Category: Racing

Race plans for practice pieces

Coxing How To Racing Rowing

Race plans for practice pieces

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Last week I was going over some audio with one of our coxswain’s from one of the race pieces she’d done during practice the previous week. On Fridays the two varsity eights go head-to-head, sort of, in a 7k race that begins at the 2k starting line in the basin and finishes at the HOCR finish line. One of the things I asked her was if she had a race plan going into the piece or if she just kind of “went with it” and coxed them without one. She said she just went with it, which I kind of figured based on her audio. I suggested putting something together for this week’s piece so that it would have a more organized and focused feel to it, rather than the focus of the entire 7,000 meters being on catching/beating the other crew that went out first.

Related: Hi, I am a exchange student and I joined our crew team. Since I am pretty small I am a coxswain. I am now moved up into our first boat but I never know what to say during a race. The problem is I am not a native speaker and so I have even more problems to make good/clear calls. Do you have any tips for Nationals (YES we qualified) and Stotesbury?

Having a plan for races is important, obviously, but so is having a plan for the pieces you do during practice. They don’t have to be meticulously planned out or even be that similar to the plan you use during actual races – just as long as you’ve got a couple specific things to focus on throughout the piece other than just beating the other crew. What’s down below is what I detailed to our coxswain as to how I’d do it if I was doing one of those pieces.

Related: HOCR: Landmarks along the course

What I’ve laid out is obviously going to be different for you since it’s unlikely you’re doing 7k pieces on the Charles but the goal is to get you to look at the pieces you are doing and thinking about how you could break them up into smaller, more manageable chunks. The way I broke up this piece, as you can see, is based entirely on the bridges. Remember, landmarks are your friend.

7kmap

Starting line → Mass Ave. (1000m)

One of the other things we talked about was how to start this piece since they’re rowing right into it with just a few strokes to build into their rate (vs. taking a “high” 20 and a “settle” 10 to come down to their base pace). If you’re doing something like that, I’d treat it similar to a head race and do something like 3-5 to build to the line, 20 at rate, and then 5 or so to lengthen out and settle in. For the next ~750m your primary focus should be on establishing a rhythm.

Mass Ave. → BU (1500m)

This section should focus on making general technical calls to the entire boat based on what you’re seeing/feeling and working to incorporate some of the technical drills/changes that you’ve been working on over the last week. You should also be making calls that reference the rhythm you established in the first section.

Powerhouse Stretch (2000m)

Coming out of final 1000m of the 2k course, where you’ve just been talking to your crew as a whole, I would start to break down the boat and talk to the individuals (or if you don’t want to go person by person you can break it down to pairs). Here I’d spend 15-20 seconds per person (adjust the time to be a little longer if you go by pairs) and point out what I’m seeing with their stroke (good and/or bad) and remind them of any technical changes that they’d been working to incorporate over the last week. If your coach spoke directly to them when you were on the water about something, try to repeat what they were saying to reinforce the message.

If you aren’t seeing anything that needs correcting, let them know that their stroke looks strong/solid/consistent, great job backing up [whoever is sitting in front of them], I like that aggressive finish, etc. Positive reinforcement like that works wonders on a rower, especially when you’re doing a long piece. Normally I wouldn’t recommend doing something like this (talking to the individual rowers) during a “race” piece but because this one is so long and you’ve got the time/space available, I think it’d be beneficial. Plus, for those of you that have trouble coming up with things to say, this would help solve that problem.

Weeks → Anderson (500m)

This chunk right here is actually made up of two smaller sections; pre-Weeks and post-Weeks. Pre-Weeks is the first 100m of this section and is just for the coxswain because they’ve got to make sure they’re putting themselves in a good position to come through the bridge. And yes, I think out of the 7,000 or however many meters you’re rowing, the crew can spare a measly 100m to let you do your own thing. One of the things I was telling another of our coxswains was that you shouldn’t/can’t be afraid to take a few strokes off when necessary if you need to direct your attention to something else. If you’ve demonstrated that you’re in this just as much as the rowers are and have been coxing them accordingly up to this point, they’re not gonna care.

