Author: readyallrow

Coxing Drills Q&A Technique

Question of the Day

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Hey! I cox a HS women’s bow loader 4+ and after looking over some footage from our past regattas, my coach noticed that many rowers are “missing water” and not getting the oars enough behind them enough at the catch to produce a maximum length and power stroke every time. She asked me to try to make calls and to focus on things that will help get the length behind them, and also to have them think about rotating out towards their rigger at the catch. Would you be able to clear what she means up for me, and possibly demonstrate the way something like this would be called? Thanks!

Normally whenever I get questions I’ll read through it and automatically think “Oh OK, all you’ve gotta do is X, Y, and Z”. First thing I thought when I read this was “your coach only realized after watching race footage of multiple regattas that the rowers weren’t getting a long enough stroke?” … l donno, I guess that just seems like a pretty obvious thing that you’d be working on during practice vs. only recognizing it after the fact.

Related: Can you explain the term “rowing it in”?

Anyways, to break down what she’s saying, “missing water” as we know means that they’re not getting the blades locked on to the water before they start the leg drive. This is also sometimes referred to as “rowing it in” although you’re not always necessarily rowing it in when you’re missing water. In this case it sounds like the biggest issue contributing to the missed water is not getting enough length, which is actually a pretty simple thing to fix. Being in a bow loader makes it really hard/nearly impossible for you to see this though because unless you’re sitting up and actually turning around to look at the blades (and offsetting the boat in the process), you’ve really only got the bow man’s blade (seen mostly from your peripheral vision) to go off of in terms of seeing whether or not they’re making the necessary changes. You can make all the calls you want but it’s really up to your coach(es) to address the root issue and work on it during practice. I’ve found while coxing that a lot of coaches don’t get that for some reason and I’m really not sure why… (and, to be honest, it really contributes to how much of a bitch it is to cox bow loaders).

The best analogy I’ve heard when it comes to explaining rotating out towards the rigger came from Holly Metcalf, who’s the head women’s coach at MIT. (She coxed my masters 8+ for a bit when I first started coxing them and, more impressively, was 2-seat in the first women’s 8+ to win gold at the Olympics at the ’84 games in Los Angeles.) The way to think about it is to think of what your upper body is doing when you’re throwing a frisbee. The way to get the flattest and longest throw is to keep your arm flat and rotate ever so slightly from the core. The same applies to rowing. To get the longest stroke possible you don’t want to dip your hands or raise them up because that’s going to mess with the trajectory, so to speak, of the blade, which is going to result in a shorter and less powerful stroke. It’s definitely something that’s much easier to understand if you can demonstrate it vs. just saying it but if you do understand what I’m saying then by all means, show ’em how it’s done.

If I were in your position I’d do three main things:

Start adding pause drills to your daily warm-up.

The goal is to emphasize getting the body prep early so you want the pause to be at bodies over. You also want to reiterate that by the time they get to this point, they should have their bodies as far forward as they’re gonna go in order to get as long of a stroke as possible. I usually like to remind them that they should be feeling a bit of a stretch in the hamstrings, in addition to telling them to keep in mind that they shouldn’t be lunging, rather they should be pivoting from the hips while keeping the back flat and the core tight. If you can, I’d recommend going over this on the erg with them before you go on the water so you can show them the difference between how they look vs. how you/your coach wants them to look. Do this for 10-15 strokes per pair (stern pair, bow pair, middle pair, outside pair) and then if your crew can handle it (you be the judge) for 10-15 strokes by all four. Remind them that it should feel different than what they’re used to doing and make sure that your coach is watching you so she can give them feedback on what it all looks like. That’s kind of crucial…

Make a list of all the “length” related calls you can think of and carry it in the boat with you.

I can’t remember what I did this for but I did something similar in college for whatever technical thing we’d been working on that week and it was great because not only did it give me 20-some different ways of saying the same exact thing but also because I had it right in front of me for an entire week of practice so I didn’t have to wrack my brain for things to say. (It also gave me an excuse to not write whatever paper I was supposed to be writing for my philosophy class.)

Get the footage from your coach and go over it.

Take notes on what you’re seeing – what looks right that you can use for positive reinforcement and what doesn’t (individually, as pairs, as a crew, etc.). With the stuff that looks right, why does it look right – what are they doing well here? Even though you know they’re not getting their full length, how do their catches look? What about their posture? Are they finishing clean? Stuff like that. Same goes for what doesn’t look right. You already know length is an issue but why? Can you see specifically where they’re doing something that would contribute to that? Go through the stroke, look at each part of it, and take notes on what you see. You really can’t be too specific here but try to avoid writing something down just for the sake of saying something. If possible, try to do this with your coach so you know exactly what she’s looking at with respect to the length issue and so you can take her exact words in the boat with you and use them. (If you can get the video on your laptop but can’t go over it with your coach, feel free to email to me and I’ll take a look at it.)

