Category: Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 7, 2013

At one of the races a coxswain hit the finish buoy (just the oars though). Apparently he didn’t warn the boat or say anything after and didn’t even mention it to anyone back on land. As a coxswain what do you say when this happens to you? I mean I’m sure you’re supposed to say something but do you just apologize and move on?

You should always tell your crew if you’re about to hit something, if you bumped a buoy, or are going to be over the buoys with the oars. When they’re rowing they’re in a zone and you hitting something will throw them off, especially if they’re hitting whatever it is with their oars. Pretending like it didn’t happen is just ignorant, negligent, and annoying. If you hit one of the bigger buoys head on or with a rigger, you should mention it to your coach too (if they didn’t see it) just because you never know what’s going to damage a boat or the oars and it’s better they find out straight from you than have to ask twenty people what happened. It’s irresponsible to not say anything, both on and off the water.

When I’m close to something I’ll just tell my crew whatever it is, where it is, and to let me worry about it. I usually say “passing a log close here on the port side” or “starboard blades are gonna be over the buoy line here, no worries, I got this…” just to let them know what’s going on and that I’ve got it under control.

If you hit something, yea, you should apologize but unless it caused damage to the boat, effected your standing in the race, injured someone in your or another crew, etc. you should really just let it go. If further action needs to take place then the coach will deal with it but the rowers should accept the apology and move on. I can’t say I blame them though if they’re a little iffy about your steering skills when you go back out with them, especially if you neglect to tell them in the first place when you’re getting close to something and/or might hit whatever it is.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 7, 2013

My friends don’t really understand coxing and think I just sit there and do nothing, or it’s a ‘wimps job’ (this girl’s not my friend) and I was just wondering if you have an eloquent way to describe the importance/difficulty of coxing and how it’s not actually an easy job?

To preface this, I’m going to tell you something that one of my coaches told me … at some point, you just have to stop defending your role on the team, forget the people who question you, and go out and do what you do.

My friend (who coxed for the guys) and I were having a heated debate with some of the guys in her boat (like, seriously??) about how coxswains actually have a role on the team and we were both really irritated because it was the same thing. We don’t do anything, we just sit there, only un-athletic people are coxswains, etc. Let’s ignore the fact that I’d played sports for at least 10ish years before I started crew and the same with my friend. Granted, our first mistake was even trying to reason with them but our second and possibly bigger mistake, as my coach later pointed out, was thinking we had to defend ourselves at all.

If you really want to spar with people and get into this conversation, first ask them why they think what they think. What led them to come to that conclusion? Do they have some kind of experience with coxing and that’s how they felt or have they never been near a boathouse before? Get their side first so you can see what you’re working with. Then, go through all the responsibilities you have … just rattle them off. Some of the ones I always say include:

Safety

You’re in charge of eight other people. Lives are actually at stake, including those of people not in your boat, if you’re not being safe on the water. You have to know traffic patterns, watch out for kayakers, be able to gauge the wind speed and how that’s going to effect your steering, etc. amongst many other things.

Equipment

In your care every day, you have responsibility for … a $40k boat (assuming it’s fairly new) + 8 oars (8 x 800 = $6400) + 8 riggers (8 x 400 = $3200) + 1 cox box ($500) + maybe a Speed Coach ($200) = $50k in equipment. What other sport can say that?

Practice

Once you’re out on the water it’s your job to manage practice and keep everyone focused and on task. You’ve gotta run them through warmups, execute drills, and communicate effectively so that they can make the technical changes necessary to help you get faster. You’ve gotta have a solid understanding of the stroke in order to do this, which means having spent time off the water reviewing video and educating yourself so you can bring that knowledge into the boat and make the appropriate calls when someone needs to make a change.

Multi-tasking

Have you ever stopped to think about all the things you do at once when you’re on the water? You’re steering, calling warmups, drills, or pieces, talking to the rowers, constantly looking around to ensure you’re not going to hit anyone or anything, listening to your coach, watching your cox box, etc. If they say “oh, that’s easy”, tell them to stand up and hop backwards on one foot, eyes closed, while patting their head, rubbing their stomach, and reciting all the Presidents, last to first, and the states they were born in. Oh, and don’t hit anything when you do it.