The second part of this, the post-Weeks section, is where I would call for the crew to take five strokes to sit up, recommit out of the turn, and mentally prepare themselves to start racing the other boat. (You’ll notice that up to this point I haven’t said anything about the other crew that’s out there with you – nothing at all about racing, telling your boat where they are, etc. Trust me, I did this for a reason.) During the second half of this part, as you’re coming into the bridge, is where I’d be telling my crew where they are on the other boat, how far ahead/back they are, and what your goals are for the rest of the piece in terms of where you want to be in relation to the other boat as you cross the line.

Anderson → Finish line (2000m)

This last 2000m is all about racing and where your tone should noticeably change from “practice” to “race” mode. This is also where you can start actively taking power bursts in the forms of 10s and/or 20s. Before this I’d recommend sticking to 3s and 5s since the primary focus from the start to Weeks is largely technical. Remember though, just because you can take them here doesn’t mean you need or have to. It’s a judgement call on your end so be smart and don’t dilute their effectiveness by overusing them.

Related: Race skills: All about Power 10s

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t say anything about racing until you get to the final 1/3ish of the race. Here’s what I think … I don’t think you should be trying to race from the very beginning (unless your coach explicitly says “treat this like a real race”) because you’re either going to be playing catch-up or keep-away the entire time and not actually using the time to focus on the adjustments you should be implementing from practice. I also think that if the rowers go into it thinking they have to race for 7,000m then they’re just gonna hulk on the oar the entire time and not think as much about their technique. The first 2/3ish should have a largely internal focus, meaning you and the rowers are concerned only with what’s happening inside your boat. The final part of the piece is where you should be maintaining the good rowing from earlier and incorporating the changes from earlier as you shift into pure race mode.

It’s important to know that during the earlier part of the piece, your tone shouldn’t be casual like it is during a regular practice when you’re calling warmups and drills. You want it to be firm enough that the rowers know this is a hard piece but not so aggressive that you forget the purpose of the beginning of your race plan. On a scale of 1 to 10 you should be at about a 6.5-7.

The final important thing to keep in mind are the goals you give your crew for the end of the piece – make sure they’re realistic! Don’t say “I want to catch them by the end” if they’re five lengths away and you’ve only got 1500m left. It’s likely not going to happen, your crew will probably see the whole piece as a failure because you didn’t catch them, and then they’ll get pissed at you. Just avoid all of that by being honest about where you are and where you wanna be. If you can reasonably catch the other crew in front of you and cross the line even with or ahead of them (or continue to hold them off/walk away if you went out first at the start) then tell the crew that’s what you’re shooting for.

If they’re far enough ahead that you don’t think you can catch them but you know you can definitely close the gap, tell them the goal is to close the gap from five lengths of open water to two lengths. Don’t go by seats because that’s too small for them to picture and you to visualize when the gap is that wide. It’s not a realistic unit of measurement unless you’re actually within a length of them and will be overlapping with them at the finish. You can also go by time (which you should be able to see because you started the timer on your cox box at the start … right?) and say “we’re X minutes into it, let’s try to break Y” or “they started 15 seconds ahead of us, let’s get that gap down to six…”.

Hopefully all that makes sense and you can easily apply it to the pieces you’re doing while preparing for head race season.

Image via // @rowingcelebration
Interview with 2004 M8+ Gold Medalist Coxswain Pete Cipollone

College Coxing High School Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Interview with 2004 M8+ Gold Medalist Coxswain Pete Cipollone

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Back in July I got an email from Jeremiah Brown, one of Canada’s silver medalists in the men’s eight from London asking if I’d be interested in reading and reviewing the book he’s been working on, “The Four Year Olympian“. It chronicles his journey from being a complete novice to making the Olympic podium in less than four years after picking up the sport. Yea … less than four years. Can you imagine doing that?

As I was reading through his book there were a couple sections that stuck out to me where he mentioned how when times were tense during training, he and the rowers would dish out a lot of abuse to their coxswain, Brian Price. Swearing at him, blaming him for things beyond his control, etc. – you guys all know what I mean because at some point or another in the last two years you’ve emailed me or messaged me on Tumblr trying to figure out how to handle those exact same situations.

Related: Video of the Week: Lessons on leadership from Canadian national team coxswain, Brian Price

This got me thinking … if elite level coxswains are dealing with this, maybe it would help you guys out to hear from them and read about how they handled being put in that position. So, I reached out to Pete to get his insight and see what advice he had to offer.

