This is from series that British Rowing did leading up to Rio and focuses on the two coxswains, Phelan Hill and Zoe de Toledo. They talk about the coxswain’s role on the team and in the boat, developing boat feel so they can coach the crew when their coach isn’t around, the things they’re observing about the rowers on any given day, their temperaments, dealing with the “what do you do” and “you’re just here for a free ride” banter, etc.
Category: Coxing
Question of the Day
I really want to practice making small steering adjustments but my team has the great misfortune of rowing on a river that is in the midst of extreme drought. When I say extreme, I mean we can’t have two boats next to each other because anything but a very specific course in the very middle of the river can break off a fin. Because of the drought, there’s debris everywhere, and coupled with the bridges, I’m basically on the rudder at all times. How can I practice minimal steering in this situation?
I get what you’re saying about wanting to practice but it sounds like you’re at the mercy of the river until conditions improve. I don’t really have any advice unfortunately – you gotta do what you gotta do and in this situation keeping the equipment safe is more important than you practicing your steering, which is a pretty low priority by comparison.
The best I can suggest is to take note of how much you’re steering now and then (off the water) visualizing the course you’d take under normal circumstances and what adjustments you’d need to make between how much you’re currently steering vs. how much you should be steering. That’s a good way to practice without being able to actually practice because by the time you get back on the water (or the river returns to normal) you’ve already got an idea of how much or little you need to steer. Other than that though, just do whatever you’ve gotta do to keep the fin in tact.
What makes a good coxswain recording
This is a short clip from a talk that Marcus gave during the Sparks winter camp last December on coxswain recordings. In it he talks about how just because you have a good recording doesn’t mean you’re a good coxswain (#preach) and the three things USJNT coach Laura Simon listens for when she’s evaluating the audio sent in by prospective coxswains.
These three things are not groundbreaking, they’re not innovative, and they’re not hard to do. If you’re looking for ways to improve your audio, this should be your starting point because they are, as Marcus said, “the bare minimum” of things most people want to hear.
Question of the Day
Hi! I’ve been a novice at my local rowing club for about two months now. I’m a coxswain but I’m not sure if I’m cut out for it. I enjoy it but I have so much trouble making calls and being motivational and speaking throughout a whole piece. Is this just because I’m new to this? Or are most coxswains good from the very beginning? I guess I’m wondering if it’s possible to improve or if I’m just not cut out. If you have any tips that would be great. Thanks!
It’s always possible to improve if you’re willing to put the effort in but to answer your question, yes, it probably just feels like that because you’re still new to this. If you’re still feeling the same way at the end of the spring season or next year or whatever then yea, it might be time to revisit that question.
Related: Advice from a former novice
I don’t think that’s a bad thing either – to be honest, more coxswains should ask themselves that. I don’t think you’ve gotta be “the best” at something in order to keep doing it , especially if it’s something you like doing, but coxswains kinda need to have the self-awareness to know when that’s a necessary conversation to have with themselves.
Related: Some things to know as a novice coxswain
I wouldn’t say most coxswains are good from the very beginning. Some are but in most cases it’s like any other sport – most people suck and make a lot of mistakes but at some point they buckle down and make the decision to do and be better. It all comes down to self-discipline and what you’re willing to invest to get where you wanna be.
Related: Five things to do as a novice coxswain
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you start out because there’s so much you have to learn and do, which is why I equate it to trial by fire so often. Just focus on getting the basics down, starting with steering. Forget motivation. Seriously. It’s not important at this stage and shouldn’t be a priority right now.
Related: What do coaches look for in a coxswain?
Same with trying to talk through a whole piece. Eventually yea, you should be able to do that but right now you (most likely) don’t have a good enough grasp on the technical aspects of the stroke to be able to do that. That’ll come in time but you can expedite it by putting in the time off the water to read up on technique, talk to your coach about the purpose and goals of the drills you do during practice, etc.
Don’t assume you’re not cut out just because it’s still hard after two months. I’ve been coxing for 14 years and I still think it’s hard. Stuff like this doesn’t get easier, you just become better equipped to deal with whatever challenges you face. Lower your tolerance for asking for help so that you can soak up as much information, advice, and feedback as possible and find ways to apply what you learn to what you’re doing on the water. That’s the fastest and easiest way to get better.
