Category: Coxing

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

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Any tips for staying warm on the water, especially on chilly mornings and evenings?

Layers. Lots and lots of layers. Although if you’re coxing in a bow loader, good luck because you’re probably going to be cold/wet no matter what.

Get some hot hands – the ones for your hands AND the ones for your feet. My mom bought me some that are the shape of your whole foot and you just put them in the bottoms of your shoes. Wear Bean Boots AND thick wool socks under that. If you have Uggs and you won’t be going through mud or anything and it’s not raining, they work well too as long as it’s not too far below freezing. Throw some hot hands in under your toes and your feel will stay nice and toasty.

Get some UnderArmour cold gear leggings and layer a pair of either fleece lounge pants or regular sweatpants over them, then put your rain pants on over that. On top, I typically do a long sleeve spandex top (either regular or cold gear), a regular long sleeve shirt (although it depends on how cold it is; sometimes I forgo this layer), a hoodie or pullover, and then a regular outdoor jacket over that. Also, don’t forget gloves. I wear either fleece gloves or UnderArmour outdoor gloves. Ear wraps or beanies are also highly recommended.

If your team has survival suits, those are great to wear over all your clothes as an additional (albeit bulky) layer of warmth. I’m not a fan of wearing them when I’m coxing because they just feel so heavy and cumbersome but if the weather’s bad or cold enough, it’s just the smart thing to do.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Ok, so we got a new coxswain. I’m in jr varsity (I’m a rower) and she moved here 2weeks ago. She just isn’t very good. Maybe she is nervous or isn’t used to this course but I have lightly hinted that maybe she start taking notes or go on the launch to maybe watch etc. but she hasn’t and she is super sweet but it’s really hard to have to cox a boat nears her. It’s like she is a novice. I don’t know how to politely tell her or the coaches without starting drama.

Hmm. What do the other coxswains think? Have you tried talking to the coxswain of your boat? I guarantee that if you, a rower, has noticed she’s not very good, the coxswains have DEFINITELY noticed it. I think that as long as you’re polite about it and not gossipy or rude, no one will look at it as starting drama. I would talk to the coxswains first and see what they say and suggest to them that they talk to her and fill her in before going to your coach. If you end up in a boat she’s in and her coxing effects your practice, then I might talk to your coach and explain what you’re thinking. No coach wants their practices to be a waste of time and if the coxswain is causing valuable time to be wasted, he/she will probably want to talk to her.

I’d try talking to her yourself too, maybe get to know her and see what her background in rowing is. How long has she coxed for, why’d she get into rowing, what was her old team like, etc. Take that information and use that to help convince her that maybe taking a step back and seeing how you guys do things would be helpful to her. She should want to get better and adapt to her new team’s way of doing things, so hopefully she’ll be receptive to your, your coach’s, and the other coxswain’s suggestions.

Coxing Novice Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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How do I get my boat to respect me?? I’m a novice coxswain on the B boat. I do all the workouts and I asked a few people for advice in what they want to hear etc but some still don’t respect me! I’m nice but firm when needed to be. I was a rower for 3 months in a a single and 2 months in an 8 and 4. I was good, they wanted me to go to varsity singles this year so I kinda get rowing better than most coxswains so I do what I wanted my coxswain to do but still no respect from half my boat!!

Hmm. I guess my question here is why your boat doesn’t respect you…

How old are you/the rowers?

Do you know them well (are you friends outside of crew or did you just recently meet them)?

Do the rowers actually CARE about crew/do they know that YOU care?

Have you done something, knowingly or unknowingly, that might have pissed them off or given them the wrong impression about you?

When you’re on the water, do you know what you’re doing or are you constantly starting and stopping (to fix steering, have someone explain the workout, etc.)?

What is different about the people who DO respect you vs. the people who don’t?

Gaining the respect of your crew can be hard. It’s more about trust than anything else. The rowers who want to be there recognize that and will usually make an effort to get to know their coxswain if they don’t already know them. Doing the workouts with them is a good start and the fact that you have rowed before will be really helpful to you.

If you’re still having problems with those few people, I’d make a concerted effort to get to know them. Talk to them when you’re not on the water, offer to give them a ride home, etc. Maybe if they get to know you, they’ll stop being assholes. If something unpleasant happens on the water, leave it on the water. Don’t bring drama into the boat in the first place but leave whatever drama happened on the water out on the water. Be the mature one and shut that down immediately.

Before you start winter training (or if you’ve already started, after you get back from Christmas break), sit down with your boat and have a “goal setting session”. Take it upon yourself to do this. Ask them what their goals are for the winter and what their goals are for the spring. Write them down and revisit them throughout the winter, at the beginning of spring, and at the end of the spring season. Remind them what your goals are and that in order to accomplish them, you have to work as a team, which requires mutual respect amongst everyone in the boat.

