lbs – I am short and I’m definitely weak compared to rowers but what I lack in strength I make up for in leadership skills, meticulous attention to detail, and just working my ass off to be the best coxswain I can be for my crews. If you want their respect, do those things instead of making excuses.
Related: How a collegiate coxswain earned her crew’s respect
Two of the drills that my coach has me do are catch placement drills (by 4s, 6s, or all 8 using just the outside hand or both hands – there’s lots of variations you can do) and pause progressions (by 4s, 6s, or all 8, 5 strokes pausing hands away, 5 at bodies over, 5 at 1/2 slide, 5 full strokes).
Catch placement drills, which I talked a bit about in the post linked above, are stationary and the pause progressions will let us row for a bit but not get too far away from him. I wouldn’t go more than 200m or so before spinning, rowing down the other side of the river, and then spinning and going back up, similar to what you do at regattas. Talk to your coach too and ask if there’s anything specific they’d like you to do that day if you’re on your own for a bit. They’ll almost always give you something to do and they’ll appreciate the initiative.
Hi I’m a novice coxswain (like really novice, my first day of actual coxing was today) and I have a steering question. Should I steer when the rowers are on the drive or on the recovery (blades in or out of the water)? I have looked it up a couple places and found conflicting answers. Today I just steered during both because I figured for my first time it was more important not to hit anything than to have perfect “steering technique”. And I have one more question actually – I found it practically impossible to talk or run drills while steering today. That will get easier as I master steering right? For now do you have any tips for focusing on both talking and steering especially while running drills that involve calling pauses and counting strokes? Thank you so much and I LOVE your blog!
You’re right, the first few times you go out it’s more important to figure out how the steering works and just avoid running into anything. I tend to make small steering adjustments on the recovery. Sometimes I’ll adjust on the drive when we’re doing pieces since that is when the boat is most set (when the blades are in the water) but I find that I often get a better response from the rudder if I do it on the recovery. Turning the rudder effects the set a little though so you want to avoid doing anything that’s going to throw it off even more, especially if it’s already wonky. The boats I’ve been coxing in the last few months have really good steering and the crews I’m coxing are pretty experienced so it doesn’t mess with the set too much. Coming around a corner, if you make that small adjustment right at the finish you can just coast around it. If you’re not used to steering though and/or have an inexperienced crew, just stick to steering on the drive and keep your adjustments to a minimum (both in number and duration).
One thing that you’ll learn as you get more experienced is that steering both is and isn’t something you’re doing all the time. It’s kind of like when you’re driving – sometimes you’re making tiny adjustments with the wheel and sometimes you’re good to just leave it alone. The boat is the same way. You should always be aware of where you are, what’s ahead, etc. and always be keeping your hands on the strings to keep the rudder straight but you don’t always need to be moving the rudder around. Once you get a point you want to steer as little as possible.
As you get more experienced multi-tasking will become second nature. Most coaches are OK with running practice from the launch for the first few days though to let you get the hang of steering. If you’re doing both right away and feeling overwhelmed, tell your coach. It’s more important that you pick up steering than it is for you to call drills right now. Pay attention to the drills and what’s going on so you’re ready to do them when it’s time though.
If counting the strokes in your head is too overwhelming right now just use the stroke counter on your cox box. In newer models (like the one in the picture) it’s in the top right corner of the screen whereas in older models it’s in the lower right corner of. As long as your stroke is rowing you’ll be able to get a count of the strokes since the sensor is under their seat. If they aren’t rowing you’ll have to count the strokes yourself since the cox box won’t pick them up.
Don’t be afraid to try counting, steering when necessary, talking, etc. at the same time (in small doses). You’re going to have to do it sooner or later. As a novice, no one expects you to be perfect right away so now is kind of your one and only chance to “test” things out. If you keep avoiding it though because you think you’re going to mess up, that’s just irresponsible coxing (in my opinion, at least). In the beginning coxing is uncomfortable but embracing the discomfort and not letting it distract you or make you scared is what makes good coxswains.
Do you think you can cox so much where you start to not want to do it anymore? I don’t feel that way but I’m basically dedicating my entire summer to crew (and I’m perfectly happy with that) but I don’t wanna burn myself out, you know? I love coxing and right now it’s my favorite thing in the world to do so I don’t want to make myself hate it.
