Category: Coxing

How to Be Useful During Winter Training

Coxing How To

How to Be Useful During Winter Training

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Previously: Steer an eight/four || Call a pick drill and reverse pick drill ||  Avoid getting sick || Make improvement as a novice || Protect your voice || Pass crews during a head race

Outside of the standard “what should I do during the winter” questions I get, another one I frequently hear is “how can I be useful?”. Similar questions but not quite the same. I hate feeling like I’m not doing anything or that I’m not contributing (either directly or indirectly) to whatever I’m participating in so this was something I tried to figure out early on in my coxing career, that way I could minimize the amount of time I spent wondering what the hell I could/should be doing.

Related: “The Coxswain in Winter”

Obviously these aren’t tasks that are going to take up a ton of time (probably no more than 10-15 minutes each…) but it’s something which is always better than nothing. The key here is to remember that it’s the little things that sometimes make the biggest difference.

Keep the rowers water bottles filled

This is more of a nice gesture than anything else but it does save the rowers from using their recovery time to do it and they will (hopefully) appreciate not having to rush around doing it themselves and trying to make it back on the erg before their 30-second rest period is up.

The easiest way I’ve found to do this if you’ve got a lot to fill is to do it during the pieces and have one person filling the bottles while two other people alternate between bringing them up and carrying them back. Otherwise you can just do it whenever someone asks or you see they’re out of water. I always try to get them filled up before someone has to ask, just because I think it’s the nice thing to do and it shows them that I’m paying attention and on top of the little things. (Rowers – a quick “thank you” goes a long way here.)

Set up the ergs

While the rowers are doing their warmup run/workout or after their erg warmup, set up the ergs for whatever workout you’re doing. Varsity coxswains, take this opportunity to show the novices how to work the display screens if they’re unfamiliar with how to use them.

Having all the ergs set up before the actual workout starts is a huge help to the coaches because it means we don’t have to stand around saying “are you ready yet … are you ready yet … OK sit ready, atten-ugh, sit easy, *ten seconds goes by*, ready? OK, attention…go.”. If the team does an erg warmup and then has a few minutes to stretch, grab water, run to the bathroom, etc. there’s usually less for you to mess with since some of the rowers will set theirs up before they get off. Taking care of the leftover ones, even if it’s only two or three, saves time in the long run though and the coaches more than anyone else really appreciate that.

If there’s an erg not being used while the rowers are doing their workout or if they aren’t using them at all, that’s another good time to go over how to work the displays with the new coxswains. It also gives you a bit more time to go over things and answer questions. I think most coaches would appreciate the initiative here too on the part of the varsity coxswains simply because this is another thing that we should know how to do but no one really has the time to show us.

Clean the boathouse

By “clean” I mostly mean tidy up. Yes, I know, there are only so many times you can rearrange things to make it look like you did something (this is basically how I cleaned my room until I left for college) but if the foam rollers are all over the mess, get them in one place and find a way to corral them. If the cox box area is a tangled jungle of wires, spend some time organizing them so they don’t get twisted or broken and double check to make sure that all the chargers are plugged in and working. If there are cox boxes that aren’t working, remove them from where the working ones are (and label them as needing to be fixed) so they don’t get mixed in with them and someone ends up on the water with a dysfunctional or dead box.

Related: Katelin Snyder on winter training

If no one is using the ergs, lifting equipment, etc. spend 10 minutes or so running over everything with wipes or a cleaning solution. You can check out the video in the link below for info on the bleach-water solution you should use.

Related: How to avoid getting sick during winter training

Outside of those options, yea, I know there’s still a ton of time to kill but I’ve detailed plenty of things you can do in previous posts so you should have no shortage of inspiration when boredom strikes. As long as you’re not standing around in cliques literally doing nothing, you can pretty much do anything.

Related: Winter training tips for coxswains

When all else fails, hop on a bike and get in a quick 20-30 minute workout or go on a run with the other coxswains. As anti-activity as some coxswains are (which drives me nuts), you should consider getting a workout in anyways because it’s good for you and as any rower will tell you, they appreciate you working out with them during practice even if you’re not doing the same stuff they are.