If none of these things work, I’d take them aside individually and figure out what the problem is. Tell them that you’ve noticed that things are weird between you guys and you don’t want it to effect the boat while you’re training over the winter and especially once the spring season starts. Ask if there’s something specific that you’ve done to offend them or give them the wrong impression. If they’re being an ass just to be an ass though, that’s a problem you should talk to your team captains/coach about. Hopefully they recognize your efforts in working out with them, as well as your rowing knowledge, and can give you a little more firsthand insight than I can.

Coxing High School Q&A Racing

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Hi, I’m 14 and I’m from England. I’m a cox (obviously) and I often cox the years above, and today we had a head-race, and its pretty likely at we’re going to get disqualified, and I feel terrible. It will all be my fault and all the coaches will hate me as will the crew and I’m just terrified and I’ve been crying for the last hour and I don’t know what to do…

Why do you think you’re going to get DQ’ed? What happened?

They’re not going to hate you. If they hate you over something like getting DQ’ed from a race, you need to join a different team. They might be annoyed but that’s it. Talk to your coaches and rowers and explain what happened. Explain why you did what you did. If you had a reason for doing something, even if it got you DQ’ed, that’s a lot better than NOT having a reason … like, you hit a bridge pier because you got squeezed out of your line by passing crews and misjudged the distance between your oars and the pier vs. you hit a bridge pier just because you weren’t paying attention.

Don’t be scared and definitely don’t cry. If you’re allowed, go down to regatta headquarters and see if there’s an official you can talk to who can explain why you were or might be DQ’ed or what you did wrong. Get as much information as you can and then study it. Figure out what you could have done differently compared to what you did, that way you know in the future what to do if a similar situation arises. The race has happened, and whether is was good or bad, the only thing you can do now is learn from it.

FOLLOW UP
Basically as part of the course there’s an ait (I don’t know if you have that in America but its like an island) and you have to go to the right of it and you cant overtake in it. For quite a while we had been gaining on this crew, and by the time we got to the ait we were pretty much level with them. My cox box was broken so I was shouting and passing on messages through bow (it was a four) and they were doing some sort of motivational shouting like ‘push cmon!’ so we were starting to pull ahead and this Marshall was like ‘your not allowed to overtake, move towards the bank!’ so I did, but I think according to the rules We can still get disqualified.

That sucks that your cox box was broken. Was it broken before you went out or did it happen once you were on the water? When something like that happens, you have to adjust your whole strategy. Were you in a bowloader? It’s fine to use your bowman to pass on things like power 10s, etc. but other than that no one should be talking. Even though it’s hard for them to hear you, they have to be quiet and not try and cox themselves. More than anything else, it’s a safety issue.

The situation you were in is actually pretty common. You pull up to a crew and right when you want to pass them, you hit the “no pass zone”. If that happens, the only thing you can do is tell your crew to back off. They’re going to think you’re insane but you have to explain to them that you’re entering a no pass zone and you caught the crew in front of you too quickly. They need to power down so that you stay either RIGHT behind them or RIGHT beside them. You have to have PERFECT steering to maintain that distance between your two boats. As SOON as you exit that no pass zone, you GO. Power back up to 110% and take a 20 to walk away.

It doesn’t sound like you did anything that explicitly broke the rules. The marshal was just doing his job, so don’t take it too personally if he yelled at you when he told you to move. He’s gotta make sure you hear him, which is why he probably yelled. At most, I would think you might get a penalty, but I don’t see any reason why you’d be disqualified. If you just sat even with them, I don’t think that’s a violation of the rules because technically you didn’t pass them. I would talk with your coaches and see what they say, but it sounds like you did what you were told to do by the marshals, so you should be fine.

FOLLOW UP
We didn’t get disqualified, we won our category!

Congrats!

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Interesting question: How often do you think a cox should talk during a race? I feel really awkward and useless if I stop talking for more than a few seconds, and when I rowed our cox would talk almost constantly during races. However, at a regatta briefing the other day the OU Captain of Coxes implied that coxes should only be talking every few strokes. I guess it depends on the standard and nature of the crew, but what do you think?

My personal opinion (and how I was taught) is that the coxswain should always be talking unless they’ve told their crew that they’re going to stop talking for a period of time. Maybe that’s just an American thing but I don’t feel like there’s ever any point when you shouldn’t be talking during a race. When I’ve talked about this in the past with some of my crews they say that even if they zone out on what the coxswain is specifically saying, they’re still listening … that voice is what keeps them IN the boat and not looking around at everything that’s going on or whatever else.

I’ve heard coaches tell their coxswains during head races that if everything is going fine there’s no reason for them to talk all the time. To me though, on the flip side of that, it seems like they’re saying that if everything is going to hell the coxswain should be talking constantly. If that’s how your team does things and your rowers learn that style of coxing, how are they supposed to differentiate between when things are going well and when things are going horribly wrong? I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s how I picture it in my head.