Here’s part of the email I sent to give you a bit more insight into why I wanted to do this:

“Hey! So I’m wondering if I could possibly persuade you to help me with a project I’m working on. Jeremiah Brown, from Canada’s ’12 M8+, wrote a book on how he made the Olympic 8+ and asked me to check it out before it got sent over to the publishers. While reading it, I had the idea to contact some national team coxswains that have been through the rigors of Olympic training and get their thoughts on how they handled taking the abuse of their rowers when tensions were high.

Jerry mentioned how they treated Brian like a “whipping boy” when things weren’t going so great, which actually surprised me because I didn’t think that that would be something you’d have to deal with at that level. I think I just assumed that by the time you reach that point in your career you’re mature enough or have developed good enough coping mechanisms to not have to take your frustrations out on other people.

It was encouraging though at the same time because I get a lot of similar questions from younger or newer coxswains that read my blog and want to know how to handle the rowers who feel like the only way to blow off steam is to blame them for every little thing that goes wrong. I think it would be helpful/reassuring for them to hear that it’s not something that’s exclusive to just high school rowing – coxswains at every level experience it and have to figure out how to work through it while maintaining positive working relationships with their teammates.”

Since there’s a tendency to hear the same regurgitated or long-winded replies that lack any substance (am I right or am I right…), I tried to put together questions that I haven’t seen be asked before so that the answers would be fresh and hopefully relatable, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or midway through your collegiate career. I hope you find this helpful and enjoy reading through it!

When tensions in the crew were at their highest, how did the guys treat you? Was there ever a point where you were the target of their frustration? (Side question, when during the Olympic cycle was everyone on-edge the most? Was it during the selection period, in the lead-up to the Olympics…?)

“The most tense time was always mid-spring of the Olympic year. By that point everyone had invested a whole lot of themselves and it was becoming clear who would make it, who would not, and who was right on the cut line. The athletes on the line had it worst, since, perhaps oddly, their fate was mostly out of their hands. All they could do was try to stay cool, pull their asses off, and hope things broke their way. The top athletes were focused on getting faster and staying healthy. The “cuts” were looking forward to pair trials and going to the shore with their girlfriends after it was all over.

As for me, I was always treated as an integral part of the team. The only time I caught any heat from the guys was if I made a mistake, or if some random new guy just blew a gasket in a moment of frustration. If I made a mistake, I owned it, apologized and resolved never to do it again.  The guys held me to the same standards that they held themselves. Obviously, they were not happy with any miscue, but I think they respected the fact that I gave it everything and did not make excuses when I came up short. In the other case, new guys who could not take the heat had short half-lives. Teti definitely selected for composure under pressure. The more someone got wound up, the more Mike would push his buttons. There was a dark humor to it, and those guys either figured out they were getting played, or they blew up.”

If there was ever a point where the rowers started directing their frustration towards you, was that something that you shut down right away or something you just brushed aside since you knew it was the frustration of training talking and not so much the rowers personal feelings coming out?

It was really situational. If I got called out for substandard performance, then I took responsibility for it. If it was someone blowing off steam, I usually made fun of them and reminded them to lighten up. That works well as long as you have their respect and your response does not hit too close to home. People have a chuckle and everyone gets back to business.

There were certain times, usually when tensions were already high, where I would be the go-between for the athletes and the coaches, delivering messages no one wanted to hear. In those times, no one was really happy with me. It was the least fun part of the process, but my role was to help us win, not to be buddies or blow sunshine.

For example, one day Mike wanted to do race pieces for the third day in a row. I knew the guys were already tapped out. Mike asked me if the crew was all jacked up for timed pieces and I told him, no, they were exhausted but would throw everything into the workout and then go home to crash.  At first he was miffed, but he countered with, “If you guys break X time in the first piece, the workout is over.” We beat the time, and I think he said, “Let’s just do one more short piece flat out.”  Then the workout was really over. We ended up doing less than half of the planned distance, but it worked out.

Being truthful and direct in those interactions is not only the right thing to do. Over time I learned it was also a competitive advantage, even if it meant telling a good friend something awful, like “No, I don’t think you have a path from here to make the team,” or “Athlete X is injured but won’t tell you.”  They remember and appreciate that you leveled with them.