Image via // @onthewater_amsterdam

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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So today we did some 30 second watt tests. I pulled a 305 on my first one and a 322 on my second one, and my assistant coach flipped out and is now obsessed with me becoming a rower. I guess I trust her judgement but I’m having a hard time with that idea. First of all, I hate the monotony of rowing. I’ve done it enough to hate it. The other coxes on my team are super type B and just don’t have good enough focus to make any calls. I’ve also almost exclusively coxed for two years a this is going to be a hard transition ( a junior in HS, 5’5″, 129 lbs). ALSO CAN 30 seconds really tell her anything? Really? Anyone can do anything for 30 seconds, and I’m not so sure that me being able to bang out 30 seconds will translate to a 2k very well. Thoughts? Thanks!

That does seem pretty good but like you said, anyone can do just about anything for 30 seconds. If you’re in good shape, play other sports, etc. then it’d make sense that you’d be able to pull decent numbers. I remember doing watts tests like that in high school and the novices that were swimmers, runners, volleyball players, etc. all did great just because they were super fit and had insane leg muscles. If I were you I’d probably just laugh it off and say “yeaaa … no” if she asks if you’ll consider rowing. If she presses it just be honest and tell her that you prefer coxing over rowing and feel like you’ll make a bigger/better contribution to the team by staying a coxswain.

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 27

Coxing Racing Recordings

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 27

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Chelsea Lucas 2008 Junior World Championships Team USA W8+ Grand Final

If this recording doesn’t give you goosebumps, check your pulse. This is one of the best recordings out there because it checks all the boxes – execution of the race plan, tone of voice, communication with the crew, etc. She does such a good job of telling them their location on the other crews throughout the race, specifically where they are seat-wise. The rowers could be blindfolded the entire race and still know exactly where they are – that’s what you want!

Once they get out of the start and settle into their base rhythm she shifts her down to a more relaxed tone (still intense, still focused, just a little more chill) but at 2:07 you can sense it starting to shift back up before she hits you with that next level of intensity at 2:14. She demonstrates a lot of vocal control through those first two minutes, which is definitely something worth practicing since that can be a hard part of the race for coxswains to maintain their composure in. As they start walking through crews she continues to do a really good job of telling them they’re moving and by how much with each stroke.

At 3:09 she calls for five to use the hips and then says “hips five, hips four…”, which is a good example of what I’ve talked about in the past with regards to knowing when during the stroke to say the numbers (if you say them). “Hips” is obviously a front end call since you’re engaging your hips at the catch as your press through the drive, thus it wouldn’t make sense to stick with the regular convention of calling the numbers at the catch, which is why she flips to calling them at the finish. Also, notice how all of her calls are “let’s”, “we”, etc.?

Another thing I’ve talked about a lot recently is motivational calls. “Make them remember this” at 3:51 is a great example of a good motivational call. (Her tone building into that call is flawless too.) Notice too how they’re progressively walking through Germany and up on Romania? She’s constantly telling them their position, which is also hugely motivating, especially in races that are tight like this one is. Even though there isn’t video of this race, you, the person listening, should still easily be able to plot out where the United States, Germany, Romania, etc. are based entirely on the positional updates she’s giving her boat. If you can get excited about where they started vs. where they’re at now just based off of listening to her calls, imagine what it’s like for the rowers who are actually in the boat. They don’t have to worry about where they’re at or what’s going on around them, all they’ve gotta do is focus on one thing, which is moving the boat and that is one of the most motivating things a coxswain can do for their crew.

We gotta talk about 4:44 too … if that isn’t the most motivating, most savage fucking call you’ve ever heard, what is?? There’s a reason why you hear so many coxswains nowadays use that and say it the exact same way.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll realize that between the start of the race and 5:10 they went from being 4 seats down on Romania to 5.5 seats up, which makes her call of “we’re 500m away from a world championship” at 5:10 so much more epic. Another example of a brutally motivational call. This is one of the ones you keep in your back pocket though for the big races – we’re talking grand finals at IRAs, last 250m at Henley, etc.