During practice pieces for Head of the Charles, right after the Weeks turn I’d have my crew take a silent five just to regroup, refocus, and get ready for the second half of the race. I wouldn’t count or talk … those five strokes were theirs to do what they needed to do. It always worked out well because after Anderson we were always much stronger when we did those silent five strokes. We did it enough during practice that we didn’t have to do it during a race and I kept talking right through the point where we normally do it. In race situations, I just feel like rowers need that constant bug in their ear reminding them of what they need to do. If they don’t or they don’t like coxswains that talk all the time, let me introduce you to the coxless 4, the 2x, the 2-, and the 1x. Take your picks and enjoy being stuck in your own head for 2-6k.

I agree with you in that I really think it depends on what kind of crew you have. I don’t think coaches should ever tell coxswains how to cox or what to say or how often to say it because the likelihood that they were a coxswain is slim. More than anything else, I think it’s a style of coxing that is specific to each individual. Some coxswains might be OK with not talking and others are chatterboxes. As long as those who talk all the time are saying useful things and not just blabbering away, I don’t see a problem with it. I’d talk to your crew too and see what their input is … after all, they’re the ones you’re talking to!

Coxing Novice Q&A Training & Nutrition

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So I’m a novice coxswain and I’m really not athletic. The other coxswains told me that during winter training we do everything the rowers do but because I haven’t been erging and working out with the team, I’m scared I won’t be able to keep up with them. What should I do?

One of the benefits of being a coxswain is that you don’t necessarily have to have the same amount of athletic prowess as the rowers. Some coxswains are extremely athletic and participate in other sports besides crew (I did) and some aren’t. It’s really not a big deal. No one, not even your coach, expects you to be going as hard at the workouts as the rowers are, so don’t ever feel like you’re “behind” or not as good as the rowers.

If you haven’t been erging or working out with them, it’s fine. Don’t try and match the level that they’re at but still put some effort into whatever you’re doing. Do things at your pace. If you can’t erg below a 2:30 split without dying, then don’t! If your steady state pace is a 2:40, then row at a 2:40. If you’re doing calisthenics and core workouts, PUSH YOURSELF. These exercises are great because there’s no weights involved and you’re just using your body – everyone can do them.

Related: My coach makes coxswains do winter workouts and 2k’s with rowers. Do you think that’s fair? We don’t get a break with the workout, at all. We have to do the same exact thing as rowers.

While getting in shape and physically fit is a great motivator for working out with the team, your coaches are probably watching to see how well you interact and can keep the team motivated when you’re doing the same workouts as them. You could be the most miserable person in the room but you’re the coxswain…you’ve got to put on a happy face and find what it takes to keep everyone else going. They also want to see your leadership skills at work…can you get everyone started and lead them through the workouts or do you slink back and all hell break loose?

Don’t be nervous. Keep an open mind and go into it with a positive attitude. Don’t feel defeated before you even start…remember, your attitude at the beginning of a task determines how successful you are at completing it.

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

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Have you ever used a head-mounted camera to film an outing or a race? Any recommendations? I’m thinking of getting a DogCam Bullet HD for Christmas, I’m likely to be coxing both Tideway heads next year plus other internal racing, thinking it would be a fun thing to have.

I personally haven’t used them but two coxswains I coached this past spring used cameras to record their races and it worked out great. One used a Go-Pro with the head strap mount and the other used sunglasses that had a camera and microphone built in, similar to these. The video quality of both was very good, as was the sound. I don’t know too much about what’s out there because I’ve never really researched it, but I’ve always heard really great things about Go-Pros. I definitely think it’d be a helpful tool to have (not only for yourself but for your coaches and rowers too) so if you can get one, go for it!

Holiday gifts for coxswains

Coxing Rowing

Holiday gifts for coxswains

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Know a coxswain but have no idea what to get them for Christmas? You’ve come to the right place. My friends and family used to joke that they were going to get me nothing but cough drops since I was always losing my voice when the weather was cold but if you’re looking for something a little more creative, here’s some ideas.

If you know someone who just started coxing, The Down & Dirty Guide to Coxing is a good resource to help them get up to speed. It covers the basics so it wouldn’t be great for someone who’s been at it for more than a year or so but could be a helpful gift for someone new to the sport. Similarly, a notebook or one of Vespoli’s coxswain wrenches, which has both 7/16th and 10mm measurements on it, would make a solid addition to their toolkit. For more experienced coxswains, it’s important that they locate as many educational opportunities as possible so they can further their own knowledge and skills so registration to a clinic or summer camp could really help them take their coxing to the next level.

