Category: Q&A

Novice Q&A Rowing Technique

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Hi Kayleigh! I have an issue. One thing that coxes and coaches mention quite a bit during pieces, either on the erg or the water, is breathing. I know a lot of people like that, however whenever breathing is mentioned I start thinking about it and my breathing pattern gets screwed up and I have trouble breathing for a few strokes, which in turn screws up my rowing. I don’t want to keep having this problem however I don’t want to say something and be *that* person, especially since I’m new to my team.

Keep it simple – inhale on the recovery, exhale on the drive.

Most of the time coaches and coxswains talk about breathing because it’s an easy thing for rowers to forget to do. Plus, if everyone is inhaling and exhaling at the same time it can help to establish a rhythm in the boat. And, on top of that (but less importantly), it sounds really cool. Not getting caught off guard by them saying something about it really comes down to just being focused on what you’re doing and training yourself to not be so easily distracted. How you go about doing that is up to you. I don’t think it’s an uncommon problem though … I think I’ve known at least 2-3 people at each place I’ve coached that have had the same or a similar problem. If you ask your coach they can probably give you some advice too – that is their job, after all. If you don’t ask, they can’t help you. As a novice you get a pass for not knowing certain things because you’re new so how/why would you know them. You’re only that person if your question is out-of-this-world stupid or the answer is really, really obvious, neither of which apply here.

Coxing Q&A Technique

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Hi Kayleigh. First of all I’d like to say how much I love love love your blog! It has been such a valuable resource, thank you for devoting so much time to it. My question is: I’ve been coxing for about 18 months now and I’m feeling comfortable with steering and basic calls. My coach has asked me to start judging each rower’s technique from what his blade is doing and I’m finding this really hard. Other than looking for timing issues and comparing length against other blades, I’m at a bit of a loss. Do you have any tips? Thanks!

Hi! Technique is the hardest thing to talk about when I haven’t got a visual of some kind right in front of me so apologies if this is kinda vague. The easiest and best way to point out how things should look vs. why something doesn’t look right is to just find a video online – almost any video (within reason) of people rowing will work – and email it to me. Then I can sit down, analyze it, and share what I see. I wish there were gifs like that one I posted in the Bend & Snap post but I haven’t been able to find anything. I got lucky with that one because I just happened to scroll past it on Tumblr while I was procrastinating on writing that post.

I’ll try to write a longer post on this soon but for now, other than what you’ve already said here are five things to watch for with the rower’s blades…

Pausing at any point during the stroke, particularly at the finish (usually leads to rush and check in the boat)

Rowing it in (the legs start before the blade is in the water, resulting in a stroke that’s half or 3/4 as long as it should be)

Excessive amounts of water being thrown up at the finish (this means they’re feathering before their blade is out of the water). It’ll probably look something like this (seriously).

Where the blades are in relation to the water on the recovery (this will tell you what their hands are doing)

Blades “bobbing” while they’re in the water (which means they’re not applying the force evenly and smoothly throughout the drive with the push of their feet and the pull with their hands)

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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I had been rowing for a club for a few years and am now coxing due to a chronic illness. Right now, in winter, that means that I am still erging all workouts but I just can’t go at a rate higher than a 24. Even with this, I am still the third fastest girl on my team. My coach is in her first year and pretty much came in to overhaul our program and make it really good in 4 years (She has told us that she much prefers to work with novice freshmen).

When I was first diagnosed, she got really pissed at me, which was fine I guess, but now she refuses to help me learn how to cox or to even acknowledge me. I have come to every day of non-mandatory winter practice, I work my ass off and I am simultaneously trying to teach myself to cox whereas the rest of our coxswains are in 8th grade and either don’t show up or don’t try. She has now started putting me in a workout group with all of our eighth graders (whom she refers to as the slow ones), even though I still hold a top split for our team, even if I have to slightly modify workouts to, you know, stay alive.