You definitely can. That’s partially why I quit in college. Even if you enjoy doing something, you’ve got to give yourself a break every now and then. That means getting completely away from crew for a few days, a week, a month, whatever and just focusing on yourself, doing the other things you enjoy doing besides crew, sleeping, catching up on TV shows, etc.
Related: How do you know it’s time to throw in the towel with coxing?
If you’re OK with coxing all summer (after having coxing in the spring and fall, I assume) then go for it but just make sure you give yourself a week or two before school starts back up to unwind and relax before the season rolls around again.
In college I majored in sport science and human performance, which meant the bulk of my course load centered on exercise science, sports nutrition, kinesiology, exercise physiology, etc. and nearly all the research I did involved athletes. One of the topics we spent a lot of time covering in my sports nutrition class was the various diets that athletes maintain while in-season, during the off-season, and in the immediate days leading up to competition. Today’s post is going to talk about one of those strategies – carbohydrate loading – and it’s effect on your performance during a race. (Spoiler: there’s not much benefit.)
During high intensity exercise, carbohydrates are the main energy source. CHOs also function as the only fuel for red blood cells, your brain, and nerves. If you deplete your CHO stores, for example during strenuous exercise, your blood glucose will be maintained by breaking down lipids and eventually some protein – lipids are fine but you never want to be breaking down proteins because that means that all other sources of energy have been maxed out so your body now has to rely on its skeletal muscle tissue (which is made up of protein) as a last-ditch energy source. This reverts back to everything I talked about in February regarding eating disorders.
Related: National eating disorder awareness week
During exercise, CHOs are the preferential fuel because they rapidly supply ATP via oxidative processes that allow them to be delivered twice as fast as fat and protein. During anaerobic activity (such as the start and sprint), they are the sole suppliers of ATP. Having a low CHO intake for three consecutive days has been shown to lead to a decrease in anaerobic exercise capacity, which means that if you’re not getting enough carbs in your diet during the week your body will be physically unable to go as hard at the beginning and end of a race, which is why it’s important to make sure you’re eating well-balanced meals all the time (regardless of what weight-class you’re competing in).
Ergogenic aids are defined as “any method or practice that serves to enhance energy utilization, including energy production, control, and efficiency.” There are several different types of ergogenic aids, some legal (CHO loading), some illegal (blood doping), some mechanical (in the context of rowing, rigging would be an example of this), and some psychological (hypnosis), amongst others.
Related: Intro to rigging
We spent a lot of time talking about the history of ergogenic aids because most people assume that they were developed or thought of recently – in fact, they’ve been in use since the original Olympic games. The ancient Greeks actually believed the “you are what you eat” mantra and to become better competitors, they’d eat the raw meat of lions and tigers because lions and tigers were/are powerful, swift, aggressive, fast, and deadly when on top of their game, which is what we as athletes all strive to be when we compete.
The mechanisms of CHO-loading involve super-compensating the stores of glycogen in the muscles and liver. The pros of doing this include:
Increased time to exhaustion (TTE) in activities lasting longer than 90 minutes and performed at a moderate to high level of intensity (marathons being the main example)
Increased TTE in intermittent high intensity sports (tennis, for example)
Improved endurance by about 20%
Improved performance by about 2-3%
The only major con is that there may be a disturbance in the body’s overall energy balance, meaning that the diet may lack other necessary macronutrients (the other two macronutrients being protein and fat). It’s also been shown that there is little or no effect on high intensity bouts of exercise lasting less than five minutes in length.
Below is a slide I did for a presentation on supplements for a class on issues and controversies in nutrition. We’d just gone over this stuff on ergogenic aids a couple days before this project was assigned so I was able to use all the info from my physiology class for my nutrition class. The yellow, orange, and red table at the top gives you a brief overview of what your CHO intake should look like in the week leading up to a race, which in this case was on a Sunday.
If your diet is made up of about 70% carbohydrates, as you progress through the week (Monday through Thursday) you would gradually decrease the amount of CHOs in your diet. Monday would be 60%, Tuesday 50%, Wednesday 40%, and Thursday 20%. During this time you are still training, although you tend to scale back a little as the week progresses (also known as tapering). On Friday and Saturday you ramp back up the amount of CHOs in your diet (where the term “supercompensate” comes from), from 20% to 75 and 80%.