Defining the role of the coxswain: Leadership
It’s election day in the US so talking about leadership seemed like a fitting topic for today’s post.
I came across this blog post from the Harvard Business Review a few days ago that talked about the skills leaders need regardless of where they fall in the hierarchy of their organization. The original question was “are some skills less important for leaders at certain levels of the organization or is there a set of skills fundamental to every level?” and what the researchers found was that instead of there being different sets of “core competencies” for each level of management (ranging from first-time managers to senior executives/CEOs), the skills that were perceived as most important stayed consistent across the board. The conclusion they drew was that as you move up the chain the basic fundamentals aren’t changing but their relative importance does.
The parallels to coxing and the sport might not be exact but they are there so this should give you a good idea of where you can/should focus your energy if you’re an upperclassman who is trying to step it up as a leader on your team or if you’re an underclassman who is taking on your first real leadership position.
For each of the top three skills listed above I’ve included a couple examples below of how you can approach and demonstrate each one with your team and/or boat.
Inspires and motivates others
We all know motivation is a tricky subject for coxswains but the leadership side of it is less about calls on the water and more about how you keep your boat/team striving for more. This starts with being one of the first team leaders to step up and start proposing realistic goals to work towards over the next month, season, and year.
Showing appreciation for your rowers goes a long way too in keeping them motivated, especially in the winter. It’s as simple as sending out a quick group text after a hard workout and saying “you guys crushed it this morning, great job…”.
Keeping everyone focused (and staying focused yourself) on the bigger picture is also key. Put it in the context of doing side-by-side pieces during practice. You have to understand the goal of the workout and know that just straight winning a piece is rarely its entire purpose. The bigger picture is leveraging the technical focuses from that week with the fitness you’ve been developing over the course of the season to see where your speed’s at, amongst other things. You can row well and lose, you can have a good piece and lose, you can row 10x better today than you did yesterday and lose. Don’t let a lost piece derail the practice or kill the energy in the boat. Keep everyone focused by highlighting the improvements you’ve made throughout each piece and noting where you can/need to do better … and then get after it on the next one.
Displays high integrity and honesty
This can be interpreted in two ways. The first is pretty straightforward and has to do with communication. Basically, are you giving your teammates the information they need in a timely and accurate fashion? Between technical feedback, your position, time elapsed, and a whole litany of other things, there’s a lot of information that you’re responsible for passing along to the crew. The more honest you are about what’s going on, the more the crew will trust you and the less backseat coxing (at the very least) you’ll have to deal with.
The second interpretation has to do with how to conduct yourself. Are you showing up to practice on time (and by on time I mean early) every day? Are you putting personal relationships aside and offering constructive feedback to everyone in your boat? Are you matching the effort put in by the rowers both on and off the water in terms of development and becoming more proficient at your job?
Solves problems and analyzes issues
This is where your technical knowledge can be a huge benefit to you. You’ve gotta able to feel what’s going on in the boat and then quickly and decisively translate that to a call that works to improve boat speed. By developing your problem solving skills by way of improving your boat feel, educating yourself off the water on the intricacies of the rowing stroke, understanding the style of rowing your coach is teaching, etc. your calls will become clearer and your command of the crew will improve.
There will also be times where you’ve gotta do some creative problem solving to deal with, for example, a shortened or lengthened warmup time on race day. Being able to shift gears and have a clear plan in mind that you can then communicate to your crew (in a totally chill manner that makes it seem like this was the plan all along) will again only increase their trust in your ability to lead them through adverse situations.
If you’re thinking of doing coxswain evals at any point, this would be a great addition to help give you an idea of what the rowers value when it comes to the coxswain as a team leader. Rather than give them this entire list and have them rank all 16 skills in order of importance, I’d get together with the other coxswains (and your coaches) and collectively decide on five at most that you all think are important and then have the rowers rank them from there. Alternatively, you could pick three and have them rate each coxswain individually on a scale of 1-5 (similarly to how I’ve got other skills set up on the evals we use with our team) to net you some feedback on how you’re doing in those areas and where improvements could be made.
Image via // @remo_boledi
Video of the Week: How to be the perfect cox
“All you can do is trick the guys into pushing harder when they really don’t want to.” That, and steer straight.
