Category: Technique

Question of the Day

By readyallrow December 10, 2015

I have noticed sometimes when coxing that some of my rowers tend to sort of bang the gate with their oar (not sure how to fully describe it) and was wondering what are they doing wrong in the stroke and appropriate calls to fix it?

If I’m picturing this correctly, what I think you’re saying is that the rowers are pulling the oar away from the oarlock and the “banging” is when the collar comes in contact with it again. I see novices do this a lot, mostly because they don’t fully grasp that you have to apply consistent pressure against the pin to prevent that from happening. Something that helps with this is making sure you have the right grip on the oar. If your hands are really far apart and/or your outside hand is a few inches away from the end of the oar then you’re much more likely to pull the oar away from the oarlock. Hands shoulder-width apart, outside pinky resting on the edge of the handle – that’s what your grip should look like.

Technique-wise though, the simplest way of explaining it is that you want to be exerting pressure in the direction that the blade is moving rather than the direction your legs are moving (keep in mind those two things are moving in the opposite direction). If you’re applying pressure towards the front or back of the oarlock (depending on whether you’re on the drive or recovery) rather than flat against the whole oarlock, you’re more likely to pull the oar away from it at either the catch or finish and when you begin moving in the other direction, that’s when you’ll get that “bang” that occurs, like I said before, when the collar comes in contact with it again. As far as calls go, keep it simple and just remind them to keep pressure against the pin and that the collar should always be in contact with the oarlock (which means they need to be applying force in that direction).

I’d really recommend talking about this with your coach though because they’ll be able to address the technical aspects of it with everyone and then once the rowers understand what’s actually happening, whatever calls you make will be a lot more effective. A huge, huge pet peeve of mine is when coxswains see an issue like this and think that all it takes to fix it is a couple magical calls (which don’t exist, by the way). Not that that’s what you’re implying (because this is a really good question so I’m glad you asked it), I just that I think that’s what a lot of coxswains expect when they ask questions like this. This is something that has to be coached so tell your coach what you’re seeing so they can address it, otherwise whatever calls you make (which may or may not even be correct) won’t make a difference since no one will understand what you’re talking about. I know it’s said a lot that coxswains are “the coach in the boat” but coaching the rowers isn’t your job. Now that you (hopefully) understand a bit better what’s happening you’ll have an easier time following your coach’s explanation so listen to how they explain it to your boat and reiterate the key points they make using the same language and terminology they use … that is how you fix a technical problem. What I said up above (and pretty much everything I say on here), it all equates to doing the assigned reading before your next class so you’re not staring wide-eyed at your professor as he flies through the lecture. Ultimately my goal is to hit the high points so you can follow along while your coach fills in all the little details.

Coxing Drills Rowing Technique

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Quarter Feather

By readyallrow December 9, 2015

Previously: Rush(ing) || Body angle || Pick drill || Suspension || Skying the blade

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to?

The recovery.

What does it mean/refer to?

Rowing on the quarter-feather is a drill, similar to square-blade rowing. Instead of the blades being fully feathered on the recovery, the rowers are just barely rotating the handles so that they’re just a few degrees past perpendicular to the water before squaring them back up at their usual spot before the catch.

Relevant calls

There aren’t many specific calls to be made here outside of reminding the rowers to not cheat and rotate the handle past the quarter-feather position. Most of the calls you’d make would be the same ones you’d make if you were rowing on the square or feather … clean finishes, even and consistent handle heights, etc. Understanding the purpose of the drill and the effects it has on the boat (discussed down below) will help you tailor your calls accordingly.

A coach I worked with last summer told the rowers to match the quarter-feather to their layback (in terms of degrees past perpendicular) and this helped everyone (mostly younger rowers) figure out where exactly “quarter” feather is, so if your crew is having similar issues you might make a similar call if you see some blades more or less feathered than others. Try not to get too caught up in the aesthetics though, it’s not that big of a deal.

What to look for

Watch the two videos down below to see what the blades should look like. The first is a compilation video of the junior national team four (I think), one of Princeton’s women’s eights, and the US men’s four. The second video is a quick clip of Cornell’s heavyweight eight from a few years ago.