I now have the option to tryout for another club, but they are 1 1/2 hours away (nearest club) and are our rival club. I really want to get better and they would definitely give me more opportunities, but I feel like I have put in so much energy to this team (which I loved before this coach and my diagnoses) that I would feel like I was betraying my team. What do you suggest? Should I stay with my club, quit, or switch clubs? And if I switch clubs, how can I prepare for a coxswain tryout since I haven’t ever really had anyone care to teach me? Thanks.

“When I was first diagnosed, she got really pissed at me, which was fine I guess…” Uh, what world do you live in where it’s OK for an adult to get pissed at a teenager for a medical condition that’s completely out of their control? Does it maybe mess with their plans a little bit, yea, but that’s no excuse to actively project their annoyance at them, let alone disregard them completely.

Have you talked to your coach directly about this? In most other situations I’d say that if a coach did this it’s probably not intentional, they’re just trying to keep their focus on the “healthy” athletes while you do whatever you’ve gotta do as far as modified workouts, rehab, etc. goes but to completely ignore you, that’s questionable to me. I’d try talking to her privately and say that you understand that having to switch to coxing isn’t ideal but since that happened you feel like there’s been a lack of communication between the two of you and you wanted to have a conversation so that you could figure out where you stand on the team, how she’s thinking of using you once you get on the water, etc.

Hear what she has to say and then maybe discuss the situation with your parents. A 90 minute drive to and from practice every day is a lot of time to spend in the car. Take that three hours on top of a two hour practice and, assuming you have practice at 4pm, it’d be 7:30pm at the earliest that you’d get home every night. When you consider the amount of time you need to spend doing homework, eating, showering, and sleeping, driving that far for practice doesn’t seem worth it to me, no matter how good the opportunity might be. That’s your call though.

As far as learning how to cox, if you’ve been rowing for a few years already then it’s likely that you already know the basic drills and calls. If she doesn’t seem willing or able to help you with the other stuff that goes into coxing, go to the experienced coxswains and ask them for some help with the things you don’t know/understand yet. Coaching you is part of her job though and if she doesn’t make an effort to do that like she does with the other people on the team then I’d maybe consider if being a part of the team is the best use of your time (and money, since I’m assuming you/your parents are paying a couple hundred dollars in fees each season).

If you do decide to switch teams then presumably you wouldn’t need to try out, unless the definition of a tryout has changed in recent years. I consider a tryout to be where you show off your skills to the coaches before the season starts and they either say “yay you made the team” or “sorry kid, maybe next year”. It seems like something that’d be pretty hard to do with a novice coxswain but if I had to guess I’d say they’d probably just put you in a boat (don’t read anything into what boat they put you into to start with, it literally means nothing), see how you do during practice with steering, giving commands, etc., and then give you some feedback afterwards.

What determines the boat you end up with is how well you respond to the feedback and make an effort to improve on the areas they said you were a little weak in. It doesn’t hurt to let them know beforehand that you haven’t had much experience with coxing, although I would avoid throwing your coach under the bus and saying that she refused to teach you because that doesn’t make you look very good.

Coxing Q&A

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My friend who does choir tries to avoid dairy before big concerts. Do you know why that is and if this would apply to coxswains too? I use my abs a lot when I’m coxing but I still feel like my voice is not very strong.

I do, actually! If only all the useless random facts I know counted as something I could throw under the skills section of my resume…

The whole “don’t drink or eat dairy” thing before you sing is partially a myth. Singers tend to think that if they eat anything with dairy it’ll produce a lot of phlegm in their throats and make it harder for them to hit their notes. This isn’t actually how it works though unless you’re one of the few people that are allergic to milk proteins. What actually happens is the mucous that’s already in your airway gets thicker due to the high amounts of fat in the dairy you eat. The lower the fat content of the dairy products, the less of an issue this is since it won’t thicken the already-present mucous as much.