When a rower or the crew as a whole was having an off day what was your strategy, if you had one, for getting things back on track and getting the crew re-focused without getting an onslaught of criticism, emotions, etc. thrown at you? Did Teti ever get involved or were you expected to handle it on your own?

My teammates and I occasionally got what Bryan Volpenhein called “the shanks.” Sometimes the only cure was time. We just had to ride it out, and we relied on one another to help us recover. If someone had a really strong track record of winning, Teti would cut them some slack where they had time to rehab themselves. My role there was to help them get back on form as quickly and with as little drama as possible…unless I was the one with the shanks, which did happen once or twice.

If a whole crew was getting slaughtered, I would try to break things down into the smallest possible unit of achievable progress and then drive them toward that. It might be things like “let’s be first off line on the next piece,” or “no matter where we are, let’s neutralize the other crew’s move and then sell it to move on them.” Even if we still lost the piece, even a little win can spur some confidence. A couple athletes in the crew get fired up and that becomes contagious. It takes persistence to find something that lights a spark, but that strategy worked better than any of the others I tried.

Teti never missed a trick, and if a crew was having a bad day, he would give us some time to get it together. A big, common goal was to figure it out before Mike decided you needed his help. If things got that far, you were entering a world of pain.

How did you avoid having “the shanks” interfere with your coxing, particularly on days when everyone was having an off day and tensions were high all around? If there was an instance where it did interfere, did you handle it the same way as before (taking responsibility when someone called you out) or a different way?

As the cox, when you have the shanks, you have to do your best to minimize the impact on the crew, and get yourself back on track as quickly as possible. My version of the shanks was magically forgetting how to go straight. In Teti’s system, going straight was the coxswain’s job #1. It is difficult and you have to practice it. When the shanks happened I would go to as much “silent time” as the crew could handle, and focus my attention on getting my mechanics back. If we were doing pieces, I had drills for myself, namely, taking my hands completely off the ropes and putting them on the outsides of the gunwales. My aim was to get myself back together as quickly as I could, which meant not panicking.

If the whole crew is having a bad day, the cox is expected to lead the crew out of it, or at at a minimum, get them focused on some relevant aspect of rowing. If you can do that, you can mitigate the damage, and then you just take your lumps. It is not personal. It is what happens when you underperform. Accept that you had a crap outing, lick your wounds and put it behind you, then come back for the next row ready to go.

What’s your strategy/advice to keep tense situations from escalating to the point where the rowers go off on the easiest target (usually their coxswain) and/or for preventing it from happening in the first place? Does it really all go back to simple mutual respect for your teammates?

Respect and trust are such huge parts of coxing. If you don’t have those things with your crew, you are a sitting duck. But they must be earned over time. Working hard on coxing fundamentals and being the person who looks out for the well-being of your athletes goes a long way. By looking out, I mean helping them get faster. If the coach has identified flaws in their rowing, work with the athletes to fix them as quickly and calmly as possible. Calm athletes can make changes. Tense people cannot.

I don’t think it is possible to completely avoid getting hammered by the athletes every now and again. What is possible is to build that respect and trust so the rowers know they have their own work to do before coming after someone else, namely the cox.

What advice do you have for junior/collegiate coxswains who may be dealing with rowers who feel like the only way to blow off steam is to blame them for every little thing that goes wrong, keeping in mind that younger coxswains tend to have a harder time maintaining a poker face and not giving in to how the rowers’ treatment makes them feel? At what point do you feel it’s gone past being something they could/should handle on their own and instead needs to be brought to the coach’s attention?

Be honest with yourself, and take athletes’ comments seriously, but not to heart. The former is a behavior change any aspiring champion must embrace; the latter is hard, since emotions form a huge part of our initial reactions and they generally run hot.

When they challenge your coxing, come right back and ask: “What can I do better? How should I do it? Coach me and I will work my ass off to improve.”  If you take criticism seriously, you train your athletes to give only serious criticism. If you are willing to be coached – which intrinsically means accepting that your coxing is not perfect – and can show that you can make improvements, too, you will get massive respect points. From first principles, racing is about going as fast as you possibly can. Winning is just a byproduct of that. Starting here, getting coached (even harshly) and making changes are simply parts of the process.