Effect(s) on the boat

This is mentioned a bit in the first video up above so watch and listen to it, particularly the beginning when Nick D’Antoni is talking.. Quarter-feather rowing is about blade control – as it says in the video, it improves the finish by slowing down the feather, similarly to the delayed-feather drill where the focus is on clean extraction of the blade before the handle is rotated. Having the blade come out square reduces the likelihood of feathering it under the water, which can lead to catching a crab, throwing a lot of water towards the stern at the finish, etc.

Like rowing on the square, it can also help the crew to figure out their handle heights on the recovery without having to worry about the blades smacking the water if the boat goes even a millimeter off set. Stability isn’t always perfect on the quarter-feather (you can kinda see this in the Cornell video) but it does make it a little easier to work on consistent handle heights in the boat, particularly when the conditions aren’t favorable (i.e. wind).

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Skying the Blade

By readyallrow December 2, 2015

Previously: Rush(ing) || Body angle || Pick drill || Suspension

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

Any point during the recovery but primarily the top quarter of the slide as you prepare for the catch.

What does it mean/refer to

Skying the blade refers to the blade being too high above the water, either consistently throughout the recovery or right before/at the catch. It’s caused by two main things: one, not carrying the hands at a consistent height throughout the recovery (i.e. either immediately out of the release or by lowering/dropping the hands at the catch) and two, by lowering the upper body (usually as a result of lunging) and forcing the hands down towards the feet at the catch. (The latter in my experience tends to be the more common of the two.)

Relevant calls

Many of the relevant calls for skying the blade aren’t necessarily for the skying itself, they’re for things like maintaining level hands on the recovery, setting the body angle early and maintaining it to avoid throwing the body forward at the catch, maintaining good posture, not rowing in a circle, keeping the eyes up/forward (because the hands do follow the eyes, regardless of whether they believe you when you say that or not … which they likely won’t but watch the hands of any rower who is looking down and you’ll see what I mean), etc.

If I see someone’s blade in the air, how I approach it will depend on who I’m coxing. If I’m coxing an experienced crew that doesn’t really need everything spelled out for them then I’ll just make a quick “Sam, watch the hands, you’re skying…” call and that will almost always fix the problem. Usually calls like this are made towards the end of a hard workout and are more reflective of the rower(s) just being tired and getting a little lazy with their bodies rather than it being an actual technical issue. This has been the case with the majority of the intermediate and masters crews that I’ve coxed.

If I know that a rower has a tendency to, for example, slump over when they get tired or they have poor posture in general then I’ll substitute “watch the hands”, which is pretty broad, with something specific to them, like “stay tall with the body, hold the hands up into the catch” or “keep the shoulders and hands up at the front end”. In instances like this I try not to say anything about what the blade is doing since it’s a secondary issue rather than a primary one but if the skying persists after a couple strokes then I’ll say something, usually like “Sam, gotta hold the hands level here on the recovery, you’re skying your blade nearly every stroke…”.

In high school I’d have to go into a lot more detail to fix the problem which was occasionally frustrating because I’d get caught up with trying to think through the process in my head of what was causing it, how it should look vs. what it looked like then, what I needed to address first, etc. and that would cause me to ignore a lot of other things that were going on (including how I was steering). What this taught me was not only the snowball effect that one issue can have on the rest of the stroke but also how to think fast in order to diagnose what I was seeing (and how important it was to learn about this stuff off the water so I wasn’t trying to learn it in the moment).

What this has to do with calls relevant to skying the blade (or any issue, really) is that because I had to know what calls to make for the issues preceding the rower skying their blade, once I had developed a good understanding of technique and how the stroke should look I was able to make more precise calls and make them say, one stroke after noticing the problem rather than three or four strokes after. Basically the better I understood what caused them to do X, the more accurate and efficient I was able to be in making calls to address that and in turn, problem Y was fixed in the process.

What to look for

This is one of the easiest things for coxswains to see so there’s never an excuse to not point it out when you notice it. It’s usually much easier to point this out with experienced crews because when the handle heights are more consistent across the board the outlier will stand out more and you’ll immediately notice it, whereas with novice/younger crews there can be a lot of different things happening and unless the skying is really egregious it might not be the first thing you notice.

From the launch it’s easy to see when a rower’s hands are dipping down or their posture is collapsing at the front end but when you’re coxing you have to rely entirely on the bladework to alert you of these two things. As previously mentioned, you’ll either see the blade high off the water consistently throughout the recovery or you’ll see the blade make a really extravagant swooping motion at the catch. (I usually refer to this as “flourishing the blade”.) If you could see an illustrated path of the hands it would probably look something like the Nike swoosh, starting from the right side and moving left.

