Author: readyallrow

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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There has been a lot of drama on my team lately. I was just wondering what the best way to deal with it would be because I really want to have a strong season and close relationships within our team. P.S. – I love your blog!

I think the easiest and simplest way to deal with it is to have the team captains (or a couple seniors, if you don’t have team captains) say something to the team without the coaches present. Not that my friends and I didn’t respect our coaches but we always took things like this more seriously when they came from our teammates/friends. It was always like, if it’s escalated to the point where the upperclassmen are saying something, that’s how you know people are tired of the bullshit. Remind everyone that you’re there to row, get fast, and win medals and you can’t do that if people are perpetuating rumors, causing unnecessary problems, creating rifts between teammates, etc. If you know of a specific incident, address it only with the people involved and remind others to do the same.

I’m so tired of reiterating this because I feel like I say it in some form or another at least once or twice a week. If you’re taking issues with another person and making them known to the entire team (particularly when 98% of the team has no idea what you’re talking about), then you’re just as responsible for any drama that comes out of that. I’ve already had to deal with two similar issues this week (it’s TUESDAY) and how “over it” I am is unquantifiable at this point.

It’s also important to remind the team that not everyone has to be friends but you do have to respect each other. You’re all out there trying to accomplish the same thing and you’re all (hopefully) putting in just as much hard work as the next person. Disrespect towards a coach or another teammate shouldn’t be accepted. If you’ve got an issue with someone, keep it out of practice and definitely off the water. I think “check your issues at the door” would be the most appropriate phrase for whatever issues your team is experiencing. Another important thing to address would be keeping stuff off of social media. The passive aggressive subtweets, Facebook/Tumblr posts, etc. directed at other people on the team can’t and shouldn’t be tolerated.

Let the team know who to go to too if they’re having issues with someone or know of issues that need to be addressed so that it can be handled by someone who’s neutral to what’s actually happening. On our team, it’s our two team captains (both seniors) and I that deal with the majority of the issues that come up. Listen to what they have to say, stay neutral, and then address it accordingly.

College Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I’m a novice coxswain for a men’s team, and I have absolutely no idea what to say to fix an issue. It’s been at least four months with me as a coxswain and we’re nearing the end of racing season. I have no idea what the source of an issue is, and am just grasping at straws. It occurred to me I’m simply repeating the same exact things every practice. Our biggest issues is the rest of the boat rushing up on stroke pair, and occasional issues of set that extend beyond just lower or raising blades and handles. My team has lost all patience with me and have no trust in me whatsoever. I want to quit, but have no replacement.

I guess to add on to this, I forgot to mention that at the end of December, basically all of our novice coxswains quit. We had four, and all of them left until I was the only left. I stayed because I didn’t want to leave my guys hanging. There is this one spare coxswain on the team, let’s call her C. She…doesn’t really do anything. I believe she is the women’s novice coxswain, but they only have one boat, so she just does…nothing. She’s there every morning though. I passed along the idea of quitting to my coach and her, and she basically said she “couldn’t” be the novice men’s coxswain because she wasn’t “allowed” to. I learned from my coach that she wanted to stay a novice coxswain for next year, and by competing she would have to be varsity. First off, I feel like I should be allowed to be a little annoyed at this. Part of me just wants to walk up to the coach and hand over my position, pay my fees, and leave. I never really wanted to be a coxswain in the first place. I joined rowing to row, but I didn’t have the athletic ability to do it. Thinking about it now, I don’t know why I stayed on the team. I don’t know what to do. We have two races left, one on Saturday and WIRA.

OK, let me ask you a question. What have you done to educate yourself on the different issues your crews are having? By educate yourself I mean how often did you bring the issue up with your coach(es) and ask them what causes this, what do the rowers need to be doing, what calls should/could I be making, etc., in addition to doing your own research outside of practice by Googling or YouTubing the issues your crew is having, looking up technique, drills, etc. or talking with your rowers to find out what you could be doing to help the crew? How often did you try to video your crew or have someone on the launch video them so you could go over it as a crew with your coach? Your coaches have a responsibility to teach you about this stuff but you have a responsibility to teach yourself as well. The loss in patience and trust from your teammates is usually exacerbated when they get the impression (or know) that you’re not doing anything on your own to make yourself a better/stronger coxswain.

Related: Coxswain skills: “So, what did you see?”

Personally I don’t think you should be “allowed” to be annoyed that another coxswain doesn’t want to or doesn’t feel ready to race yet. That’s a judgement call on her end and if she wants to continue as a novice next year to gain more experience and enhance her skills before she begins racing, you have to respect that whether you agree with it or not . I’d much rather have a coxswain do that than jump straight into a competitive crew that’s preparing to race when they’re not ready to do so.