Going back to my first answer, there is a difference between the national team and youth/college programs. In our case, the coach ruthlessly weeded out temperaments that would be liabilities at Worlds and the Olympics. Most other programs do not have that luxury, since they need the butts in seats or the massive erg score that occasionally comes with an outsized ego. If something is bothering you with one of the athletes, then my suggestion is to address it one-on-one first, as above – find out what the beef is and see if you can make an improvement. If that does not work, ask a respected crewmate to help you work it out with the person. If it escalates to the coach, you have a major problem. One of you is likely gone, and unfortunately the cox usually loses out.  Our job is to glue the team together and lead them. If we cannot do that, someone else will at least get a chance at it.

If there are any rowers and coaches reading this, let me point out that rowers improve faster than coxswains, especially early on. Think of how often second-year rowers make the varsity. I bet you know of several. Now think of some second-year coxswains who made the varsity. Probably not too many. The right answer to this is to coach your coxswains as rigorously as you coach your athletes. Don’t just rely on someone figuring it out on their own.  It’s not complicated and pays dividends as the season progresses toward championship racing.

That last paragraph is really important and definitely something that I hope coaches take into consideration. It also reiterates the point I’ve been making for the last two years that you have to coach your coxswains and give them the tools to succeed just as you do with the rowers.

I hope you guys enjoyed that and as I said earlier, are able to taking something away from it that you can incorporate into how you work with your crews. If you’ve got any questions or a follow-up on something that was discussed, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email.

Pete, thanks again so much for your support and your help with this!

Image via // World Rowing
Coxswain Recordings, pt. 24

College Coxing High School Racing Recordings

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 24

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Resilient Rowing 2013 Head of the Charles Youth 8+ Crash

This is just a short clip of one of the men’s youth eights from 2013. I’m mainly sharing it because none of the other videos showed a crash and the whole point of HOCR is to see which youth eight is going to have the best crash. (That is the point of the regatta … right?)

At 2:04 when he says “I can’t get through, coxswain, yield…” I guar. an. tee you that no one past his like, 7-seat heard that. If you want another crew to yield you need to and yell loud and project. your. voice. Don’t assume that just because you’re talking into a microphone that anyone outside your boat can here you. I honestly think that if he’d just stayed directly behind Duxbury and then had the starboards hit it hard they would have been fine and not collided but youth eights = inexperience so there’s not much you can do. The “fuck you Duxbury” comment though from one of the rowers was pretty unnecessary and definitely would have/should have earned a penalty if an official had heard it.

Middlebury College 2013 Head of the Charles Men’s Collegiate 8+

The start of this piece was pretty sloppy in terms of telling them when to build, where they’re at on the build, etc. I also feel like I would have been confused as a rower because they did two builds … one way before the start and right right before the start. Their stroke rate was a little wonky too. I think the build was supposed to be to a 33 but they were at a 31 and then did a “build” under the bridge to get to a 33 … but then a few strokes later she said “32, good”. It was just all over the place and not as “on point” as it should have been.

As far as when to build, you’ve kinda gotta base your pressure off of the crews in front of you. You don’t want to get closer than a length of open but you don’t want to fall back more than that either (because that’s just more ground you’ll have to make up on the course) so you’ve really got to be paying attention to that while you’re in the chute. You want to be at full pressure by the time you hit the upstream corner of the BU dock since the starting line is the middle of the dock so you should start your build as your bowball passes the last group of trees on the shoreline before the boathouse – to give a reference point in the video it’d be around the 23-24 second mark. Another reference point is the buoy with the yellow flag on it off of the starboard side at 0:24.

Through the first two and a half minutes I’m already tuning out because all I’m hearing is the coxswain embracing her inner cheerleader and making a lot of “you can do it!”, “let’s go!”, “show them what you’ve got!”, “here we go!”, etc. calls. There’s also a lot of “build in two” calls to get the rate back up to a 33 because it keeps falling down to a 31. 

The turn at Weeks could have been sharper – she had room – but she started it about three strokes too late. If you wait until you’re under the bridge to tell your starboards to power it up, you messed up. You’re going to end up taking the turn really wide and then having to snake back over to get a good line through Anderson, which ultimately adds unnecessary seconds and meters to your course.

When she says “don’t let them walk” at 9:45 … I mean, it’s going to happen. It is happening. Make the other crew work for it and focus on pressing together, maintaining your rhythm, holding a solid line, etc. Stop talking so much about the other boat though and focus on your own.