Another thing to look for is the square timing. If when they square corresponds to when the blade skies then that rower is likely squaring down (i.e. pushing down with the hands as their inside hand rotates the handle) instead of maintaining a level, horizontal angle between the release and catch as they square.

Ideally you want the blade to be carried about 6″ off the water (give or take) and if the rowers are carrying the blade too low to begin with (i.e. it’s dragging on the water or it’s just barely above the surface) then that can also cause them to sky the blade. In order to give them room to square it up and prepare for the catch they’ll drop their hands, resulting in the blade going up in the air. Here you should be looking at the distance between the blade when it’s feathered and the surface of the water – if you can’t see any daylight between the two, remind the rowers of where the blade needs to be and the adjustments they should make with their hands.

The key here is that skying the blade is always the result of something else (that in turn has it’s own set of results stemming from it) so when you see someone doing it, you have to take a step back and focus less on the aesthetics (simply getting their blade to match everyone else’s) and instead address the actual issue that’s causing the blade to sky. This means inferring a lot of things about the hands and body based on what you currently see the blade doing but if you have a good understanding of what the “ideal” recovery looks like, both technically and with regards to body positioning, it shouldn’t be hard to call for a correction that addresses more than one issue at a time.

Below are two videos that illustrate what skying actually looks like. If you compare it to “normal” rowing, such as in this video where the blades are relatively level throughout, you might be able to see the difference a little easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWx4mcUuXCE

In this video, pay attention to stern pair. It’s a little tough to see three see but you really don’t even need to see his catch to know he’s skying, simply based on the trajectory of his hands and what you can see from the first part of the recovery. Stroke seat becomes a little more obvious with his skying towards the end of the video and the amount of water he’s missing is a lot more apparent.

Effect(s) on the boat

To name a few: poor catch timing (you’ll almost always be late), missed water at the catch, no suspension, decreased boat speed/increased check since you’ll likely be starting the drive without the blade in the water, and poor set due to hands dipping down into the catch instead of rising into it.

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Suspension

By readyallrow November 25, 2015

Previously: Rush(ing) || Body angle || Pick drill

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

Suspension on the handle occurs during the drive. It begins during the top quarter of the slide and is at it’s peak (force wise) when the oar is perpendicular to the hull (aka halfway through the drive).

What does it mean/refer to

Suspension, also referred to as “hang”, is all about using your body weight in the most effective way possible to move the boat. Moving the boat efficiently requires the isolation of the two strongest muscle groups – the legs and the lats – which means using your upper body strength to hold the weight off the seat and redistribute it to the handle.

Relevant calls

“Suspend the weight, light on the seat…”

“Stand on it…”, “Stand up…“

On the recovery we always tell the rowers that they shouldn’t feel any weight on the feet, that the feet should feel light, etc. During the last quarter of the recovery, that’s when they should be shifting their body weight forward and on to their feet, which will give them that “standing up” feeling. Being light on the seat is the corresponding action to standing on the feet so if you make a call for one, the rowers should know that they should also be doing the other because it all corresponds to good suspension on the drive.

“Suuuspend send…”, “Haaaang send“

You want the rowers to suspend/hang their weight for as long as possible so drawing out the call as you say it helps reflect that. It’s similar to drawing out “lengthen” when you want them to slow down the slides.

“Skeletal hang…”, “Hang the skeletons off the handle…”

Graham Willoughby, the assistant men’s coach at Brown, said this a lot at NRC this summer. It’s basically just another way of saying “hang all your weight off the handle”.

At HOCR I heard a men’s coxswain during the Champ 8+ make a call for “legs and lats” and followed it up immediately with this really long, low, aggressive “suuuuuuuspennnnd” call. I wish I’d been able to get video of it because as soon as he called it you could just see everybody in the boat sit up and hang off the handle for a second or so longer than they were before. This was right around the 2-mile mark by Newell so I assume he made the call because they were starting to feel the fatigue and he wanted them to feel the boat pick up going into the last mile.

Either way, it was a great call that left nothing open to interpretation and was punctuated by how he said it. If 50% of the success of that call was just the pure simplicity of it, the other 50% was the calm intensity in his tone of voice.