I suppose that could also apply to coxswains. Trying to talk or project your voice when you’ve go a ton of crap in your throat can be tough because you spend more time coughing to try and clear it which just leads to your voice getting all scratchy and hoarse. I’m always clearing my throat (not because I eat a lot of dairy though) so that sometimes happens to me. That or I end up with a really bad migraine which is just about the worst thing to happen to a coxswain short of completely losing their voice.

Some people just don’t naturally have strong voices, which is fine. To strengthen your voice, go on YouTube or Google “voice strengthening exercises” or something similar and try out some of the exercises that come up. Or, since you’ve got a friend in choir, ask her to teach you some of their vocal warmups. Obviously you won’t notice a difference overnight but if you do them consistently then you’ll probably start to feel like your voice is a little stronger after a couple weeks. Remember too that there’s a difference between having a deep voice and a strong voice. How deep a person’s voice is is something that you don’t really have much control over whereas how strong it is has to deal with the strength of your vocal muscles and how confident and/or authoritative you feel.

Related: Hi Kayleigh! Last week, I lost my voice after one of our fall head races. I was talking to my coaches and they said that your “coxing voice” shouldn’t come directly from the throat or something like that – it should come from deep breaths from your stomach or the bottom part of your throat. I am now officially confused and don’t know who else to ask! Help please? Thanks!

In addition to all that, try doing some core workouts a couple days a week. As I’ve said before (in the post linked above), the stronger your core the easier it’ll be for you to project your voice.

College Q&A Training & Nutrition

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This winter I got injured. I’ve tried different treatments but haven’t had success. I tried cortisone shots but that made my pain worse. From what I’ve been told it seems like my next step is surgery. Though it’s arthroscopic the recovery time is 4-6 weeks. I’m terrified of the surgery and upset over maybe missing my first college spring season. Do you have any words of wisdom to help me through this? Also if I competed in the fall would I be able to redshirt or would I have had to be out in the fall?

Regarding redshirting, here’s a copy and paste of what it says in the NCAA Rulebook. I’ve bolded the important parts to make it easier to understand. If you want to look it up yourself it’s Bylaw 14.2.4, “Hardship Waiver”, but it’d be in your best interest to go talk to your compliance officer about it since they know the rule book and logistics surrounding everything far better than I do.

“A student-athlete may be granted an additional year of competition by the conference or the Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement for reasons of “hardship.” Hardship is defined as an incapacity resulting from an injury or illness that has occurred under all of the following conditions:

(a) The incapacitating injury or illness occurs in one of the four seasons of intercollegiate competition at any two-year or four-year collegiate institutions or occurs after the first day of classes in the student-athlete’s senior year in high school;

(b) The injury or illness occurs prior to the first competition of the second half of the playing season that concludes with the NCAA championship in that sport (see Bylaw 14.2.4.3.4) and results in incapacity to compete for the remainder of that playing season;

(c) In team sports, the injury or illness occurs when the student-athlete has not participated in more than three contests or dates of competition (whichever is applicable to that sport) or 30 percent (whichever number is greater) of the institution’s scheduled or completed contests or dates of competition in his or her sport. Only scheduled or completed competition against outside participants during the playing season that concludes with the NCAA championship, or, if so designated, during the official NCAA championship playing season in that sport (e.g., spring baseball, fall soccer), shall be countable under this limitation in calculating both the number of contests or dates of competition in which the student-athlete has participated and the number of scheduled or completed contests or dates of competition during that season in the sport.

Dates of competition that are exempted (e.g., alumni contests, foreign team in the United States) from the maximum permissible number of contests or dates of competition shall count toward the number of contests or dates in which the student-athlete has participated and the number of scheduled or completed contests or dates of competition in the season, except for scrimmages and exhibition contests that are specifically identified as such in the sport’s Bylaw 17 playing and practice season regulations. Scrimmages and exhibition contests that are not exempted from the maximum permissible number of contests or dates of competition may be excluded from the calculation only if they are identified as such in the sport’s Bylaw 17 playing and practice season regulations.

(There’s a part “d” but it applies to individual sports, which rowing is not, so I didn’t include it.)