The ending is crazy frantic but it’s the right kind of frantic. It’s energetic, it’s electric, it’s just … hard to put into words. If you’ve been in a race like this then you know you can’t really describe it because even though you’re 100% in the moment as it’s all happening, as soon as you come off the water you’re like … what just happened??? Anyways, this is just a great recording and one of the very few that falls under the “gold standard” umbrella. Definitely a lot to be taken away from it and incorporated into your own coxing.

Other calls I liked:

“Lay it on…”

“Let’s close this gap, baby…”

“Stand up!“

“This one’s gonna be close guys, time to sit up and show ’em who we are…”

Steve Young USA Men’s 8+ Practice

This is a super short recording from inside the USA men’s 8+ during one of their steady state practices in the lead up to the 2013 World Cup. Right off the bat I love the “find that confident finish” call and how he immediately responds to the coach telling them to go to 3/4 pressure. How he builds into that 18 – “three quarter press 18, we’ll come up one beat … on this one” – is exactly how you wanna call a shift in rate, not just in terms of response time between when the coach calls it and when you actually do it but also in how he communicates it. Very succinct, no extraneous words, just where they’re at and where they wanna go.

The other call I like is the “long arm stretch” call near the end. I think that’s a good basic call to make to remind the rowers to get the arms out first before swinging over with the bodies.

You can find and listen to more recordings by checking out the “Coxswain Recordings” page.

College Coxing High School Training & Nutrition Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Katelin Snyder on winter training

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This is an interview that row2k did with Katelin Snyder, the women’s national team coxswain, earlier this year on the coxswain’s role during winter training, the difference between what the winter months are like in high school vs. college vs. with the national team, her advice for a coxswain going into their first winter training season, etc. I think we can all relate to her comment about how you can “only rearrange the cox boxes so many times”. Been there, done that, right?

Related: Coxswains + winter training

There’s definitely some good stuff to take away from what she says that you can apply to your own “winter training” so make sure to watch the whole video and also check out the post linked above for more ideas on how to spend the next couple of months.

Holiday Gift Guide 2014

Coxing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Holiday Gift Guide 2014

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Christmas is two weeks from today. If you’re still looking for a great Secret Santa gift, here are a few ideas.

Warm socks, a new uni, and fun band aids for the rowers or a coxswain wrench and hot hands for the coxswains would make great gifts for anyone but especially anyone on the team who might be a novice.

The phone case could be cool for your friends who like showing off that they do crew and the vodka, well, I’m sure there’s a volunteer assistant or two out there that would appreciate that from their team.

For more gift ideas, check out the “rowing gifts” tag.

Image via // Deutschland Achter
Coxswain evaluations + how I organize them

College Coxing High School Teammates & Coaches

Coxswain evaluations + how I organize them

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I get a lot of emails asking about coxswain evaluations. Coaches want to know what they should say, how long they should be, are they even necessary (why would you ask me, of all people, this question), etc. and coxswains want to know how to interpret everything, what they should take seriously, and how much of what the rowers wrote is based on their level of like/dislike for person they’re writing about. Additionally, if you have a coxswain who is new to the team (like us – we have one freshman and two upperclassmen) it can be hard for them to know what to take away from the evaluations since they likely won’t have coxed many of the rowers if you do these early on in the season and the feedback can be scarce and occasionally harsh.

Coxswain evaluations are important and coaches should make it a priority to do them at least two or three times during the year. The problem though is what I said above – coaches don’t know how to make them and coxswains don’t know how to interpret them which renders the time you put into them all but wasted. Coaches also have to realize that part of doing evals is spending 20-30ish minutes going over them with your coxswains, explaining some of the more ambiguous comments, giving them specific things to work on based off the feedback, etc. Done right, yes, it does amount to a few hours of work but at the end of the day it’s a few hours well spent and your coxswains will be that much better for it. And, to be honest, it’s quite literally the least you can do for them in terms of helping them get better.

Related: Thoughts on coxswain evaluations? How should they be approached as a coach? And as a coxswain? What is the most effective method you have seen?

Sometime in October-ish we did our first round of evaluations for our three coxswains. I was excited but a little apprehensive at the same time because every coxswain evaluation I’ve seen before this has been borderline awful and/or useless. Thankfully the one they’ve been using is actually pretty good and manages to cover all the bases pretty well. (I’ll go into detail a bit more down below.)