Warm gear is always a simple and much-appreciated gift, as are Hot Hands. Two of my personal fave brands are Patagonia (their snap-t fleece pullover is a staple) and Smartwool, because nothing saves you from being miserable on the water like a thick pair of socks to keep your toes warm.

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

Image via // Sofia Donnecke
How To Survive Winter Training: Coxswains

Coxing How To Novice

How To Survive Winter Training: Coxswains

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Previously: Rowers

We all know that winter training is the bane of every coxswain’s existence. It’s boring, there’s nothing for us to do, and … there are a ton of other things we could be doing besides watching people erg. When I was a freshman in high school, I did a lot of standing around and observing. My team didn’t really have a fall season because the majority of the team participated in other sports (soccer, cross country, etc.) or were in marching band (*raises hand*). I spent the winter season, which started the first day we got back from Christmas break, learning everything I could about rowing and my responsibilities as a coxswain. If you’re a novice, educate yourself. If you’re on varsity, continue educating yourself by helping to educate others.

In addition to what I’ve mentioned here, something that all coxswains should consider doing is working out with the team. So what if you can’t hold the same split as them? You can hop on the ergs once or twice a week, right? There’s no rules against running core sets and doing them at the same time. While they’re lifting, you can run or hop on the bike for 45-60 minutes. Coxswains should not look at exercise as a bad thing. “I’m not athletic/strong/coordinated” is not a legitimate excuse for not working out with your team. Some teams don’t care, some require it. Regardless of whether or not it’s mandated by the coaches, the rowers will notice if you do the workouts with them and it will help them formulate an idea in there head as to whether they want you as a coxswain or not.

Have a positive attitude

Don’t go into winter training thinking “ugh what am I even doing here, I’m so bored, I’m just going to sit and watch this paint dry while you guys do 2 x 6k.” No. No, no, no. When has going into something with a less than positive attitude EVER worked out for anyone? Never, that’s when. As the coxswain(s), the rowers and coaches look to you to keep the atmosphere light and upbeat during winter training. The rowers look to you for motivation and encouragement while the coaches observe your leadership skills and ability to take charge of a crowd. Like I said in the rower’s post,  your attitude at the beginning of a task determines how successful you’ll be at completing it. You can either go into winter training with an objective or you can go in without one. Which leads me to…

Set some goals

What are your goals this season? What did you do last season that you hope to improve on this season? Which regattas are you REALLY planning on going hard for? Which of your skills needs work? What about college – have you started emailing coaches and looking at potential majors? All of these things are goal-worthy, meaning you should be making a list of all the things you want to do or get out of this season and set some “deadlines” for them. Just because you’re not on the water doesn’t mean you can’t get better.

If you’re a varsity coxswain and already know roughly what your lineup will be, sit down with some of them and discuss what your goals as a crew are for the season. Look at how quickly you covered courses last year and figure out what you should be able to do them in this year. Talk with your coaches about what they’d like to see you do this season, both as a leader of the team and with your boat. Take it upon yourself to take the novices under your wing and help them set some goals of their own.

Take some time off

If you need a break, now is your shot. Everyone needs a break every now and then but coxswains have the luxury of actually being able to take it in the winter without getting too much shit for it. Talk with your coaches and explain why you want to take a week off from practice so you can come back refreshed and ready to go. Have a legitimate reason though – you know there won’t be anything for you to do is NOT an acceptable excuse. Staying at practice and just going through the motions doesn’t help anyone and it’ll become obvious quickly that you don’t want to be there. Listen to your brain and your body when it tells you it needs a break.

Do something fun with your team

Get to know your new teammates. If your team doesn’t do the fall season or there are people that have joined since then, organize a game night, social, dinner, etc. to introduce yourselves and the team to the new rowers and coxswains. Have a team Christmas party and do Secret Santa. Get with some of the varsity rowers and organize something fun to kick off winter training. Team triathlons sound like a ton of fun to me and would be a great way to start the indoor season on a fun, happy note. You could also organize a boathouse cleanup – the team breaks up into groups of nine and are each given a list of tasks that need to be completed around the boathouse. The team that finishes first wins a spectacular prize!

Strategize

Have a plan for how you’re going to approach the indoor season. What are you going to do to make sure you make the most of the time you’re on land? How are you going to help the rowers? What are you going to do to help the coaches out? What are you going to do to help the novice coxswains get prepared for the spring season? What are you going to do to prepare yourself for the upcoming races?

One thing I always tried to do at some point during the winter season was sit down and look at my race notes from previous seasons. Pull up the course map on your laptop at practice one day and go over it with everyone, including the other varsity coxswains. Discuss where good spots to make a move are, what the various landmarks along the course are, etc. Start to formulate very basic and general race plans for the regattas your team plans on attending. Clue the novices in on the course, what it’s like, etc. Discuss race strategy with them, why it’s important, and how to form race plans.