If you’re having issues with rush and slide control, try doing some two-part pause drills pausing at hands away and half slide. I did those with my crew a couple weeks ago and they helped a lot.

Related: As a novice coxswain I still really struggle with the technical aspect of practices. This summer I joined a boat club and spent two weeks out on the water learning to row, hoping that the first-hand experience would help me understand how to fix some common problems. Now that I’m coxing again, I still get really confused when something is wrong with the set. I don’t know what other advice to give other than handle height suggestions and counting for catch-timing, especially when it doesn’t seem to be up or down to one side consistently (like rocking back and forth with every stroke). I was wondering what advice you would give to your rowers in a situation like this, and how you can recognize and remedy some common technical problems.

It really sounds like you aren’t enjoying crew at all though and (correct me if I’m wrong) don’t have much invested it in other than the fees and the time you spend at practice. If you’ve only got WIRA’s left now then I would at least stick it out through that and then you can give your coach your fees and leave.

Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Hi I was wondering if it was possible to merge boys and girls on a boat for some races? For example if we row a 4+, could we have 2 guys and 2 girls ?

As far as I know, you can only row a mixed gender crew in events that are specifically listed as “mixed” races. If they’re not listed as that then you have to follow the rules of the event you’re entering (i.e. “men’s varsity 8+” must be all men (minus the coxswain), “women’s junior quad” must be all women who aren’t seniors, etc.).

High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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Hi, we have states in two weeks and we have boat gifts – is this a sport-wide tradition? If so, what are good gifts to buy/make? Thanks a bunch.

I wouldn’t say it’s a sport-wide tradition, rather it’s more of a “if your team does it, cool, if not, whatever” kind of thing. My team does something similar to this called “secret motivators” where each girl is assigned another girl to buy a fun gift for before each regatta. Sometimes they find out who their person is early on but I don’t think anyone is supposed to know until the end of the season. At the beginning of the season one of the seniors gave everyone on the team a “survey” to fill out where they listed why they joined the team, what motivates them, what music/TV shows/movies they like, what their favorite things are, etc. so that the person who was assigned them had an idea of what kind of things they might like.

It’s hilarious watching everyone open their gifts because it’s like Christmas morning every week – wrapping paper, gift bags, and tissue paper litter the ground regardless of where we are. The creativity that some of the girls have is pretty impressive too. Some of the things I’ve seen people get so far are baseball hats that say “crew” on them (Headsweats are a team favorite), SpiderMan coloring books, their favorite food or candy (jars of peanut butter + their own spoon seem to be popular), fun patterned sport bras, crew or team-inspired artwork, water bottles, etc. I’d say 98% of the stuff that’s given though has nothing to do with rowing (Disney princess bath soap or miniature stuffed animals, for example) but it’s all done in good fun and the goal is to just perk everyone up a bit before a regatta. Just from asking around I think the average amount that people spend each week is $10-$20, although for the first race of the season and most likely for the bigger regattas at the end of the season, people tended to spend (or will spend) a little bit more.

Don’t over think it and just have fun with it! It’s a great way to get to know other people on the team better and promote team bonding.

Erg Playlists

Music to erg to, pt. 34

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Quick note on emails: if you have a race related question about an upcoming race (anytime during the season), try not to email me about it anytime between Thursday through Saturday because the likelihood that I’m going to see it and have time to write a reply is very, very, very slim. I know questions come up last minute and that’s totally OK but try to put “URGENT” or something somewhere in the subject line so I know it needs to be responded to ASAP.

https://play.spotify.com/user/1241641027/playlist/0FNqmSwdun3zLeGHZRIQSe

College High School Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hello, so going into the spring racing season, I knew that I wanted to improve as much as possible etc etc (coming off an unsuccessful fall) but then I also knew that there are things that I need to do as a junior (such as college touring). There’s a fair sized regatta at the end of my April break, but that’s also the only time I’ll have until August to college tour. Also what if I get asked by college coaches why I’m not racing? I know this is mostly my decision, but could you help me out?

Ooh, that’s tough. Between crew, marching band, SATs/ACTs, and all the other stuff I had going on, I didn’t have time to start going on college visits until the late fall (read: November) of my senior year. I had already narrowed down the schools I wanted to visit to three so that made it easier but I didn’t go visit any of them until pretty late in the game. I would have liked to have started the process earlier but I don’t think it hurt in any way going when I did. If you end up having to wait until August I honestly don’t think you’ll be too far behind the curve as long as you’re not trying to look at like, eight or nine schools. There were several kids that came in the fall to look at Cornell who were in similar positions as you so if you end up having to wait til then I wouldn’t stress about it – there are plenty of other people doing the same thing.