As far as how I’d call something like this, I’d mainly try to focus on incorporating basic “reminder” calls into your regular coxing (“remember to get the bodies set before the knees come up”, “45 degree angles between the blades and the boat”, etc.) and then whenever you’re doing short pieces, if you’re not given something specific to do, make the majority of your calls about finding that length. When I do this I like to focus on the technique that leads to the rowers getting long so that I’m not harping on one thing over and over but the general idea of what we’re going for is still obvious.

Coxing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Allen Rosenberg on Coaching (and coxing)

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If you don’t know who Allen Rosenberg is, he was a coxswain-turned-coach who coached numerous successful crews throughout his career, including the 1964 Men’s 8+ that won gold in Tokyo (the last time the United States won before the 2004 crew did in Athens). He was also particularly innovative when it came to rowing technique and even has a “style” named after him. (Did you know there were/are different types of rowing styles? Four, in fact…)

Anyways, I came across this video back in December after he passed away. What I really like about his interview is that he reiterates that the only difference between coxing and coaching is years of experience (and in some cases, a paycheck). Pay particular attention to the traits he lists of successful coaches – all three of those things are exactly what it takes to be a successful coxswain.

Female coxswain weight minimums

College Coxing

Female coxswain weight minimums

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If you follow me on Instagram then you’ll know that I’ve been going through about 40 years worth of rowing magazines over the last month. I was going through my latest stack this evening and came across this letter to the editor from the July/August 1991 issue of American Rowing that I thought was worth sharing.

What I appreciated about this letter was that it was coming from a coach (and a very successful one at that) who actually appears to understand how difficult the process of making weight can be for a coxswain.

Related: National eating disorder awareness week: Coxswains

I’ll be honest, I really don’t see that same kind of concern from many coaches these days and that’s pretty upsetting. The number of emails I’ve gotten from both male and female coxswains describing the things their coaches have told them to do to lose weight or the nasty offhand remarks they make about their size disgust me. I’ve witnessed it in person too and it’s taken a lot of restraint to not say anything (although in retrospect I always feel like I should have).

Saying “oh, just do what you have to do” and/or looking the other way when you know that one of your athletes is taking drastic measures like this is really offensive. I mean really, all it does is perpetuate the idea that coxswains aren’t real athletes so why does it matter if they’re doing stuff like this to their bodies? It does matter and for the exact reasons that were stated in the letter – there are serious physical and psychological effects to depriving your body of energy and nutrients and those effects will be felt on race day.

I’m mainly sharing this because I thought it was interesting but if you take anything away from it, I hope it’s that resorting to extremes like not eating, making yourself throw up, taking laxatives, etc. are all dangerous behaviors that will have a serious impact on your ability to perform your duties at the level you need to. Be realistic about your weight and don’t try to force your body down to a number that it’s not capable of being at. Also keep in mind that your skills on the water are worth far more to your crew than whatever the number on the scale says.

Image via // @tsarel

College Q&A Recruiting

Question of the Day

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My coach mentioned that the NCAA recently changed its rules about when you could contact college coaches from after your junior year to after your sophomore year. Do you know anything about this? All I could find was about basketball. Anyways, any information would be great. Thanks!

The NCAA did change their rules but on the men’s side, the IRA coaches voted to stick with the original rules that said no calls before July 1st of your senior year. You can read about that here. As far as what the women’s side is doing, I’m going to assume that they’re following the new rules since I haven’t seen anything that says otherwise. The men opted out because they’re not part of the NCAA even though the IRA has adopted and follows the majority of their rules.

Also, just to clarify from what you said, it’s when they can contact you, not the other way around.

Here’s what the proposal says. This was taken from the NCAA’s PowerPoint since it’s more concise but if you want to read it in full legalese click here and scroll down to page 18, towards the bottom of the page where it says “No. 2013-26 RECRUITING”.

From what I can gather, for you guys it means you’ll probably need to decide earlier than usual whether or not you want to pursue rowing in college, in addition to having an idea of where you want to go.

For the most part though I can’t imagine that that many programs are going to drastically change how they do things. Smaller programs might try to go after potential recruits a little earlier to try and get ahead of the game but that’s about it. The fall is most likely still gonna be about getting early-decision seniors to sign their NLIs during the early-signing period but where things might start to change going forward is in the spring. If you show a lot of potential as a junior then you might get a call whereas you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten one for a few more months but for the majority of people things will probably stay the same as they are now.