Once the rowers had filled them out (this took maybe 10-15 minutes total) I collected them and asked the other coaches if they were going to go over them with the coxswains. They said “nah, we usually just give them the sheets to read on their own” to which I responded with this exact expression (I’m completely serious). Now, let’s think about this for a second. If you were given 20+ evaluations containing a lot of comments but no real indication of which of the three coxswains the feedback was directed towards, how much would you get out reading them? Probably not a lot. So … here’s what I did to make it easier for the coxswains to actually use the feedback they were being given.

To preface this, I’ve made templates of my “system” for you to use with your coxswains if you’d like. Everything is explained down below and can be found in this Google Doc.

First things first – the evaluation itself, which is on the first tab of that spreadsheet. MIT’s used this one for awhile so I can’t take credit for making it but I do like it so at the very least I’m endorsing it. It’s simple and to the point but open-ended enough for the rowers to elaborate if they have any specific comments (which, obviously, the goal is for them to do that with each section).

Once you have your evaluations and they’re filled out the next thing you’ve gotta do is figure out what to do with all that information. The first thing that I did was take all the numerical ratings and average them into one number so that instead of having 20+ ratings for each of the nine sub-sections, they’d only have one number each. (The sheet for this is under “Overall Evaluation” in the second tab at the bottom.) This allows them to get a better idea of where they fall on the 1-5 scale. It’s just like what your teachers do with your grades – instead of giving you a million individual grades at the end of the semester they just give you one that you can then compare to the pre-defined scale in order to determine how you did.

I tend to spend a lot of time on this section because averaging 20+ numbers for nine sections times three people is rather time-consuming. Luckily the day that I crunched all the winter numbers last week was when everyone was either biking or out on a long run so this ended up being a good way for me to pass the time until they got back. I have a pretty good system that works well for me so it only took me about an hour, or maybe a little less than, to get everything averaged out.

The next part is the most time-consuming. I’ve done this twice now and each time I’ve spent about 2.5 – 3hrs total putting these spreadsheets together (so about 45-60min per coxswain). How long it takes you will depend on how many coxswains you have, how many comments your rowers have left/how detailed they are, how diligent you are about dividing them up amongst the coxswains they apply to, and whether or not you boil down the comments to two to four bullet points of specific things to work on (hint: you should).

Each coxswain has their own sheet for each season that we’ve conducted the evals. We just did our second set last week so as you can see, each coxswain has two sheets so far for the year. Each individual sheet (noted as “Coxswain A”, “Coxswain B”, and “Coxswain C” in that spreadsheet) is broken down into four main sections, just like the evaluation itself. There’s a “pros”, “cons”, and “general comments” section where I’ve taken all the comments the rowers have left and divided them up to fit into one of those three categories. Most of the time the rowers will specify if their comments are directed towards a particular coxswain but if they don’t then I just consider it a general comment that’s directed towards everyone and I’ll include it on each person’s sheet.

As you can see, some of the comments are a bit repetitive but I think it’s important to write them all down regardless so that the coxswains can see what the rowers are noticing and how they feel about certain aspects of their coxing. If one person says “steers a great course” it’s not nearly as much of a confidence boost as four people saying it is. Same goes for the negative comments – they might not take “doesn’t steer competitive courses” that seriously when it comes from one person but if six of their teammates say it then it holds a bit more weight.

The “things to work on” section should be two (minimum) to four (maximum) bullet points based on all the pro/con/general comments. These really don’t take that much effort to come up with either. As you read through the comments you should easily be able to get a sense for what areas the rowers think they can or want them to improve on.

After putting all that together then you can go over it with your coxswains. When I sat down with ours I printed out their individual sheets so they could read the comments for themselves as we went over them and essentially just read through everything, pointed out anything that I thought was worth discussing and/or elaborating on, and got their thoughts on how they felt about the comments (did they agree/disagree with anything, have questions, etc.). We did this individually the first time but when we go over the most recent ones I think I’m going to do it as a group just because there’s only three of them and not as many individual nuances to discuss this time around.