Mental game

Rowing isn’t a game but coxing is. It’s a game that tests your wit, strength, toughness, ability to process things, etc. This is the hardest for me to explain because only those who have experienced it can really understand what it’s like or how to do it. You’ve got to be able to see things, process them, and then spit out whatever the corresponding call is all in less than a second or two. It’s not easy. If they say that’s easy, tell them to go stand by a busy intersection and name the first eight cars they see (make, model, and color), how fast they were going, and whether or not the driver was talking on their cell phone. Oh, and don’t forget to tell them they’ve got a 20 second time limit.

Athleticism

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an un-athletic coxswain, especially when looking at coxswains who are guys. Most, if not all, of the coxswains I know lift, run, erg, and work out with their rowers, sometimes when they don’t even have to. One of the reasons why I started doing the circuits and stuff with my rowers was because I realized how much I was using my core when I coxed, especially during races. The stronger your core the easier it is to project your voice and communicate with the people in the back of the boat. Granted, sometimes there are things coxswains can’t do (for me, it’s running, for other people it might be because of other injuries they’ve suffered), but it’s certainly not an indication of being a “wimp” or whatever other word you want to use. Please, call me a wimp and then let me cox you for a 2k. I guarantee you’ll be the one crying at the end of it, not me.

The reason why I prefaced this by saying at some point you’ve got to stop defending yourself is because even after going through that whole monologue, there are still going to be people who don’t get it. Whether or not they actually don’t understand or they’re just being assholes because they enjoy seeing you get pissed (I’ve dealt with both), it doesn’t matter. No one questions a rower’s role on the team, which blows my mind because … I mean, they just sit there and move back and forth, right? How hard is that?

My coach drilled this into me and it’s one thing I’ve never forgotten – you know how important you are, the coaches (hopefully) know how important you are, and if you’re lucky, your boat knows how important you are. At least, mine did. Our coaches constantly praised us (we had to earn it obviously…) and told us how they wouldn’t be able to do what they do or how our team wouldn’t be nearly as successful if we didn’t have such high-quality coxswains leading the boats. You’ve got to take that positivity and reassurance that your contribution means something and think of it every time someone says otherwise.

Coxing High School Q&A Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 7, 2013

So there is one girl on our team who is tinier than the rest of the team and she doesn’t pull as hard. She is pretty committed and went to all of our winter practices and meetings but her scores are a lot lower than other members. I have heard a few of the other rowers saying, “Why doesn’t she just quit?” And I’m the coxswain so it is my job to keep morale up. I just don’t know what to do in this situation. I tried talking to the other girls but nothing has changed.

Ah, been there. I watched a similar situation go down my sophomore year. We had a girl join our team who was enthusiastic, tried hard, was well liked by everyone, etc. but she had trouble keeping up with the other girls on the ergs because she was pretty small. Her technique was good and I think that helped make up for some of the strength deficits but most people only ever looked at her erg times, which weren’t good.

I was sitting with my friend who was the senior coxswain after practice one day and we overheard some of the varsity girls say the same thing – “Why doesn’t she just quit?” and my friend stepped in and said “Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have a teammate who tries but might not be as strong as you or a teammate who goes around talking about other people behind their back?”.

That ended up causing a huge argument which our coach ended up dealing with by basically telling the girls that they can either be supportive of their teammate who shows up (on time, everyday), gives 100% whenever she’s asked, is excited to be here, and does fine on the water or they can quit, because we don’t want or need rowers (let alone varsity rowers) who are willing to take whatever opportunity they find to talk down about another rower. If they don’t think she’s rowing like they think she should be, why aren’t they helping her? Why aren’t they giving her advice, sitting on the erg with her, etc.?

I would pose those questions to your teammates. I’d rather have a smaller rower who I know I can throw in the bow of nearly any boat than have a rower who thinks it’s OK to talk like that about a teammate.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 3, 2013

I’m a novice and I keep hearing that the head varsity coach at my club is an ego tripping jerk who doesn’t let a lot of stuff slide which stinks because I’m injured and stuff and I don’t think I’ll be totally better by next season when I go to varsity and OMG how do I cope with a scary coach?

Forget everything you’ve heard until you’ve experienced it for yourself. Go talk to him as soon as possible and let him know about your injury, the time table for when you hope to be back to 100%, and what you can expect (training wise) when you return. Also ask what would happen if you weren’t at 100% by the time you moved up to varsity, that way you know what to expect and aren’t blindsided by anything next season.