If you decide to go at the end of April then it can easily be explained to any coaches that ask that this was the only available opportunity that you had to look at colleges until August and looking ahead to the fall you didn’t want to try to juggle the start of your senior year, getting back into the swing of training, filling out applications, etc. with trying to travel all over the country to look at schools. As long as the regatta you’d be missing isn’t a championship of some kind, I don’t think they’d look that closely at it. You have to weigh the pros/cons though and decide if this is a race that you can afford to miss. Obviously that’s something only you and your coach would know but it does require some thought and consideration.

Ultimately you should do whatever you think will make the whole process as smooth and stress-free as possible for you. Don’t try to balance traveling to visit schools with a million other things because you’ll just end up overwhelmed and distracted, which will take your focus off of why you’re really there.

Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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I’m starting to fall out of love with rowing and it scares me because I don’t know whether it’s because the sport is so stressful or it’s just because I’m not progressing, which is stupid, but I don’t know what to do because its been a huge investment for my family.

Are you not making any noticeable improvements because you’ve hit a plateau or because you’ve stopped trying? Be honest. If you’ve been doing the same types of training for awhile it might just be an issue of switching things up so that your muscles become un-bored. That’s what happens when you plateau – your muscles adapt to the training you’re doing to the point where they’re so used to your routine that they get bored and stop responding. If it’s because you’ve given up for whatever reason then you’ve got to make the decision for yourself whether or not you want to readjust your outlook and keep trying or if it’s no longer worth it to you and it’s time to move on. You should also consider whether or not you’re burned out. If you’ve been doing crew non-stop for a year or more then you’re probably just tired, mentally and physically, and that’s contributing to why you’re not progressing the way you want to be and why you feel like you’re just kinda over it. The solution to this is taking some time off, even that means just a couple days to start with. If you can, try to take the whole summer off from rowing and then once August rolls around, reevaluate how you’re feeling and go from there.

The investment that your family has made should be something you keep in mind because obviously that’s an important factor to consider but don’t base your decision off of that. You shouldn’t continue to do something just because you feel guilty over the amount of money, time, etc. that other people have put into it. If you’re genuinely not enjoying yourself anymore then that’s reason enough to take some time off. It’s OK to stop enjoying something you once loved doing but you’ve gotta be honest with yourself about it and recognize when you’ve reached that point. Talk to you coach and/or parents, tell them how you’re feeling, and get some feedback from them. See if you can negotiate a break with your coach so you can clear your head and reassess the situation. Sometimes looking at it from the other side when you’re not overwhelmed by a million different things can help you come to a decision.

To miss a workout (for no good reason) when you’re training for the Worlds or Olympics is utterly devastating. You know that you’ll never again have that unique window of time: Wednesday, November 9, any year, 3:17 PM – 5:58 PM. You missed it. Your opponent on the other side of the country (or planet) however, did not miss it. He rowed his 20 kilometers; he managed to make a tiny little improvement, (which will then grow like a weed in his skill-set), and in eight months time he will kick your ass. No matter how you cut it, you are fucked!

Brad Alan Lewis "Lido for Time"

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I just started coaching, and am worried that I might be a little overwhelmed by dividing my attention between driving the launch and watching the rowers. Any advice on watching what’s happening in the boat while multitasking?

It’s not as overwhelming as you think it will be, I promise. The more time you spend on the water the more of a second nature it’ll become. Similarly to what I tell the coxswains, just make sure you look up and scan the river every 10-15 strokes to make sure there aren’t any crews in front of you or miscellaneous tree limbs, junk, etc. floating around. I would recommend taking the launch out for 10-20 minutes before practice one day and practice steering it while pretending to watch a crew beside you. That’ll get you used to steering straight while your attention is focused elsewhere while also giving you a chance to practice scanning the river every 20-30 seconds. If you can, get another coach to come out with you so you have someone to talk to, similarly to how you’ll be talking to the boat. Somebody recommended doing all of that to me when I was first learning how to use the launches at CRI and it was really helpful. If you were previously a coxswain, the transition won’t be that tough. The only difference is that the boat your steering now is about 50ft shorter. Think of learning to drive a launch like learning to drive a car all over again, except with a boat.

This goes along with what I said at the beginning about scanning the river for other crews – make sure when you go by them you slow down so that you don’t wake them out. There’s nothing worse than a coach that blows by and completely wakes out another crew that’s trying to do stationary drills or have a conversation with their coach. Always throw up a hand wave to the other coach(es) too. It’s just the friendly, polite thing to do. (Harry Parker waved to me once on the Charles and it was literally one of the greatest things ever.)