When she calls under 500m to go (from the Belmont dock to the finish line) at 15:20. It’s more like a little over 800m. Also, that is not what half a length of open looks like. A length and a half maybe but not half a length.

Ultimately his one wasn’t the best coxed and wasn’t the best steered. Of all the races you go to in the fall, HOCR is not the one you want to be a cheerleader at (unless you’re on land, in which case … cheer away). Have a plan, know your plan, and try not to make the same calls over and over throughout the race. Don’t spend so much time focusing on other crews either. Your head has to be on a swivel, obviously, but at the same time you’ve also gotta keep your head (and focus) in your own boat.

University of Wisconsin 2013 Head of the Charles Women’s Champ 8+

The audio is slightly out of sync with the strokes so don’t let that throw you off as you’re watching.

Right off the bat, I like how she calls the pressure up and perfectly times “half, three-quarter, full pressure, you’re on” with when their bow crosses the starting line. Something that caught my eye too that I wish she would have made a call for what 6-seat coming out early every stroke. Make sure you don’t get so focused on executing your race plan that you forget to check the blades and make little reminder calls when necessary. Obviously this is harder to do in a four but in an eight there’s no excuse.

At 2:16 she says “we’re right on the buoy line, starboard side…”, which is good for informational purposes but it can also be a strategic motivational call too. This is something I talked about with all of our coxswains when we went through their evaluations last week. Use your steering as quick little bursts of motivation for the rowers. If you’ve got a good line, your riding the buoy line, etc. tell them. Let them know that you’re nailing the course right now so let’s capitalize on that and focus on XYZ. If they know you’re taking care of your responsibilities as far as steering a good course goes, that’s one less thing they have to worry about and more focus they can give to just rowing their asses off. If I’ve learned anything from my own coxing experience and coaching coxswains for the last two and a half years, few things matter more to rowers than their coxswain’s ability to steer a good course. If you’re doing that, don’t be afraid to say so and use that to keep your rowers engaged and on their game.

If you’ve got a SpeedCoach, a call like “we’ve got a 1:58, we’re gonna push it to a 1:55…” is a great way to work the splits into your calls. Make sure you know what splits you’re going for throughout the race too. Holding a consistent split probably isn’t realistic for a lot of crew so know what parts of the course will be a little higher (i.e. the turns) and which parts you can really get after it (i.e. the straight shots through the Powerhouse and after Anderson).

Throughout the rest of this section before Magazine Beach she does an awesome job of telling her crew where they are on the other crew (“we’re walking”, “two lengths of open behind and closing”, etc.) and how they’re doing (“right on rate”, etc.). Keep an eye on her course throughout the whole race too – she nails it.

If you notice them starting to row it in a bit, just make a quick call like she did around 6:57ish (“blades in on this one, GO“) to sharpen things back up. Don’t waste 5-7 strokes by calling for 5 to get the blades in or something like that when you can sharpen it up on this one, particularly if you’re an experienced crew. If you’re a high school crew then go ahead and take a couple strokes to get that focus and sharpness back but college crews … you guys can get that on one stroke. I also liked her call at 7:12ish – “hold your fucking blades in now” or something like that. A coxswain after my own heart.

At 7:31 she tells them that whoever is in front of them is “moving away” and she follows up with “…and we’re responding right now“. That is how you get your crew going. Telling them another crew is walking away from them isn’t a bad thing – you should do that – but THIS is how you follow it up so you can get competitive with that other boat again. She immediately calls for a five for something (I couldn’t hear what) and then finishes it off with “1:49, that’s what I’m talking about!”. Perfect perfect perfect.

Her line coming into Weeks is gooorrrgeousss. I also like how she preps her starboard side (“alright starboards, get ready…”) and then counts it down (“here we go … that’s 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … on this one“) before bringing it around. She started her turn about three strokes too early, which is why she said she needed “even” for a couple but it didn’t hurt them at all – the overall execution and calls to the starboard side throughout the turn were pretty much flawless.

College coxswains, this is the A-standard. Hands down one of the best college HOCR races I’ve listened to.