If he brushes you off or something, have your parents talk to him. In most cases, when parents get involved, coaches will be less rude and/or dismissive towards them than they will to the kids. Just have your parents approach it from the “concerned parent, not sure if my son/daughter told you but they’re injured, etc.” angle instead of the “my son/daughter said they told you this and you said that” angle. That’ll just cause a lot of unnecessary drama and put you in an awkward situation.

College Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 3, 2013

How did you balance crew, classwork, and a social life while you were in college?

I didn’t at all. My college experience could be equated to Murphy’s Law – everything that could go wrong went wrong. Looking back I should have advocated for myself a lot more than I did when I talked to my coaches, I should have gone to my professors sooner when I realized I was falling behind, and I should have avoided my advisers entirely since they ended up steering me in the wrong direction more often than not. The way things panned out with rowing and college in general is without question the biggest regret I have.

College itself wasn’t a shock to my system or anything so there really wasn’t an adjustment period there but as soon as classes started I got smacked in the face with crew from every angle. Practice twice a day, weights in the morning twice a week after a row (7-8:30am before classes), not to mention having a teammate as a roommate (alarm clock going off every five minutes for an hour starting at 4:30am … I wanted to kill her) was a lot to deal with on top of the usual college stuff.

I started taking classes over the summer and already had an incredible group of friends before the year even started. I went from seeing them every day to never seeing them. I was way too exhausted to go out on the weekends so I missed a lot of opportunities to hang out and stuff. I justified missing out by saying that rowing in college was what I wanted to do and I knew there were going to be sacrifices and if this was one of them, fine. All work and no play is not healthy.

Classes were a whole separate issue entirely. I was excited about my major and most of my classes but it’s hard to maintain that excitement when you’re late to your morning class every day because you get held over by 20, 30, 40 minutes at practice (and then have to wait for the shuttle back to campus) and are so exhausted at the end of the day that you can’t manage any brain waves when it’s time to actually do your work. I’d come back from afternoon/evening practice around 6-7pm, maybe grab something to eat (justified again by not having enough time, I didn’t feel that hungry anyways, etc.), take a quick break to wind down from the day (usually in the form of a shower, which was the only time during the day when I felt no pressure to do anything), and then start my homework. That’d go from 8pm-2am usually before I’d set my alarm and go to bed. If I got more than 3 hours of sleep a night I was ecstatic. I was constantly running on empty.

I’ve always been a good student but my grades were awful and having never experienced that before, I was constantly kicking my own ass and telling myself to get it together. I was nervous to talk to my professors because I figured they would look at me as an entitled athlete expecting special treatment so I didn’t go to them for help (until it was all but too late) and instead committed myself to figuring out how to fix things on my own. Needless to say, that didn’t work.

Midway through the semester, I hated crew. Like, absolutely hated it. I didn’t feel like I was getting any opportunities to do anything useful when I was at practice and I (and some of the other coxswains) always felt like the coaches were pretty “meh” towards everyone but their “favorite” coxswain. Whenever the subject of crew, the team, etc. would get brought up by friends, family, professors, etc. I could feel the look of disgust on my face. If I never saw another oar, boat, or cox box ever again it would have been too soon. It went from being something that I loved doing more than anything to a job that I despised waking up for. I was stressed beyond belief, I was constantly getting sick (I ended missing nine straight days of classes at one point because I was so run down … the doctors I saw were horrified and almost made me check into the hospital for treatment), I had no energy, and the energy that I did have was spent convincing myself that this was what I wanted. I wanted this!

When I had conversations with my coaches or athletic advisers, I got nowhere. My athletic advisers, instead of finding ways to help me, only offered the suggestion of “just pick an easier major”, which I ignored because that’s literally the most lazy, bullshit piece of advice ever. My coaches guilt tripped me because I had committed myself to the team and I had to fulfill that, blah blah blah. I sat in their offices ready to punch the walls at a moment’s notice because it was like … do you think I don’t know that I made a commitment? Why do you think I’m running myself into the ground right now? I’m doing it because of this commitment!

Eventually it came to the point where I knew I had to walk away. My grades were the number one reason but my health (physical and mental) was another. I had never felt before what I felt my freshman year. I was in a perpetual state of fatigue, hunger, anger, stress, anxiety, depression, etc. that no one understood. The people I did talk to about what was going on knew maybe 1% of everything – the rest of it I kept to myself. People aren’t joking when they say doing that eats away at you. I could feel myself becoming less and less of the person I was before and that only added to everything I was feeling.