Talk by Penn ’15 Coxswain Lou Lombardi
Today’s post is some audio of a talk that former Penn coxswain Lou Lombardi gave during the Sparks camp that Penn hosted back in August. He talked about his experience as a coxswain, his lowest point in the sport, what he took away from that experience (namely that he didn’t set himself up to succeed and the changes he made as a result), and what he learned as part of the coxed pair that placed 5th at this year’s world championships . He offers up a lot of great advice in here, especially for coxswains, so definitely give it a listen. It’s a little over 11 minutes long.
Question of the Day
Hi! Recently I’ve taken a bigger role on my team as a coxswain and have made some definite improvements with my confidence. But, I’m still struggling with how to handle frustration. When a boat feels really good and my rowers are being super responsive I feel as though I make really good calls, but when my rowers aren’t being as responsive to me or they’re tired, I feel like I never know how to motivate them without sounding mean. The other day a rower told me to work on saying more positive calls instead of negative calls, but I’m having trouble thinking of what would be considered a negative call. What do you think I should do to improve on this?
Good timing with this question – it’s something I’ll be talking about with one of our coxswains this week when we go over their evals, hence why this is a really long response since this is all fresh on my mind.
tl;dr The best way to turn practice around and get them to respond to you is to communicate throughout practice and keep everything you’re doing goal-oriented and the best way to pinpoint “negative” calls is to look at what you’re telling them not to do and then rephrase by telling them what you want them to do.
You should definitely ask that rower for clarification about the positive vs. negative call thing so you understand what calls they’re perceiving as negative and what alternatives they think would/could be more effective. A good rule of thumb if you’re trying to figure out what a “negative” call is is to think about what you’re telling the rowers not to do rather than what you’re telling them to do. Here’s the example that one of the guys gave on the evals:
“When [that coxswain] makes technical calls, they tend to be something like ‘Dan, don’t row it in’. This is so much less effective than saying ‘Dan, back it in’ or ‘Dan, get some backsplash’, or even ‘Dan, you’re rowing it in, you need to get some backsplash here’.”
So, it’s not that what you’re saying is inherently or traditionally negative, it’s just that when you say “don’t do X” they’re more likely to start thinking more about whatever you just said not to do instead of immediately thinking “OK this is the change I need to make”, which is what they’d do if you instead phrased it in one of the ways listed in the example above.
One example that Marcus McElhenney used with the coxswains last winter to make this point was he’d say “don’t think about a pink elephant … don’t think about a pink elephant … don’t think about a pink elephant” … and then he’d ask “OK what are you thinking about? Are you thinking about a normal elephant or are you thinking about a pink elephant?” and of course everyone said they were thinking about, visualizing, etc. a pink elephant, even though that’s what he said not to do. It’s a “the more you try not to think about it, the more you end up thinking about it” kind of thing so to combat that, you have to make sure that the words you’re using to communicate with the crew are as efficient as possible, which in this case means eliminating the negative word (“don’t”) and replacing it with something more effective/”positive”.
The first part of your question is similar to something I talked about with our freshman coxswain today. If practice isn’t going well or the crew isn’t responding to your calls, turning that around has literally – literally – nothing to do with motivation. Like pretty much everything else related to coxing, that should be your lowest priority. If they’re not as responsive today as they were yesterday, you’ve first gotta look at yourself and figure out a different/better way to communicate with them.
When I’ve been in that position I always talk to my stroke (with the mic turned off) between pieces and ask if there’s something I could/should be saying that I’m not or something they’re feeling that I’m not picking up on that I should address, etc. From there I’ll quickly say to the boat “Something’s not working … what’s going on, how can I help?” and usually someone in the boat will have an opinion on what I can say to get them to refocus. I’ve rarely ever been in a boat where the rowers don’t know what needs to be done to get back on track, it’s just that they need someone (aka me) to facilitate it and if I’m approaching it from a different angle or just not addressing it at all, it helps to just ask and have them say “this is what we need from you”. It also saves a ton of time, which took a while to accept because there was definitely a period where I didn’t want to ask them that because I felt like I should just know or be able to pick up on it without someone laying it out for me … but it’s not always that simple or easy so you’ve gotta have that back and forth communication otherwise you’re just gonna waste time going through six different things that aren’t working instead jumping straight into the one or two things that will work.