College Q&A Recruiting Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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How involved should my coach be in the recruiting process? I know it sounds bad but I haven’t really talked to him at all about this.

Eh, I think they should be as involved as you want them to be. In theory they’d at least know that you’re looking to row in college since a lot of the initial recruiting questionnaires will ask for their contact info. It’s also helpful to have them know what your plans are so that they aren’t totally blindsided if/when you ask them to write you a letter of recommendation.

Related: Letters of Recommendation

If you have a good relationship with your coach then involving them in the process can only help you, especially if they’ve been coaching for awhile or happen to know people in the rowing community. I was pretty close with my two coaches in high school and they were both really helpful when I was looking at colleges. Both knew all the coaches at the schools I was applying to, which was a huge help because they were able to tell me a bit about them before I actually met them, in addition to talking to them on my behalf.

Related: So I’ve noticed that most recruiting questionnaires ask for your coach’s phone/email. What do college coaches who are talking to your high school coach ask about? I’m not nervous about it cause my coach and I have always had a good relationship, I was just curious.

If you don’t have a close relationship with your coach or there’s been a lot of turnover to the point where you haven’t consistently had the same coach for at least two years then I wouldn’t worry about involving them beyond saying “hey, so I’m looking at these schools and was asked to include your contact info on the recruiting forms I filled out”.

College Q&A Recruiting

Question of the Day

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When a coach asks “What should I know about you?” or “Tell me what me about yourself.”, what should you say? I was asked this question and completely froze because I had no idea how to respond. Please help! I want to be prepared next time.

Ugh, this question. I’ve frozen too when I’ve been asked this and in that nanosecond before I start bullshitting my way through answering it I question why such a simple question has to be so annoyingly difficult. It gets easier though once you’ve actually thought about it and have it in your head what you want to say.

Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten on how to answer this question came from a coach that I was riding along with one day during Harvard’s summer camp. She said that you should always aim to keep your answer around two minutes long, give or take, because anything less typically isn’t enough and anything more is too much. Since you’re talking to a college coach they’re going to care about two main things – academics and rowing – so those should be the two things you focus on. Ideally you should sit down and think about your accomplishments and essentially put together an outline or a script of how you want to answer this question.

From there you can practice it (with a friend, sibling, parent, your friendly neighborhood blogger, etc.) and get feedback on how it sounds. Obviously you don’t want it to sound rehearsed or like you’re reading from a script so practicing it in a conversational tone with the standard ebbs and flows is important. Actually speaking the words is important too because what you read and say in your head rarely ever comes out the same when you say it out loud.

Here’s an example (this isn’t based on anything/anyone in particular, it’s just what I came up with on the spot):

“I’ve been a member of the _____ team for the last three years and this past year was elected captain, which was the first time in ___ years that a junior was nominated for that position. This spring I rowed 6-seat in the lightweight 8+ that won the Southwest Regionals and placed 2nd in the A final at Youth Nationals. Those were the highest finishes our light 8+ has had at those regattas in ___ years so it was exciting to be a part of that. I also competed at CRASH-Bs in February and finished with a time of ____ which put me in the top 10 for the junior women’s lightweight category. At school I’ll be taking four AP classes this fall in addition to acting as vice-president of the ____ club, which I also helped form last year. My goal is to major in _____, which is one of the reasons why I’m taking AP _____ and _____. I really liked what I read about the program when I was researching schools, particularly about the ___________, so that’s one of the main reasons why I chose to apply here. I was also really impressed with how well the team did at Eastern Sprints and NCAAs this year and how the freshman crews have consistently been in the mix for medals the last couple of years. I’d really like to be able to say that I helped my team win an Eastern Sprints or NCAA title as a freshman so it’s definitely a goal to get a seat in the 1F by the time spring rolls around. I definitely think I’m capable of that too, especially given how much work I’ve put in over the years to get to where I’m at now.”

The key is to highlight your accomplishments and goals while staying concise and to the point. Try to avoid straying into “this is my life story” because that kinda just shows that you haven’t really thought about the question or prepared an answer for it. The only time I’ve mentioned something “biographical” is if it’s something that the two of us have in common, usually in the form of something relating to my hometown or where I went to school. I always try to do a bit of research on the coach(es) before I talk to them and, for example, if I see that they went to Marietta College or coached there at some point then I’ll mention that that’s where I’m originally from and that I rowed out of the boathouse beside MC’s. It’s a great icebreaker and an easy way to transition into whatever I was planning to say.