Walking away from crew was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I know it doesn’t seem like something that a normal person would agonize over but for me it was. I knew that quitting (something I had never done before) would put an end to my dreams of competing at the elite level. I was back home when I got a call from the assistant coach who said that she could tell something had been going on. No shit, really? Do you think maybe you should have said something beforehand instead of rubbing my “commitment” in my face? I told her I needed some time to figure out what I wanted but I didn’t think I was going to be on the team next season. It wasn’t until I took a step back and realized how miserable I was making myself that I realized the choice was already made. I called my coach back and said I was done.

I hate that I’m that person who is the anomaly and couldn’t make things work out. There are thousands of collegiate rowers out there that do and on some level, I’m envious of that. I’ve realized in the years since that I should have stuck up for myself and I should have told my coaches at the very beginning that something wasn’t right. Whether they could or would have helped me is something I’ll never know but I should have made the effort to at least see what they had to say. Asking for help as a coxswain is something that’s really easy for me but asking for help in “real life” is really hard and it bit me in the ass here.

The simplest piece of advice I have is that the moment you start to feel the ground under you getting a little shaky, figure out why and then go talk to the appropriate people until you’ve got things stabilized. Even if you don’t think you need someone else’s help, down the line you will. If your professors know ahead of time that you’re juggling a lot and struggled a bit with a certain topic, problem set, etc., they can at least throw out a “Hey, how have you been doing since we last talked?” at the beginning or end of class one day. I never had any professors like this but maybe you do. They can’t help you if they don’t know there’s a problem though, regardless of how minor it is.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you to “just switch to an easier major”. In the short term that might solve the problem but in the long run you probably aren’t going to be happy. Also, don’t let your coaches guilt trip you, make school seem like an interference to crew, or make you feel like your concerns are invalid. Don’t let anyone else invalidate your concerns either – family, friends, significant others, teammates, etc. How you balance crew, classes, and having a life is different for each individual too. There’s an experimentation period of trial and error where you find out what works for you before you settle into a routine, but the key is making sure your routine is dictated by you and not someone or something else.

Novice Q&A Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 2, 2013

Question (especially for a novice boat): What defines a winning/champion boat and one that comes up short?

Attitude. There are a lot of things that define champions but attitude is the most important.

Related: Words.

You can still be a championship-caliber team if you’ve lost a race. It’s entirely based on how you react immediately after the race ends, how much time you spend reflecting on everything up to that point (training, practicing, and the race itself), and the commitment you make to yourself and your teammates to go back and worker harder. If you give in to defeat, you’ve already lost all your future races. People aren’t kidding when they say champions don’t quit, they never give up, etc. If you lose a race, especially one you knew you could have won or should have one, you’re allowed to be pissed off with yourself but wallowing in self-pity or taking your anger out on someone else (especially the other competitors or your teammates) is unacceptable. Be angry, but use that anger to motivate you the next time you get out on the water. It’s like the saying goes, let your past make you better, not bitter. Don’t let one bad race affect your attitude or the amount of effort you put into training. If anything, your attitude and the amount of effort you put forth should be better and higher than they were before.

Attitude also defines a winning boat. Championships mean nothing if your attitude doesn’t reflect humility and respect. Look at all the gold medalists from the Olympics last year. One of the common threads amongst all of them was that they didn’t just thank their families, coaches, and teammates … they thanked their competitors too. You have to respect your competition enough to bring it 100% every time you go out to race. Following the rules, stuff like that, that’s obvious but going out and racing to your fullest potential while pushing and being pushed by the competition is one of the biggest signs of respect in sports, at least in my opinion.

Related: Words.

You also have to be humble. If you win a big race, like Eastern Sprints in a close race (like say, Brown and Harvard), cheering and whooping it up is always expected but there is a line when it comes to celebrating. Cross it and the quality of your win starts being overshadowed by the way you’re acting. I guarantee you in that race, Brown left the water with a hell of a lot more respect for Harvard than they had going in. If those two crews hadn’t been rowing off each other during the race, it wouldn’t have ended like it did. They were each other’s motivation, they were pushing each other, they were fueling each other and you can’t not have respect for a crew that does that for you.

Champions know that they won’t be champions for long unless they show up for practice every day. They know that they aren’t training to beat their competitors on their best day, they’re training to beat them on their worst. They know that taking one stroke off is a sign of disrespect and that quitting shouldn’t even be in their vocabulary. The team leaders (coxswains, captains, upperclassmen, coaches, etc.) also know that know that attitude reflects leadership.