The second thing you’ve gotta do after evaluating how you’re communicating is just get over feeling like you’re sounding mean or being a bitch or whatever just because you’re asking for more … or in some cases, the bare minimum. Like, there’s obviously a fine line between pushing them to meet their potential during practice so you can get shit done and pushing too far to the point where they’re giving everything they’ve got and you’re just coming off as unsatisfied and making them think their efforts aren’t good enough … you definitely have to be aware of that. At the same time though, you have plenty of tools at your disposal to keep you on the right path, namely your Speedcoach that’s showing you your splits (you know where you’re at vs. where you need to be and from there you know how much harder you can push them … usually one or two splits is good as a “stretch” goal for pieces if things are going well) and your own goal-oriented practice plan that you’re ideally forming in your head as soon as you find out what the workout is.
This is another thing that we ask the guys about on the evals – how do the coxswains do at keeping practice on task, goal-oriented, etc. and if practice is going poorly, how good are they at turning that around. We definitely have days where the guys are similar to your rowers – not responsive, tired for whatever reason, and just not in it – but the consistent theme when I ask them what the coxswains could do better is that they just need to keep the crew focused on a goal. Sometimes the overarching goal of practice is too broad (i.e. if it’s a skill-and-drill day and we’re working on blade placement at the catch) so the coxswains will need to break it down even further and lay out some smaller goals that feed into that larger goal for this next piece or for the next 3-2-1 chunk of steady state or whatever.
That shouldn’t be something you always need to come up with on the fly either. Sometimes it is just based on what you’re seeing but in talking with your coach(es) before practice you should be able to extrapolate a couple of sub-goals based on whatever they say you’re gonna do that day. To use the blade placement example again, if that’s the main focus then the sub-goals/focuses should be on moving the hands away together, watching the shoulders of the guy in front of you, anticipating their movements and swinging out of bow together, starting the wheels together, making sure the bodies are fully set by the time the handle crosses the toes (that’s our style, yours might be different), and unweighting the hands in the last inch or two of the slide as you come into a fully compressed catch position.
On the surface sure, it doesn’t exactly read like how a “goal” normally reads because each of those is just a step in the process but each of those things has to happen if you want your catch to be on point and your blade to move through the longest arc possible in the water so they should naturally be a focus every time you take a stroke. You are the one with the power to take those inherent focuses and turn them into something more goal-oriented in order to get everyone back on the same page.
If we’re doing 3-2-1 at 18-20-24spm then something we might do is say “alright, let’s refocus and for the next minute here at an 18 let’s anticipate that movement out of bow together and match up the hands as they come away…”. Remind them to breathe and stay loose and then give them a few strokes to get it on their own. Make some calls throughout that first minute about tapping down, finish posture, matching the hands to the speed of the boat, etc. – all things that directly relate to getting the hands out together, that way you keep them singularly focused on matching up the hands. Give them feedback on how it’s going and then move on in the next minute to swinging the shoulders over together. Incorporate in a few calls about the hands but try to stay focused on swing, staying loose with the upper body, pivoting from the hips, anticipating the movements of the guy in front of you, etc.
From there you’re just progressively building on each step of the recovery until finally you’re at a 24 and can put it all together. Once we’ve gone through that 3-2-1 segment then the coxswains will take a step back and just let them row on their own for awhile to give them a more extended period of time to process what they just worked on.
That’s where that fine balance comes in of knowing when to push and ask for more and knowing when to take a step back and let them work it out on their own. If things are going poorly you’ve gotta be the first one to step up and say “alright, this is what we’re gonna do, this is how we’re gonna do it, let’s go…” and then once you’ve spent a few minutes on that, back off and let them focus on just feeling the boat and committing those changes to memory. A tendency with coxswains (myself included for sure) is to want to tackle every problem immediately or to just go radio silent and address nothing but if you are focused and you understand the stroke and how each movement feeds into another, it’s really easy to break things down into smaller parts that you can then use to get practice back on track.
Something to keep in mind too is that everything I listed above isn’t going to work 100% of the time. There will be days where nothing you try works and that’s OK as long as you’ve actually made the effort to find a solution. If you just sit back and do nothing then you’ve failed in your responsibility as the coxswain but if you’re actively trying different things and are finding that none of them are clicking, you’ve gotta keep an Edison-esque mindset about it and accept that you didn’t fail, you just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work. Those 10,000 ways that didn’t work are just as important to know as the one way you find that does work so spend some time post-practice reviewing what you did, what you tried, what wasn’t working, etc. and then … move on. You’ve now got a ton of info on hand for what to do and what not to do so just let it go and commit to doing something different tomorrow.