If you raced in the fall I don’t think that matters since part “b” says the injury has to happen before the first competition of the second half of the season that ends with the NCAA championships. Talk to your compliance person to be sure though. All that being said, you have to be able to provide proof (aka medical documentation from the athletic trainers and your doctors/surgeons) that the injury is season-ending. I’m not saying yours isn’t or couldn’t be considered that but an arthroscopic surgery with a recovery time of 4-6 weeks might make the rules committee question its severity.

Be realistic too, do you really want to stay in school any longer than necessary just to say you raced all four seasons? This is just my opinion obviously but there’s no way I’d shell out an extra semester or year’s worth of tuition just to row for another season. If I was a football or basketball player with serious NFL/NBA potential, I’d probably consider it (then again, I’d also probably be on scholarship which would make it an easier decision) but for rowing, I don’t think so.

If none of the therapies you’ve tried so far have worked and the doctors are saying the next step is surgery then you should probably have the surgery. Admittedly I’m a terrible person to ask about things like this because if I’m injured I’m just gonna do whatever I’ve gotta do to get back on the water. Being scared of having the surgery is a totally foreign concept to me because I tend to take a very pragmatic approach to these kinds of situations. I’d rather get knocked out for a few hours and be in some pain for a few days afterwards but know that the problem is fixed than be in a consistent amount of pain for weeks, months, or years on end because I’m afraid of the scalpel or whatever. Anyways, that’s just my point of view. If you look up any college roster you’ll probably see at least two or three rowers with “sat out their sophomore season due to medical hardship” or “redshirted their freshman year” in their bios. It’s not uncommon.

My advice? Schedule the surgery ASAP, get it done, and be extremely diligent with your rehab. You could conceivably be back before the end of the season if you had the surgery soon and while you might not be in the best boat, you could probably still vie for a spot in a boat. Something is better than nothing, right? Don’t rush anything though. If the doctors say you need to take the season off, do it.

Coxing Q&A Racing

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Hey! So during races, do you think it’s acceptable to yell to your own crew that “the other coxswain is swerving and looking nervous” or something like that? Is that abusive to the other lanes? And also to say for instance “lane 1 is gone, they are dying”. Are those decent calls? Thank you!

I’m definitely the kind of coxswain that gets way too much pleasure out of messing with other coxswains and crews but I do think you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere. There’s a difference between saying “5-seat’s not getting her blade in” and “their coxswain can’t steer” because saying something about their coxswain steering just seems like a cheap shot to me. Whether or not it is, I donno, but it’s probably just because I’m a coxswain that I think it’s not OK to say something like that. I wouldn’t say it’s abusive but in terms of good sportsmanship I think it’s questionable.

Related: What are some calls you make during a 2k when you know the other crews can hear you to get in their head and psych them out?

Plus, you’re the only one that’s going to care about whether or not she’s steering straight. If you say that during a race the rowers are probably just going to think “HA sucks for them” (if they think anything at all) but not really do anything different with their own rowing, whereas if you say “5-seat’s not getting her blade in” you can follow that up with “let’s take 5 for sharp catches to show ’em how it’s done”. When I’ve noticed other coxswains swerving a bit I just keep it to myself but commit extra hard to steering as pin-straight as possible for the next 10-15 strokes. Depending on how much the other coxswain’s steering is off it can be an easy way to grab a seat on them.

I do think it’s OK to say something about someone in another crew looking nervous because if you can see them looking out of the boat at you or you can hear the coxswain saying something about you guys coming up on them, trying to make a move to hold you off, etc. you’ve already started to break them. From there it’s up to you to capitalize on that. If you listen to this recording around the 1:30 mark you’ll hear the coxswain say they’re going to go off the other crew’s move. That can be huge for your crew if you call for them to take a move like that. Knowing that the other crew is already nervous that you’re breathing down their necks is just a nice psychological boost on top of all that for your rowers. Same goes for saying stuff about other crews fading.