Coxing Rowing Teammates & Coaches Training & Nutrition

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Your experiences

By readyallrow March 1, 2013

Previously: Introduction || Eating disorders defined + explained || Signs + symptoms || Coxswains || Lightweights

When I decided to do the posts highlighting NEDA this week I knew that this post had to be one of the ones I did. Throughout the week I’ve collected a couple of messages and emails from rowers and coxswains who have experienced, are recovered, or are currently dealing with an eating disorder. One of the biggest things that I hope you guys get out of this post is to realize that you’re not alone if you’re experiencing these issues. You aren’t the only one. Other people have faced and overcome them and if they can, so can you.

These emails have made me sad, happy, angry, encouraged, frustrated, uncomfortable, and a whole range of other emotions. It’s saddening to read about this but at the same time I feel a sense of pride for everyone who says they’re recovered, are in recovery, or want to recover.

Thanks to everyone that reached out and was willing to share their experiences.

“I think it’s amazing that you’re doing this so here’s my story. In the summer before 6th grade (I’m in 9th grade now) I stopped eating. I went from my healthy 130lbs to under 90lbs at my worst. I wore baggy clothes and no one even noticed. When I told my best friend finally she just said, “oh yeah sometimes I won’t eat for like 6 hours if I’ve just had a big meal.” She didn’t get it and didn’t help. Then in 8th grade I discovered rowing. The sport pushed me to regain my health and now I’m recovered completely. Rowing saved me from everything and I couldn’t be more appreciative. But I know my story is a lot better than a lot of people’s and I owe it all to the sport that gave me it all. Thanks again so much for doing this.”

“As a 5’7” rower who isn’t lightweight I felt a lot of pressure to drop weight from my coaches and teammates. “You either need to start eating less or throwing up more.” That’s what my COACH told me to do. Needless to say I have never been more disgusted in my entire life. The saddest part is that at the time, I listened. My coach finally got the message when I passed out just before weighing in. Luckily I’m now being coached under some more level headed people and am happily (and healthily) 10lbs over.”

“I used to row and I was always the smallest on my team (who didn’t race lightweight). My coach used to always tell me to eat heaps to try to gain weight to keep up with the other girls because most of them were 40lbs heavier than me. Now I’ve stopped but I keep over eating and I know I am and it disgusts me and I want to make myself throw up to get rid of the food but that disgusts me too because I should be stronger than that but I’m not. Sorry for telling you all this, I just needed to say it out loud to somebody.”

“I’ve been reading all your posts on eating disorders awareness and I want to tell you about my dick of a coach. Last season we only had one coxswain for 18 rowers so he made this girl who was 60kg (about 130lb I think) cox cause she was the lightest novice and for the first five months he was fine with it. Then about 3 weeks before the biggest regatta of the season for the novices he told her that she was too heavy as another girl (who liked to stir a lot) had been saying that it was the coxswain’s fault that they had been losing because she was overweight (it wasn’t, the girls were just lazy and didn’t have a good attitude). The coach then told the coxswain that she had to lose 10kg (about 20lb) in 3 weeks so she was pretty much starving herself and running in track pants and jerseys every day in an effort to lose weight which didn’t work because she was of a very athletic build due to being a swimmer before and would have struggled to lose weight.

There is also another girl who had to cox for similar reasons the season before that and got similar treatment from the coach but he stopped her from coxing about 2 months before the big regattas because she was “too heavy”. She transferred to rowing where she struggled due to being 6 months behind the other novices in terms of experience. About 3 months into the next season her parents pulled her out of rowing due to the fact that she had developed anorexia and they didn’t think that rowing would be healthy for her. Luckily she is alright now.”

“I rowed for three years before coxing and when I started I was about 116lbs, no muscle, and still growing. By the end of the spring season of my freshman year of high school I was 126lbs and an inch taller. I grew a few more inches, gained some weight, and by my senior year was about 140lbs. When an injury worsened and made me unable to row, I asked to cox. To make weight for my freshman year of college I started eating a meal a day, sometimes a meal every other day. I averaged out eating 400 calories a day. I lost a lot of weight but I think the stress on my body actually prevented me from losing some of the weight I could’ve lost.