The takeaway here is that coxswain evaluations should be a regular thing that you do at least twice per season (for comparison’s sake) and in order to maximize their effectiveness you, the coach, need to spend a few hours organizing them so that you can go directly to each coxswain and say “Here’s what your teammates said, here’s what we’d like to see you work on based on the feedback they’ve provided, let’s discuss…”. Don’t just give them a pile of papers and expect them to sort through all that themselves because they won’t do it (and I don’t blame them). Hell, you can outsource all your evals to me and I’ll organize them for you if it means you’ll actually do evals for your coxswains (…totally serious, by the way).

Related: Hey! So I’m a coxswain in high school and we (all the coxswains) want a coxswain evaluation/ranking from the rowers. Some coxswains feel like they should be in a different boat and we all want feedback from the rowers. How do we go about asking our coach about it?

After the first round of evals that we did all three of us (the coaches) noticed some major improvements in our coxswains so if you want proof that spending the time doing these and providing them with real information actually pays off, just look at the fall vs. winter averages in the first picture. I was a little skeptical initially because I didn’t think there was going to be much of a difference (mainly because I didn’t think the rowers would notice anything, not that I didn’t think our coxswains had improved) but I was really excited to see actual numerical data that backed up what we were seeing on the water.

Anyways, I hope all of this is helpful and encourages everyone to make coxswain evaluations a regular part of your seasonal plans. Coxswains, if your team hasn’t done evaluations before you should pose the idea to your coach(es) and show them the first tab of the Google Doc. If you have done evaluations but want to discuss some of the comments or get some additional feedback/insight, feel free to get in touch.

Image via // @mlcsrs_17

Coxing Ergs Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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What is your opinion on weight-adjusted erg scores? I’m about 105lbs and 5’1″ so due to obvious height disadvantages, my erg scores are a bit higher than other lightweights on my team. There is an older girl on my team who is older and a “worse” erg score but she has the seat in the ltwt 8+. Would you suggest switching to coxing? I asked my coach about it at the end of the fall season since our team is going to be short on coxswains at the end of the year but she was trying to avoid the topic. Any suggestions?

I’ve never really done much stuff with weight-adjusted scores before this year so I’m largely unfamiliar with the “science” but from the limited knowledge/understanding that I do have, I think they can be useful but really only for determining who gets a shot to be in a boat, not who actually gets in the boat. I think most people agree that on-the-water performance is the more important variable though. I’ve also heard that the heavier/lighter you are the less accurate it is so if that’s true it’s probably not doing you many favors since you’re only 105.

Weight-adjusted scores aside, I’d probably at least suggest looking into coxing. You’re pretty small and it’s no secret that it’s tougher to be a successful rower the smaller you are. I really don’t ever understand why coaches make this so awkward and try to avoid the subject when it gets brought up but if it’s something you’re interested in and you know you’re going to need coxswains anyways, I’d probably bring it up again at some point (although not repeatedly…) and just be very point-blank about it. The more beating-around-the-bush you do the more opportunity you’re giving your coaches to avoid the conversation (I’ve been on both sides of that so … trust me on this).

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Hi, this is a great resource, thanks for devoting so much time to it. I’m coxing a 5km head race in the UK in a couple of weeks. I’ve raced it before, and am feeling quite confident. One thing I’m unsure of is how best to call the end of a power twenty. Our race plan is to push for twenty at the end of each kilometre. I don’t want to call down pressure at the end of the push, to avoid a sharp drop off in boatspeed, but neither do I want not to call anything, and have my crew pushing for longer than the twenty I’ve asked for. Any help you could offer would be great – thanks!

My suggestion is to not aim to call a “power” 20 at the end of each kilometer, rather call it for something and don’t necessarily make everything 20 strokes. During HOCR this year, which is also about 5km, I only called one 20 and it was at the start of the last kilometer.

Related: Race skills: All about Power 10s

At this point it’s very rare that I actually call something for straight power but when I do I remind them to maintain this as soon as we finish the burst, usually in the form of “yea that’s it, now let’s maintain it, we’re sitting at 1:46 right now, stay on it with the legs and accelerate through the water…” and then I go right into calling a couple strokes for acceleration, giving them position updates, and coxing them like normal. It’s not like I’m calling the end of the burst and then completely falling off with my calls, tone, volume, etc. If you do that then yea, there will be a sharp drop off in speed but if you maintain your voice and immediately jump into like what I said up above then you’re more likely to, you know, actually maintain whatever you just did. If the crew is falling off with pressure immediately after then a) you’re not doing your job, b) their endurance is awful, and c) someone needs to clue them in on the concepts of pacing and flying-and-dying.