Something you might have noticed from that slide and in what I mentioned earlier is that it says “endurance sports” and only talks about the increased TTE in events lasting longer than 90 minutes. So, this would lead one to believe that CHO loading before a sprint race wouldn’t do much to enhance your performance, which for the most part would be correct. CHO loading is better suited for something like a head race where you’re going at 100% for 20-30 minutes, although even then any performance benefits would be small.
To ensure your energy supplies are topped off before an event, your best bet is to eat a pre-competition meal about three hours ahead of time, although it’s important to remember that this meal alone cannot and will not make up for having a poor chronic diet. Ideally you’d be eating something with 150-300g of carbs (3-5g/kg of body weight) while being sure to avoid anything containing high fat or protein contents. The advantages of a meal like this are that they replenish your glycogen stores, it requires less energy to break down, nutrients are absorbed faster, digestion is quick, and it serves as the main source of energy for short term anaerobic/high intensity aerobic exercise, which is basically exactly what a sprint race is.
On the flip side, if you eat something immediately before you go out and race, you end up with a spike in your blood glucose levels which results in a hyper-insulinemic response. Because of the surge in insulin being released, your blood glucose then plummets which in turn leads to your performance being not so great. This is why you should avoid eating anything within thirty minutes of your race.
There are so many options. Seriously. Pasta is not the only food with carbohydrates – bagels, peanut butter, honey, raisins, whole-wheat bread, apples, brown rice, yogurt, sweet potatoes, etc. are all examples of good staples in a rower’s diet.
If you’re going to commit to CHO loading, you should spend the time to work out exactly how many grams of carbs you should be eating/how much you need and then determine the number of carbs/calories in the foods you’re ingesting. If you’re in college and are taking a nutrition class or know someone who is, ask to borrow whatever book they’re using. Most basic nutrition classes require textbooks that tend to have long, long, long lists of foods in the back from every food group that list amount of macronutrients they contain. If you can’t do that, you can search whatever food you’re trying to look up and the awesomeness of Google will tell you right on the search page the number of carbs that food contains. If you don’t trust Google, I suggest using the USDA’s website. All you have to do is open up the “carbohydrates” report – you can open it with the foods listed either alphabetically or by nutrient content, which has the foods with the highest amount of carbs listed first.
There’s a lot of controversy on athletes who are vegetarians or vegans since the majority of them don’t eat any animal by-products, which cuts out a lot of the foods that their carnivorous counterparts rely on to maintain adequate energy stores. When attempting to CHO load, the options are pretty much the same for the most part, the only difference being they would need to look into gluten-free options and replace the meat and dairy with more vegetables, lentils, beans, tofu, chickpeas, etc. If there are any vegetarian/vegan rowers out there who wouldn’t mind sharing the foods they eat when prepping for a race, that’d be great.
Carbo-loading for sprint races is pretty much pointless. It’s a little more understandable for head races but in essence this is a tactic best reserved for straight endurance athletes, which rowers are not. You’re better off eating a diet rich in protein (see the slide below this) than trying to ingest large amounts of carbs that you most likely won’t fully burn off.
That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be eating a solid amount of carbs too, because obviously you should be, but when comparing the benefits of CHO loading (remember, that’s super-compensating the amount of carbs you’re taking in) vs. ingesting protein, the more applicable benefits to rowing come from diets with adequate amounts of protein in them.
Rowing Teammates & Coaches Video of the Week
The quality of this video is everything you’d expect, considering it was made in the ’70s, but the quality of the content is top notch. The title is “Symphony of Motion”, which is borrowed from a quote spoken by George Pocock.
“It’s a great art, is rowing. It’s the finest art there is. It’s a symphony of motion and when you’re rowing well, why it’s nearing perfection. You’re touching the divine. It touches the you of you’s, which is your soul.”
While there’s much to appreciate in this video, coxswains, let’s take a second to stop and really appreciate the fact that we don’t have to wear that ridiculous megaphone contraption thing, seen at 8:07.
How do you know its time to throw in the towel with coxing?
The reasoning is different for everyone but I think it comes down to three things – whether or not you’re happy, having fun, and/or getting something out of it. If you said no to 2/3 or all of them and can genuinely back up why you feel that way, it might be time to reconsider whether being part of the team is a good thing for you or not.