All in all, I think whether or not they’re decent calls comes down to how you say them. If you’re saying “her steering sucks, their bow seat can’t row for shit, etc.”, that’s not OK. That’s just poor sportsmanship. Instead, phrase them in a way where you’re not sparing their feelings (because let’s be honest, where’s the fun in that) but you’re still getting the message across that you’ve found their weakness and now you’re going to exploit it.

Coxing Q&A Training & Nutrition

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Hi! I’m a high school women’s coxswain and I recently weighed myself for the first time in a while. I weigh 124 and I’m 5’3″. I know this is heavy for a women’s coxswain and I know that I didn’t weigh this much during the summer. I’ve decided that I want to lose about 7 pounds by monitoring what I eat more and doing a little more exercise. Do you know about how long that would take me? Also, if you could suggest some workouts I could do at home that are good for losing weight, it would really be appreciated. Thank you so much!

How long it takes depends on a lot of individual factors but if you loosely followed the “suggested” guideline of losing no more than 2lbs per week I’d say it’d take maybe a month, give or take a week. Workouts that get your heart rate up will be what you want to focus on so going for a 45-60 minute bike ride or run would be good. Just make sure that you’re making healthy choices with the foods you eat – working out isn’t going to make any difference if you’re still eating crappy food.

Also, don’t weigh yourself every day because you’re not going to notice a difference. The average person fluctuates +/- 2-5lbs every day so if you want to get an accurate idea of how much you’ve lost, try to only weigh yourself once every few days.

Ergs Q&A

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Hi! I am doing a 15 minute erg, free rate although, my coach says to keep the rate above 26 spm, but I was thinking of building up the rate towards the end and I was just wandering how you would recommend I pace myself. P.S. This erg will determine the crews for a national competition we have coming up.

If the minimum stroke rate is 26 I’d say you’d wanna keep your base rate at 26-27 for as long as you can. Since it’s seconds that are ticking down and not meters, you’re not going to be done any faster if you speed up your stroke rate so it’s best to keep it low to avoid flying and dying. If you wanted to build it up I would probably not do anything until you’re inside of 90 seconds to go and then go up maybe 1 beat or so every 30 seconds so that you finish around 30spm.

Coxing How To Q&A

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Hi! I’ve never been especially comfortable in docking and with spring rolling by I want to go back into the season with some more insight. What are the different types of docks and how would you approach them? Thanks!

It has taken me for.ev.er to get to this (sorry!), mainly because I had no idea how to answer it. I wasn’t immediately sure what you meant by “different types of docks” so I just posted pictures below of the three most common types of docks I’ve encountered and how I go into them. I used screenshots from Google Maps of Cornell’s docks, Marietta’s docks, and the docks at Occoquan (Sandy Run Regional Park) as examples so the instructions are somewhat specific to those ones but it really applies to just about any dock that’s set up similarly.

Related: Any tips on how to properly dock an 8+?

To be honest, pretty much every dock is exactly the same so as long as you know the traffic pattern you need to follow and use your common sense. I’d say docking as a skill is about 85% common sense and 15% knowing how to give proper instructions. By your 2nd year of coxing though you really should/need to be proficient at it. Problems only arise when coxswains overthink things and lose control of the boat because they don’t know what to do, which then opens up the door to the other eight people in the boat who all think they’re the one with the solution to start shouting out their opinions. The best thing you can do is just take your time and go slowly. 99.9999% of coaches would rather you creep into the dock at a snail’s pace and not hit anything than come in really fast and damage your $35k+ boat.

Collyer Boathouse, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)

*Note, this isn’t necessarily how the coxswains there dock. It’s just how I would do it based on observing them and my own experiences.

Step 1

Below the red dot you can be rowing by 4s, 6s, or all eight  – it doesn’t really matter. At the red dot you want to weigh enough and spin so that you’re pointed straight into the dock (which means you need to first know which dock you’re supposed to be landing on). Knowing where to stop ensures that you won’t have to row across and then spin again in order to be lined up. When you spin it you don’t want/need to use all the rowers either since you’re only turning about 45 degrees. If you use all eight rowers you will inevitably over-turn and then you’ll have to readjust and that’s just a massive waste of time. Unless it’s really windy out you should be able to use just stroke and bow to spin.