It’s sad – part of me only regrets that diet because I could’ve lost more weight if I hadn’t stressed out, not because I acknowledge that it was unhealthy for me. It’s twisted. Even today, I struggle to put enough food on my plate at school and it’s a major lose lose situation: I hate myself if I put enough food on my plate because I think I’m going to gain weight and I hate myself if I don’t put enough because I’m falling back into old habits. Long story short: eating disorders suck. People who encourage unhealthy weight loss habits don’t know what rabbit hole they’re pushing someone into. And once you develop one, I’m pretty sure it will always be with you in one capacity or another.”

“I am a lightweight rower, and, at 5’6”, quite happily have a maintenance weight of around 125lbs. I also am recovering from bulimia. My disordered eating started a few years before rowing, and it was very on and off. It started as throwing up my meals, and varied from that, to starving, to over-exercising, and everything in between. When I got into rowing, and learned about weight categories, I saw no reason to try and recover when simply throwing up was a ‘convenient’ (and soon my main) way of maintaining my weight. Despite believing this, my weight has since ranged from 87lbs to 139lbs!

I started to recover when I was weighed (90.4 lbs) after fainting during training. I was dehydrated, starving, and probably smelled of ketones. My coach took me into his office and had a long talk, because a BMI of <15 is not on, no matter who you are. He knew a bit about EDs, and he saw how mine was destroying my rowing, not to mention my health and body. He offered to help, and I accepted. I won’t pretend it was easy, but I‘m so glad I did!

He started to carefully (but not obsessively) monitor my food, making sure I kept at least a protein shake or some small meal, and moved on from there. He’s not qualified, so he also made me get help from professionals, although personally I hated them. It was important I went, but the real help came from my coach and my team. I know the coach/ therapist situation is NOT the norm, but it works for us!

I‘m happy to say that today I am (mostly) recovered. Yes, the thoughts are there, and probably always will be. Do I slip up sometimes still? Yes. But my coach and I always keep an eye on my weight. If it changes madly, we discuss options. Thanks to my collapsing/ catastrophe and being very open with the crew (who were amazingly supportive, and I love then for that), a male openweight also came forward with disordered eating, and now he’s doing really well with recovery. We are proudly an ED-free crew, and we all know each other well enough that we could come and chat if there was ever a problem, and not just ED related.

EDs have no business ruining anyone’s life, so if you’re ever in doubt, talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Catch your club barman, coxswain, partner, librarian, anyone you can trust. You won’t regret it. I promise.”

“I‘m a rower struggling with an ED right now and I thought I‘d share my story. It seems kind of silly to me, to already have this sort of issue, since I‘ve only completed one season. But the problem with rowing is that it consumes your life. You can’t get away from it so when trouble arises, you’re stuck with it.

For me the concept of being a “lightweight” really threw me off. When I joined the team I kept seeing all these varsity girls at my highly competitive club do weigh ins, we had this tradition of really fast lightweights going to D1 schools and all of a sudden I got this idea in my head that that is the only way I‘m going to get into a school. Currently, I am 124 lbs and 5’9″. The average 5’9″ girl on my team is at least 140.

I‘ve always been very tall and very skinny. When I joined my team, I gained 5 pounds, and that was fairly new for me, considering I‘ve never really put on weight quickly.That added weight and the new stimuli, the new idea of lightweight and weight classes and weight efficiency, it all scared me, I suppose. I look in the mirror and I hate what I see. I want my muscles more defined, I want my hard work to show, but I still want to be the twiggy little girl I was. But I want to be strong.

The wonderful part of rowing is that even with all the pressure of weight restrictions and good times for heavies or moving up a boat, even with all of that, you still see the beauty of the human body. I joined rowing because I loved how our US Women’s 8+ moved, how they were able to make it look so graceful but at the same time, holy crap, their muscles. The sport has made me love what my body can do, with the weight or without it. And so I want to keep fighting, I want to eat healthy, get good times, feel GOOD about myself, just because I‘m a goddamn rower and I put in so much effort that I deserve as much from myself.

This is really long winded, but my point is that it’s scary, the idea that if you play with the heavies, you need to get times like them, but if you ‘re a lightweight, you need to keep it down. It’s hard to find a good weight and a good time and everything, it torments me all the time, it’s terrifying, it hurts, half the time I hate my body, half the time I hate myself for hating my body.”

“It’s been almost a year since I first started my battle with my eating disorder. It’s tough to be an athlete and have one. I used to run on the treadmill to prepare for soccer season. When I got down to 107 lbs my mom stopped me. She wouldn’t let me leave the house because it was likely I would be going to the gym and on an empty stomach.