There’s actually a “quitting crew” tag if you want to read other people’s thoughts/questions too.
Q&A Rowing Training & Nutrition
Out of curiosity – why do lightweights stress and stress about getting so far under the minimum? It makes sense that they would want to have a bit of a cushion to ensure they don’t go over it (e.g., being at 130-132 so that if they eat or drink too much, they’re still under 135), but I don’t understand from a logical perspective why they get so worked up about getting their weight down and down and down. Yes, getting down to weight is extremely mentally and emotionally taxing but why do coaches want such drastic margins between the weight maximum and what they actually weigh? It seems to me that you would want to be as close to the maximum as possible, because the heavier you are, the more powerful your stroke can be, theoretically speaking, no? So you would want to be as big as possible without surpassing the maximum to be better competition. I.E. A 160lb guy can probably pull harder than a 150lb guy, if you’re making that judgment solely based on weight. Right? So what gives with the constant weight loss — other than it being emotionally addictive and unhealthy?
I get what you’re asking and what you’re saying but be careful about phrasing it so … harshly. You sound kind of flippant here and I know several lightweights that would raise an eyebrow at this. It’s a physical thing yes, but for some rowers, more than most people realize, it’s much more of a psychological thing. When people are dismissive about it or talk about it like they’re being illogical or something, it can be pretty damaging.
Related: National eating disorder awareness week: Lightweights
There is no minimum for lightweights – not sure if you meant to put “maximum” in your first sentence or not but only coxswains have minimums. Minimums mean that you cannot be under that weight; maximums mean you can’t be over it. Lightweight women and men have a maximum of 130lbs or 160lbs, respectively.
I don’t think most coaches do want drastic margins between the rowers’ weights and the maximums. If the maximum is 130lbs a coach isn’t going to tell all the women in the boat that they need to weigh 120lbs on race day. A few days beforehand they might want to be 128lbs to provide that cushion, like you said, but I don’t think two pounds constitutes a “drastic margin”.
Related: National eating disorder awareness week: Your experiences
Theoretically yes, I suppose the heavier you are the more brute strength you’ll be able to conjure up but lightweight rowing isn’t all about strength like heavyweight rowing is. OK, technically that’s not completely true. Heavyweight rowing requires good technique, obviously, but since they don’t have weight limits they can be as heavy as they want (within reason, use your common sense) which means they can out-muscle the competition. Lightweights, however, do have weight limits which means their brute strength can only take them so far. Their technical rowing has to be spot on in order to make up for what they lack in strength (compared to heavyweights).
Other than all of that … I don’t know how else to answer your question. I think that most people that compete at the lightweight level are already within a healthy weight range so they don’t need to do much other than maintain their current weight. Others have to do more but if they’re responsible in the off-season they won’t have much weight to lose when racing season rolls around.
College Ergs Q&A Recruiting Rowing
Hey so following that junior girl, I’m going into junior year as well, I’m 5’9″ and on the lower side of lightweight. I pull an 8:00 2k, and I know that’s not low enough but do you think I may have a chance at recruitment? There’s only so many lightweight options and I’m not at that level, so I need a compromise. Tips for really getting that time down in the next year?
D1 programs tend to look for 2ks around 7:40-7:45ish as a starting point. As a junior, you’ve definitely got time to shave some seconds off your current 2k, it’s just going to be a matter of putting in the meters to get it done – basically it comes down to steady state, steady state, and more steady state. Build up your strength and endurance too – try to incorporate some lifting into your routine over the summer, as well as some cardio (running, biking, or swimming are great options).
I’m not sure if this is a misconception or just something that people don’t know but you don’t have to be recruited to row on the team in college. You could just email the coach up and say “hey, I was accepted into the Class of 2017, I rowed for four years in high school, and I’m interested in walking on to the team.” If you’re not sure your times are good enough to be recruited or after talking to coaches you don’t get any offers, you should consider this route.
To be honest, if you’re on the low side of lightweight (I’m assuming around 115-120lbs?) you’ll probably get more requests to cox rather than row, even though you’re tall. Height isn’t as much a big deal for coxswains as weight is, so even though the majority of us are vertically challenged there have been known to be a few tall coxswains. Your height is great for a rower but being 20+ pounds lighter than the other openweights can make it hard for you to actually be competitive with them, which is probably what coaches will point out.