Other calls I liked:

“Bigger fucking puddles…”

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

Coxing Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: “The Turn”

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I’ll probably do an actual post on this a little later in the season but just putting it out there now that it might be worthwhile to talk with your coaches now or soon-ish about the regattas you’ll be attending this fall and which, if any, courses have hairpin turns like this, that way you can hopefully practice doing them before you’ve actually gotta do it during a race.

Racing Rowing

Question of the Day

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Why do coaches put out mixed crews for races? Don’t they want us to win? Your blog is AMAZING!! You have helped so much, thanks! 🙂

To be honest, I never really understood mixed lineups during races either but all in all I think it’s a pretty harmless thing to do. Mixed lineups during practice, especially at the beginning of the season, is great but I probably wouldn’t race those lineups at any point past the first race or two. I really don’t think it has anything at all to do with winning or losing though. If your coach races mixed lineups and you’re curious why, just ask him/her what their rationale is behind that. Once they explain it it might make more sense to you and seem less random/dumb.

In my experience it’s largely been a chance for the less experienced rowers to be in a boat that’s (hopefully) more stable which in turn lets them focus a bit more on their stroke and technique without having to worry about all the other distractions that would otherwise be present in a boat made up of entirely less experienced people. For the varsity rowers who might be/probably are pissed that they’re rowing that lineup, all I can say is … chill. You were in that position once too and there were probably varsity rowers that at the time felt the same way about you. Part of being able to call yourself a varsity athlete is knowing that there’s some responsibility on you to help the less-experienced rowers get up to speed. Just go with it and use that time to set a good example by having a good attitude and focusing on rowing well as an individual. The boat’s probably not going to feel perfect but again, you should look at that as an opportunity to figure out what adjustments you can make to your rowing so that when the boat feels similarly once you’re rowing in your regular lineups you’ll already know what changes to make before your coach or coxswain says something.

Coxswain recordings, pt. 23

Coxing High School Racing Recordings

Coxswain recordings, pt. 23

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Clips from practice on the Potomac, Head of Occoquan, and Head of the Charles

I like what he says at 2:22 – “Our bow deck is on 71’s stern deck, let’s go. 70’s gone, time to make the next move. You don’t pass one boat then stop, you keep pressing…”. That’s a great call to make after you pass a crew, particularly if you’re close to the next crew in front of you. Another call that I really like (from Pete Cipollone’s recording) that would work well in this context too is “do not sit, do not quit”.

2:48, “bowball on the Charles, nothin’ better, let’s go baby, enjoy it…” This is a motivational call. This will get your crew fired up and ready to shift into that next gear. Not every motivational call is “yea guys you can do it woooo”, sometimes it’s as simple as pointing out that you’re passing crews at Head of the Charles because that is cool and that should motivate you.

The reason I wanted to share this recording isn’t necessarily because of the coxing though, it’s because of how the video itself is structured. If you’re reaching out to college coaches you should be including your audio in your intro email and this is a good way to format it. I’d include some short clips from practice of you calling part of your warmup, a drill, some steady state, etc., as well as a clip from a race, whether it’s a full spring race or a clip from a head race. Ultimately though it doesn’t need to be more than 10-12 minutes total of audio.

PNRA 2013 Head of the Charles Senior Women’s Masters 8+

This is a pretty good example of how to cox masters crews. If I didn’t know this was a senior masters women’s 8+ I probably would have assumed it was a youth or club eight.

I like this “power train” thing they do at 3:45 where the coxswain calls a ten for each pair. How she draws out her numbers and says “thaaaat’s four … thaaaat’s five …”, etc. is kind of annoying and not really the best use of her tone (I feel like it translates to sloppy/soft catches) but I’ve found masters crews tend to be less inclined to care about stuff like that. Ten strokes for each pair seems too long though so I’d probably cut it back to 3-5 per pair max.

At 10:27 when she’s telling Style Driven to yield it sounds like they’re not yielding so her telling her bowman to tell them to move is a good call on her part. Make sure you talk to your bow beforehand so they know you might ask them to do that and let them know that all they have to do is yell over at them “[Team name], yield!!”. Saying “yield or you’ll get a penalty” like this coxswain did can also be pretty effective since it’s like a 30 or 60 second penalty for not yielding to the faster crew. That’s a lot of words to get out though in the middle of the race and a lot of coxswains don’t do it effectively (they kind of just shout into the wind and fumble over their words) so it is something you should practice so you can establish beforehand what you want to say if the situation warrants it.