My eating disorder has brought me to my knees, especially today. Today was the start of soccer tryouts. Because I purge constantly my lungs tend to act up. In the middle of a drill it happened today. I lack just about every vitamin and mineral that I need. My back does a weird twitch from it. It’s hard to control my movements with spasms running about. Not only has my eating disorder affected my breathing, but it’s also affected my muscles. It’s true when people say you lose muscle from starving. I was never strong to begin with, but it was hard for me to run today; harder than it should have been. My bones have also lost some density and find it difficult to support myself and kick a ball far.

Playing a game on an empty stomach because you just can’t bring yourself to eat is dangerous. Feeling light-headed and faint isn’t something I wanted. This isn’t how I imagined my life to be, which is why I am where I am. I’m not sure if I want recovery. All I know is that I can’t keep this up forever. Thankfully, I’ve gotten a healthy amount of calories today. Maybe this year I’ll recover. I hope so.”

“I saw your post on EDs and lightweights, and I have a little bit of input. I had developed an ED prior to becoming a rower. I swam for several years, and putting a muscular girl into a swim suit does a number on your self esteem. So when I switched to rowing, and I learned about lightweights, I thought about trying to starve myself that much more just to get to 130. That would have killed me. I‘m 5″8, and I should be about 160 lbs, but I‘m 150 because I still have a habit of restricting. So I thought about trying to hit the light weight mark, but after my first practice with restrictions, I nearly passed out. I knew I couldn’t do it. And staying healthy was more important to me than being a lightweight.

In a weird way, rowing actually helped my ED. I couldn’t restrict my intake like I had done while I was swimming. Rowing took more out of me than I had anticipated, and I ended up dropping weight without even trying. So I learned that I was allowed to eat, even if I wasn’t one of the lightest girls on the team.”

“I was in pain for a long time. As is the case in anyone with an eating disorder, or anyone with a mental disorder in general. I was quite underweight – never to the point that I needed to go to the hospital, but I was definitely hurting my body. I didn’t get my period anymore, and I regularly had trouble with my blood glucose levels. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t concentrate, and I couldn’t remember much. How I managed to get a 3.6 GPA by the time I graduated, bearing in my I had been struggling with this for 2/3 of my college years, is still a miracle to me. But I did it, and after an extremely stressful last semester where my ED was the worst of all time, I started feeling peaceful. I don’t know where it came from, but I had ended another chapter of my life, I had achieved my academic goals and had another adventure in front of me. The adventure being moving to another country to go to graduate school. I associated my college town with my disorder, and I associated my hometown with stress and family problems, so I wanted to get away. But I didn’t want to taint my experience abroad with this stupid disorder, I was done with it, I didn’t want it in my life any longer.

There wasn’t a moment where it all clicked. Sometimes you hear that from people, ED survivors, that they went out and did something and suddenly it clicked. Or they went to therapy and had an epiphany. It didn’t work like that for me. I didn’t go to therapy. I didn’t go to the doctor. I wasn’t even diagnosed. As far as I know, no one knew except for the people I told. But I wanted to get better. I started eating more regularly and I felt better. My body image was still very distorted and it was a struggle not to look in the mirror and not to stand on the scale, but at a certain point it became normal not to. It sounds so much easier when I write it down like this, but I promise to anyone who is reading this: it was the fucking hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It is harder than a 2k. It is harder than a 5k, 6k, 10k, power hour, ergathon, anything. But you distract yourself. You find things that make you feel good. Whether that’s a song, or a bath, or knitting, or drawing – anything. YOU KEEP GOING, until it becomes normal.

I was looking at my graduate university’s website and after being sedentary for quite a long time (aside from the occasional yoga and run a bit earlier in my disorder), I wanted to do some exercise. I didn’t know what, until I found information about rowing. I was scared at first, because rowers tend to look quite buff, but I read up on it and I got excited. I watched youtube videos and I got excited. I wanted that connection with people, after being alone in my disorder for so long. At first I thought I would cox, because I was still quite small, but on the open day at the beginning of the academic year I decided I was gonna row. I realised I was only this small because I hadn’t been taking care of myself, and if I would eat normally and work out normally like any other person, I would be too big for coxing, as I am quite tall. I was still scared of the weight gain, but I hadn’t been weighing myself for a long time, and I finally started wanting something more than I wanted to be thin. I wanted to be fast and strong more than I wanted to be thin. I started training with the novices, and although I was obviously out of shape, I caught on quickly and made first novice boat in November. That’s when I decided I was more interested in what my body could do than what it looked like.