Step 2

Once you’ve spun you want to make sure that you’re pointed just off the side of the dock that you want to land on. You should always be able to see the entire dock that you’re trying to land on; if you can’t there’s a pretty good chance that you’re lined up directly with it instead of off to the side. In this case, if I’m trying to land on the inside of Dock 3 I want my starboard oars to look like they’re overlapping with the dock. When I line up to go in, if I’m looking at it from the red dot, I should appear to be just to the right of center between Dock 2 and Dock 3. (Looking at the picture below, pretend that the “collision” boat is trying to dock on the left side of Dock 2 (the middle dock).)

Step 3

From the red dot to the green dot I would row by pairs. The coxswains there will probably disagree with me but we saw a lot of collisions with the dock (or they missed it completely) because they were rowing by fours and coming in too fast. Unless it’s like, hurricane-ing outside, slower is always best when you’re trying to dock. (Use your common sense with your interpretation of “slower”.)

When going in by pairs, as I’ve said many times in the past, do not use anyone in bow four. You can row in with stern four if you want – that’s totally fine – but as you get within two lengths or so you need to drop down to pairs. You always dock using stern pair only regardless of what kind of dock it is. I literally don’t understand why that has to be explained as many times as it does but I’ll probably punch something if I have to explain it again to someone. Logically it does not make sense to do it any other way. You need someone to catch the dock when you’re rowing in, bow pair is the first one to get there, THUS they are the ones that have to reach a hand out and grab it. Also, if you’re coming in too fast, they’ve gotta be the ones to grab the dock and try to slow you down. Please tell me how they’re supposed to do any of that if you have them rowing. (Don’t though because whatever explanation you try to come up with is wrong.)

Step 4

When you’re within about 1/2 a length at the very least (yes, this requires you to know what that looks like) you should weigh enough and just float in to the dock. At this point you should say “oars up” so the crew knows to lean away and lift up their blades so they don’t ram into the dock.

Carl Broughton Boathouse, Marietta High School (Marietta, OH)

Step 1

Rowing upstream you want to stop at the first red dot, check to make sure no traffic is coming down the river (also the 2k course), and row across. When crossing I aim for a general area rather than a specific point since I know I’ve gotta stop and straighten out anyways so I usually shoot for somewhere about two lengths below the dock. If there’s traffic waiting to get on the dock I’ll either wait to cross if there’s more than one boat ahead of me or I’ll just aim below the boat in front of me.

Step 2

Once you’ve reached red dot #2 you want to weigh enough and get pointed (again using as few people as possible) upstream towards the dock. Same as with the first scenario, you want your oars lined up with the dock and the boat itself lined up just to the right of it.

Step 3

From here all you’ve gotta do is row by pairs up to the dock and weigh enough once you’re within half a length or so.

Sandy Run Regional Park (Occoquan, VA)

*I’m not positive if I labeled the right docks in terms of launching and docking but let’s pretend this is right…

Step 1

Docks like this that are set at an odd angle in a narrow stretch of water can be tricky only because of the traffic that can accumulate. Other than that, they’re actually the simplest ones to get into because you don’t need to stop rowing unless you have to because of traffic.

This one requires you to lightly steer as you come around the curve and then once you hit the general area of the red dot you can do one of two things. Unless you’ve been told otherwise, in tight spaces like this where there’s not a ton of room rowing by fours is your best option. When I’ve been at Occoquan or similar areas we’ve never been allowed to row by more than that anyways.