As far as having your crew pushing for longer than the twenty you asked for … the phrasing of that is bugging me. I really can’t put my finger on which exactly of the five reasons I’ve come up with for why it’s bugging me but there’s something about how you said that that’s just … off. I’m probably/definitely over-analyzing this but just keep in mind that they should be pushing themselves regardless of what you’re saying and you shouldn’t be calling them up or down. Whenever coxswains say stuff like that I imagine them coxing the race like they’re on a roller coaster, going up and down with the pressure and their voice and whatever else and it makes me wonder how they can possibly think that that’s effective.

If you continuously call for 20s to push (and I’m going with the standard definition of pushing in this context to mean “more pressure”) then you will be coxing a roller coaster race and it’s not effective because the crew will likely do what I said before, which is fly and die each time. If you give each burst a specific purpose, limit the number of 20s you use and instead incorporate in some 5s, 10s, etc., and remind them to maintain whatever feels good during those bursts then you’ll be able to have a much more efficient and evenly-paced race.

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hi, I am a novice cox and was just wondering about what to do during the winter training. Thank you so much.

Check out any (or all) of these posts:

Winter training tips for coxswains…

Coxswains + winter training (Similar titles, different posts, I promise…)

How To Survive Winter Training, pt. 1b: Coxswains

“The Coxswain in Winter”

How do you as a coxswain help your rowers when they are erging in the winter?

Coxing Masters Q&A

Question of the Day

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So I’m the most experienced coxswain on my juniors team, and was asked to cox a master’s eight. It isn’t a racing boat or anything. Some of the masters just wanted to try sweep. The thing is both of my coaches and a few of the board members for the juniors team will be in the boat, as will my dad. I’m afraid that if I mess up, or if my coach isn’t a fan of my style, it could affect boat placement going into spring. Any advice?

It won’t. It would be really stupid of your coach to keep you out of certain boats just because he didn’t like your style of coxing. I was emailing with another coxswain about a very similar situation a couple weeks ago and a lot of what I told him applies to you too. In this situation, yea it might be awkward to have your dad, your coach, and some of the board members in the boat but when you’re on the water they’re none of those people – they’re just another group of rowers. Something that I’ve noticed with masters rowers over the last few years (both men and women) is that they tend to forget that on the water I (and the other coxswains) don’t look at them the way their employees, colleagues, etc. look at them – they’re not doctors, lawyers, university administrators, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, small business owners, non-profit managers, contractors, advertising execs, etc. to me. They’re just rowers. If it comes off like you’re intimidated by them because of who they are off the water then you open the door for them to put on their manager/department head/executive hat and try to run the show because that’s what they’re used to doing every day. Don’t forget though, you’re used to managing people every day too, the only difference between the two groups being age.

The majority of masters rowers are great and come out just to have a good time with friends so trust me when I say all you have to do is the exact same thing you do during practice with your normal crews. Obviously you should make sure you’re on top of your game (that means steering good lines, not hitting things, communicating clearly and concisely, etc.) but if you excel at all of the basic coxswain skills any other day of the week then you’re not going to have any issues with these guys.

Below is another part of the email I mentioned earlier that I hope will help you out. Remember, you wouldn’t have been asked to do this if someone (your coach, I’m assuming) didn’t think you were capable. Don’t take the situation too seriously and have fun with it!

“The biggest piece of advice I can give you is if you get nervous, keep it to yourself. Act like every single thing you say and do is a deliberate action, not something you debated doing before making a decision. Be confident and have a good time! Coxing masters, even competitive ones, can be a lot of fun. They’ll probably joke around with you which will hopefully lighten the atmosphere a bit so just approach it like you would any other practice. Communicate with the coach, ask questions if you don’t understand something, need it repeated, etc., be clear with your calls to the crew, and use this as an opportunity to learn. Every crew is different so you can probably apply something you’ve done with your high school team to these guys and you’ll probably be able to take something away from this and apply it to your high school practice next week.”