At 11:39 when she tells them she’s going to make a tight turn she does the smart thing by telling her starboards to be prepared to lift their handles up to counterbalance the boat (since it will naturally tip the side she’s steering to, which is port). I definitely recommend doing this so that the boat stays stable throughout the turns.

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

Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Assault on Lake Casitas

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Steve Gladstone really isn’t kidding when he says they start slow and build towards the finish. Around 4:00 in the video it looks like Belgium has a maybe a seat of open water on the entire field but you can see from that point on where the Americans slowly start walking through the field. With 250m to go, the rest is history.

Related: Books on rowing, pt. 2

The end is actually pretty interesting when the two announcers discuss how they challenged the national team coach’s chosen double and beat them for the chance to represent the USA in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. You gotta admit, that’s pretty damn impressive.

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 22

College Coxing Racing Recordings

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 22

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George Washington University 2014 IRA Men’s Varsity 8+ C-Final

If you wanna watch the race footage with the audio over it you can check that out here. If you just wanna listen to the race, the Soundcloud link above is probably better since you’ve got the announcer’s voice competing with the coxswain in the video.

At 3:28 when he says “get ready to take our move…”, that’s the kind of aggression you need when you’re in the thick of it and have to do something to separate yourself from the pack. A few strokes later he says “We’re movin’, half a length up OSU, half a length up FIT…”, which is not only a good example of how to call your position on other crews but it also demonstrates exactly what you want to do after you call for a move – let them know if they’re walking and if so, by how much.

I like how he goes down the boat at 4:18 and calls out certain individuals then calls out the seniors. That’s a great way to get just a little more out of the rowers when you already know they’re giving you all they’ve got. It’s that sense-of-personal-responsibility thing. 

Other calls I liked:

“Five to open the angles…”

“Move away from FIT, fucking put ’em in their place…”

Temple University 2014 Dad Vail Women’s Varsity 4+ Semi-final

The audio’s a little choppy on this one but otherwise this is a solid recording from Temple’s coxswain. She emailed this recording to me so below is part of what I said in my reply.

“This recording is great – my favorite ones to listen to are the ones where I don’t have to pause it every five seconds to make a note of something. You do a really fantastic job of being right in the moment and communicating to your crew what they need to know about what’s happening inside the boat as well as outside the boat. Far too often a lot of coxswains will get too focused on just spitting out the race plan and end up not making calls for anything else. I really liked your buildup into your 20 when you a couple of the girls if they were ready to go – that’s a great way to keep the boat engaged in what you’re doing and keep them focused. I love the 10 that your bowman calls – that is a really creative and SMART strategic move.

One suggestion – maybe don’t count as much at the start throughout the high strokes and the settle. It can get monotonous after awhile so don’t be afraid to change it up and replace the numbers with catch or finish-related calls. You called it really well though – tone, intonation, intensity were all perfect. Don’t change any of that.”

Other calls I liked:

“Break ’em through the bridge…”

“Here we go, we got each other’s backs…”

Drexel University 2014 Knecht Cup Women’s Freshman 8+ Grand Final

There’s not much I would change here except for all the counting. I talked about this a bit in the power ten post from last week. Over the course of 2000m it’s probably unnecessary to be calling more than five or six power bursts. It’s important to remember too that just because you’re calling a 5, 10, 15, or 20 doesn’t mean that you have to count out every. single. stroke. Calls like jump, swing, attack, legs, sit up, breathe, together, send, long, stride, press, power, etc. are just as effective when you intersperse them between or in place of 1, 2, 3, etc.

Related: All about Power 10s

I’ve talked about this with regards to tone in the past but make sure that you’re making an effort to match it with the calls the you’re making. If you want calls like that one to relax at 3:10 to be effective, maybe try not to sound possessed as you say it.

At 5:30 she says “It’s gonna be intense, it’s gonna be a fight, get ready…”, which sounds like something that would have/probably was said at the start of a Muhammad Ali – George Foreman bout. Good call coming into the last 500m.

Other calls I liked:

“2, be an animal, 3, be an animal…”

“Bow four, I need your speed…”

“This will be a dogfight, get dirty, get proud, now walk…”

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