Also, slightly unrelated, when you go out make sure you have life jackets and a paddle in the launch with you. The life jackets are (obviously) for situations where someone or multiple someones end up in the water and the paddle is if your engine dies and you need to get to shore or back to the dock. (For more info on why coaches are required to carry those items, check out this post near the beginning where it talks about the Level 1 certification thing I went to.)

Coxing Novice Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Hey! I’m a novice coxswain and yesterday we had our first race which we lost by a lot. I struggled with trying to motivate my boat when we really didn’t have a chance of coming back. I could tell everyone felt pretty defeated and I didn’t know what to say to keep them working hard. Do you have any advice on what sort of calls I can make if this happens again? (Fingers crossed it doesn’t)

Check out the two posts linked below. The first one is a video from the Harvard, Penn, and Navy race from last spring and the second is a question about coxing off of other boats when you’re doing pieces at practice. Both touch on similar issues of one boat being way ahead of the other(s) and ways to deal with that as the coxswain.

Related: VOTW: Harvard, Penn, and Navy

The toughest thing is not letting what you’re seeing come across in your tone of voice. If the rowers start to detect any sign of defeat in your voice it’s going to change the entire attitude of the boat. It can from “yea, we’re in this!” to “screw it, why bother” in a very short period of time if you’re not careful. Don’t start getting overly-motivational because that just makes it obvious that you think they have no chance but on the flip side, don’t get completely dour or silent either.

I was fortunate enough that I was only in this position maybe two times that I can remember and the thing that I told my crews both times was that regardless of where we finished, we were going to cross the line looking, acting, and rowing like a first place crew. Being down in a race is no excuse for letting your technique get sloppy or your attitude to become “woe is me”. Losing a race and having a bad race aren’t synonymous – you can lose and still have a good row. The crews that are ahead should always be just the tiniest bit afraid that you could come back on them at any given second. It doesn’t matter if you’re in first place or fifth place though, you should finish the race rowing as hard and as well as you can.

Related: My girls really like when I cox off of other boats, even if we’re just doing steady state. I’m in the 2V boat so they all want to beat the 1V at ALL times. I find it easy to cox when we’re next to another boat/in front of it. However, I never quite know what to say without being negative and annoying when we’re CLEARLY behind another boat. Yesterday afternoon we were practically three lengths behind the v1, and we STILL didn’t catch up even when they added a pause. What do I say at times like these? I always end up getting rather quiet since the overall attitude of my boat is pretty down. I feel like whenever I call a 10 or get into the piece at this point it does absolutely nothing, since my rowers have practically given up.

This is where intrinsic motivation is so important because, like you said, it’s easy for a coxswain to just run out of things to say to keep their rowers going. The rowers should have their own personal reasons for being out there (that their coxswain doesn’t know about) that they can rely on for motivation when they need a reason to keep going. I would try to remind the rowers in close races or races where we were down a few seats (particularly in the 3rd 500) to think about why you row … what do you do it for? … and then we’d take a BIG refocus 5 for that. I wanted to be able to feel their motivation in those five strokes. This would always gain us back a couple seats and from there, I’d cox them like normal until we crossed the line.

The best thing you can do is to find something that will put a bit of energy back in the boat and then capitalize on that. There is no “magic call” for this and it’ll very rarely be the same thing between boats – it’s gotta be completely unique to each crew, something that you only know because you know your rowers and what drives them. They key is remembering that all you’ve gotta do is ignite a spark and let the fire follow. Once you see the fire in your rowers, fuel it like you would during any other race.

Another thing I’d say to them is something our coaches said to us after a particularly rough practice and before all of our races: who do you row for? They’d ask us two to three times, louder and more aggressively each time, WHO DO YOU ROW FOR? My interpretation of that was that they were always reminding us that what we’re doing is bigger than any one individual. You’re rowing for each other, your teammates, and for the pride you have in your program. Pride and dignity should be two huge forces that drive your crew and you want to be able to cross the line with both of those things intact regardless of where you finish.

Talk about the importance of mental toughness with them too. Remind them that just because there’s a voice in your head telling you there’s no point in continuing to row hard doesn’t mean you have to listen to it. Also remind them that the other four or eight people in the boat aren’t giving up, which means they can’t either. The only time you should ever assume anything during a race is that you’re the only one doubting yourself. Always assume that the other four or eight people are 100% confident in your abilities as individuals and as a crew. That should be enough to change your mindset really quick.

Related: Words.

Finally, talk to your crew about your race and find out what they were thinking, how they felt, and what you could have said to keep them going. Get their feedback and use all of that to help shape your calls for next week. Whenever you feel them starting to slip off the pace (this applies to practice too), use what they said to you about your last race to keep them going hard in this race.