Question of the Day
So far finding this blog a great resource, it has helped me so much already so thank you? Onto my question, as a novice cox for maybe a month, the only real thing I am really struggling with at the moment is maneuvering the boat – e.g. moving the boat from the middle of the river off to the side in order not to impede traffic, sorta like parking the boat.
Say if I was in the middle of the river and I wanted to get to the bank and be ‘parked’ in the same position as if the boat had simply moved sideways, how would I go about doing this? My past attempts doing this have involved me steering while bow just rows, then I would just get stern pair to back it. It seems really slow and inefficient when I do it.
Also if the current keeps pushing us towards the bank, to the point where there is barely enough room to take a stroke without hitting the bank what can I do to:
1) Keep the boat off the bank in the first place
2) Get out of a situation like this if it does arise again.
I usually tell bow to tap it on bow side but then the stern just gets pushed in, then I tell stroke to tap on bow and same goes, bow just goes back into the bank. If I tell all 4 to tap in on bow side, the stern will just hit the bank. BTW This would primarily be for a 4x+ as I don’t cox 8s very often, but advice for 8s would also be nice? Thanks!
I’d just keep it super simple and spin the boat 90ish degrees (ports row, starboards back), take a few strokes to get out of the way, and then spin back 90ish degrees (starboards row, ports back) so you’re pointed back where you were before. You’ll be in pretty much the same position, just a few lengths to the right of where you were before. If you’re on a narrower stretch where it’s not necessary to spin a full 90 degrees or you’re just trying to move over a length instead of a few lengths I’d have the rowers spin it enough that I can take a sharp angle towards shore and then I’ll row it across. I’ve never been concerned with being in the exact same spot along shore as I was in the middle of the river (nor have my coaches) so backing it down just seems unnecessarily tedious.
As far as dealing with the current, that’s one of those things where you’ve either gotta know ahead of time that it’s strong that day thus you’ll need to stay further out from shore or you’ve gotta evaluate it when you get out and know based on the flow what adjustments you’ll have to make to your steering. If you’re sitting well off shore and it’s still sucking you in then the solution is to either a) don’t sit for very long or b) if you’re sitting because your coach is talking to the crew, make quiet calls to bow pair or stern pair or whoever your coach isn’t directly talking to and have them row you out a little. I usually try not to interrupt my coach but sometimes I’ll try to sneak in when he finishes a sentence and just say “hey, can we row it out?”, especially if we’re getting close to the point where we might get stuck or the fin could get damaged.
The simple and obvious solution to dealing with your bow or stern going back and forth into shore is also pretty straightforward – don’t put yourself in that position to begin with. If the current is strong don’t row that close to shore and if you know you’re going to be stopping definitely don’t row that close to shore. I fully get wanting/needing to get out of the way but you can do that while still giving yourself a buffer zone so as to avoid not getting stuck.
If you do find yourself in an unavoidable situation like that, you have to work quickly without freaking out and losing focus on the steps you need to take to get out of there (which is a common thing with novice coxswains). The boat is naturally gonna pivot around whichever side is taking strokes so if arms + body strokes or full pressure strokes or whatever is too much, try sculling it around by having your 2-seat take bow’s oar and bringing it nearly parallel to the hull while taking short choppy strokes.
Related: How to scull your bow around
Your stern is still gonna move towards shore but it shouldn’t be at nearly as aggressive of an angle as before, so you should have a little more room to then row it out. Again though, this can’t be something that everyone just takes their time with otherwise you will drift into shore and make things ten times harder for yourself.
Ultimately though the best solution is to not put yourself in that position to begin with. Sometimes it’s unavoidable if there’s a lot of traffic or you’ve had to stop or whatever but getting to that point where you’ve gotta execute some ninja-like maneuvers to get out is nearly always preventable if you’re paying attention to the conditions and where you’re positioning yourself on the river.
Also, don’t be afraid to say to your coach “The current’s pretty strong, is it OK to stop here rather than go all the way over so we don’t end up drifting into shore?”. If you’re gonna be sitting for a few seconds before the start of a piece it’s probably not a big deal but if you’re gonna do stationary drills or he wants to discuss something, let him know so that he knows and can be aware of that going forward since it’s not always easy to tell from the launch how the water is impacting your steering.