Step 2

If you’re rowing by fours (in a starboard rigged boat), in the vicinity of the launching dock and the red dot I would have 6-seat drop out and 5 + 7 increase their pressure while you steer around to starboard. It usually takes minimal effort to get lined up with the dock so you should be able to drop out 5-seat and coast in with your stern pair. The other thing you can do if you want/need to stop is have everyone weigh enough and then have your starboards check it down. This will also get you roughly pointed towards the dock, at which point you can make a quick adjustment with bow pair if you need to before rowing it in with stern pair.

General tips

Below are the general tips that I originally posted in the post I linked to at the beginning. If you do these things, take your time, maintain your composure, and give clear, concise instructions, you’ll be fine.

  • Never come into the dock with anymore than stern pair rowing.
  • NEVER come into the dock with bow pair rowing. I don’t know WHY some coaches teach this because it seems so completely illogical to me. If you think about what part of the boat is hitting the dock first, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the rowers who are hitting the dock last be the ones rowing?
  • Don’t try and point towards the dock from the middle of the river. The current will pull you downstream and by the time you actually get to the dock, you’ll be at a 90 degree angle. Set yourself up so that even when you’re two or three lengths away, you’re only two or three feet off the dock from the end of the starboard side’s oars.
  • If you end up taking too sharp of an angle to the point when your bow is on the dock but you are five feet off it, have your stroke back row.
  • Account for the speed of the current and the wind as you make your approach.
  • If you’re a novice, freaking out about docking is only going to make the actual event that much more shiteous (shitty + hideous). Yes, there is probably a 99% chance that you’re not going to get it right on your first try – most of us don’t. Your coaches know this and thus, they should be on the dock to catch you and prevent any avoidable damage to the boat. If they’re not there to help you, they’re more at fault than you are because you’re still learning. However, that does not exempt you from using your common sense. Be smart about docking and it will come much quicker and easier to you.
  • Tell the rowers to be quiet so they can hear what you’re saying. Due to the trickiness of it, the rowers need to be listening at all times in order to hear when to lift their blades, when to lean away, etc.

Q&A Rowing Technique

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Hey! So last year I didn’t make a varsity boat though my ergs scores are very good, my technique was very bad. We just had our first day of practice of the season today, and I have another season and summer training under my belt now though, so I was hoping things would go better. But I seem to be having a lot of technique problems again. When your erg scores are bad, you just pull harder (though I’m worried I can’t repeat my erg scores from last season), but fixing technique isn’t concrete so it’s a lot harder to learn for me since I don’t really have a good sense of hand eye coordination and the smaller details of the stroke just seem so much for difficult for me than others. I mean, a lot the brand new freshmen yesterday already seemed better than me!!

Fixing technique issues can be really tricky because once you’ve developed a bad habit it takes twice as long (or longer) to break it. I was having a similar conversation with someone at practice today and what I told them was that it requires a frustrating level of concentration on your part because you’ve got to think about what each part of the stroke is supposed to look like and then consciously think about what your body currently looks/feels like in comparison. (If you’ve got some video of yourself rowing you can compare it to videos like the ones linked below too.) It helps if you can have a coach or experienced rower/coxswain sit with you for a bit before or after practice while you erg to give you some feedback on what you need to work on but at the end of the day it all comes back to you being willing to self-critique and force yourself to make the necessary changes.

Related: Technique: Good and bad technique on the erg

If you know you’ve got specific issues that are really apparent when you’re on the water, talk to your coach/coxswain about that and have them watch you/your blade for a few minutes so you can get some direct feedback from them after practice on what you need to work on. Coxswains can usually tell a lot about your body just based on what your blade is doing so ask her what she’s seeing while you do your warmup or are rowing steady state. Work with her too and let her know that it’d be really helpful for you if she could work in a couple calls that relate to what you’re doing, even if it’s a just a simple reminder like “hands up at the catch”, “sit tall”, etc.

Comparing yourself to the freshmen isn’t going to do anything for you. Who cares if they pick it up quickly or not? Focus on yourself. You’ll be a lot more satisfied at the end of the season when you realize you focused your energy on the right things (like training) instead of on something dumb like worrying about other people being better than you.