It was a struggle, especially during winter training where you pack on the pounds (of muscle, but still) but I got through it. I realised that in order to be a fast rower, you need the calories. You need the food. And if that sometimes means that you have to force yourself to eat, and force yourself to overeat to the point of being uncomfortable every so often, then so be it. I remember vividly the first time I realised that my thighs were touching once more – it’s a silly little thing but for someone with an ED it’s important. It shows your ‘status’. Losing your ‘status’ means failing and failure isn’t fun for anyone. The only way I got over that was by ignoring it. Ignoring it, doing other things, ignoring it some more until it no longer matters. Until you know longer care. Make it angry. Show it who’s boss. I gained the weight and leaped over the lightweight limit over Christmas break, and leaned back down to my normal, pre-ED weight a month and a half later, just within the lightweight zone. But I’m beating PB after PB. I’m winning medals. I’m stronger, and faster, and more determined to move the boat to the finish line as fast as I can, than I ever was to be skinny.”

Coxing Novice Q&A Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 1, 2013

Being a novice cox, I can’t wrap my head around this. A varsity cox switched with me so she was coxing one of the novice boats and they went faster and harder than ever! I feel like my intensity is ok … but it’s different with her I guess, can you explain it? Thanks!

This is totally normal. I coxed the novice 8+ when I was a senior and part of the reason why I think they were able to go as hard as they did is because I knew how, what, and when to say things to them that a novice coxswain wouldn’t have known to say or do. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong, it’s just that she has more experience and has her voice more “developed” than you do. She’s also got a better technical eye so she can pinpoint things easier which means she can make the calls to fix them faster.

Intensity is only a small part of being a coxswain. Don’t focus so much on how much better your crew did without you and with her – instead, talk to her and ask her what she said, what she did, what she saw, etc. Pick her brain, take notes, and then the next time you go out with them, use everything you learned to help make whatever changes they made while rowing with her stick.

Coxing Q&A Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 1, 2013

You’ve posted before on calling rowers out in practice for what they’re doing wrong (e.g. “Three, you’re late”). Does the same count for technique? For example, my bow seat always opens with his back. Is it appropriate for me, when talking technique, to say something like, “Keep your knees over your ankles so you don’t over-compress and open with your back – that means you, bow seat,” even if I can’t see it actually happening, or does that sound antagonistic?

Yea, correcting technical issues is 98% of the reason why you call a rower out. Unless I’m just joking around with my boat I’d never actually say “that means you” though unless I’ve been calling for this change for awhile and the rower isn’t responding … and even then, I’d probably try to phrase it a different way. If I’m calling out someone in my boat with regards to technique, 95% of the time it’s because I’m seeing them do something that directly warrants the call so I’ll say “Sam, keep the shins vertical at the catch…”.

If you’re just making general calls because you don’t want to call someone out directly, it’s not hard to see how they’d be annoyed if you follow it up with “that means you” when you could have just not wasted time in the first place by telling them directly that they need to make a change. Like I said though, I’d probably phrase it differently and say something like “Come on Sam, that’s you…”.

Coxing Q&A Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 1, 2013

During races my coxswain always tells us we’re on, say, 5 seat when in reality we’re even or sometimes even behind. Other than that she’s a good coxswain but we can obviously tell that she is giving us the wrong information. We have politely asked her to be honest but she just keeps saying that she does it to keep our morale up. We’d all so much rather know where we actually are! How do we handle this? Thanks!

Ugh coxswains, stop doing this!! There it is in writing – rowers want the truth, not what you think they want to hear.

This goes past the point of just not listening to what her crew wants. For me, it’s now an issue of respect. Yea, you’re the one calling the shots but you’ve got to respect the rowers enough to listen to them when they ask you to do something differently because whatever you’re doing isn’t working. I’m glad you guys have asked her politely but now might be the time to ask her a little more firmly. Sometimes it’s necessary to be a little harsh to get your point across. Just tell her straight out that her coxing is great but she’s not helping you and it’s not boosting morale when she tells you things that you can blatantly see aren’t true. Tell her why it doesn’t help you and the reasons you have for wanting to know where you are, regardless of whether your position is good or bad.

If talking to her (again) doesn’t do anything, talk to your coach. You’ve given her several opportunities now to make a change and she hasn’t respected your requests. Hopefully your coach can understand where you’re coming from and talk to her. Maybe hearing it from a more authoritative figure will spark something.