What to look for

This is another thing that, like body angle, is more easily seen outside the boat than in it. Body position is key here, as is connection with the foot stretchers, because any discrepancy in the two won’t allow you to suspend your weight properly.

Keeping the core fully engaged helps control your body weight as well as maintain your center of mass between your hips. Moving upward and outward from there, the shoulders should stay down and relaxed (you don’t want any tension in the upper body), your forearms (and by extension your wrists) should stay parallel to your legs (breaking them early reduces your ability to hang), and your elbows should stay pointed out, not down. All of this allows you to stay centered and stable which translates to being able to hang more of your weight off the handle.

Pushing with the legs = pulling with the oar, meaning when the hips drive out of the catch the hands must move in sync with them. If you’re shooting your slide then your back will collapse forward because the hips are moving without the hands. If you open the back too early (hands before the hips) then you’ll be relying on the smaller (therefore, less efficient) shoulder and back muscles to pick up the weight of the boat instead of engaging the larger leg and lat muscles. All of this factors into having a coordinated drive, which relies on being connected at the front end and following the correct sequence through the stroke.

Since I can’t see the rowers suspending off the handle when I’m coxing, I rely on two main things to help me know if/when to make a call for this. (It’s something I try to make regular reminder calls for but I’m also always looking to see if it’s something that actually needs to be corrected too.)

Related: Coxswain skills: Boat feel

The first is boat feel. If I can’t feel that impulse at the catch when they start driving, I know they’re probably not getting connected and thus not hanging their weight off the handle (or at the very least, they’re not as connected as they could be and not hanging their weight as efficiently as they could be).

Related: The Four Defaults

To correct this I’ll make a connection call, evaluate it via boat feel, then follow up with a few suspension calls. I think initially focusing on the body position helps a lot here rather than just jumping straight into “suspend send” calls (although that is what I finish with). This (and what’s down below) is a good example of how prevalent the snowball effect is in rowing. If one thing is off at any point in the stroke it can/will have an effect on everything that comes after that.

The second thing I rely on and look for is timing at the catch, specifically if they’re rowing it in. If they’re rowing it in then they’re limiting the amount of overlap there is between time spent on the leg drive and how long the blade is in the water. The less overlap there is the less time they have to hang on the handle … and hanging on the handle pretty much requires your catch timing/drive initiation to be precise so it’s not hard to deduce that they’re not getting any effective amount of hang if they’re rowing the blade in. If this is what’s happening then I’ll address getting the blade in before the leg drive (unweight the hands as you roll into the catch, etc.) before transitioning to getting them to hang their weight once they’ve established some resistance to actually hang against.

Effect(s) on the boat

When I’m coxing the most obvious effect on the boat that I notice is how much more “send” there is when we’re suspending our weight. The meaty part of the stroke is when the handle is moving between your shins and shorts (that’s another great call that I learned this summer – “shins to shorts”) and if you’re really hanging your weight through this section, the finishes tend to have more weight behind them (literally) which allows you to clear the puddles by a few extra inches.

Additionally, suspending your weight off the handle instead of keeping it sitting directly on top of the seat gives a lightness to the boat that lets the rowers pick it up and leverage it through the water more easily.

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Pick Drill (Normal + Reverse)

By readyallrow November 18, 2015

Previously: Rush(ing) || Body angle

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

The pick drill targets the sequence of movements on the recovery whereas the reverse pick drill targets the sequence of movements on the drive.

The normal pick drill goes like this.

Arms only → arms + body (→ quarter slide) → half slide (→ three-quarter slide) → full slide

The reverse pick drill is equally as simple and goes like this:

Legs only (→ top quarter/”first six inches”) (→ top half) → legs + back → legs + back + arms

In both of those, the parts of the stroke in parentheses can be included but typically aren’t part of the default drill (which includes the parts not in parentheses).

What does it mean/refer to

The pick drill is one of the most used and basic drills that you’ll call. It’s purpose is to break the stroke into its various components and build upon each one until you’re taking normal strokes at full slide. Even though it does a good job of walking you through the stroke sequence (which makes it great when you’re first teaching novices how to row), it’s more commonly used as a warmup on the water than an actual “drill”.

We tend to think of drills as having a specific technical focus and that’s where the reverse pick drill comes in. It’s purpose is to focus on the drive sequence and is typically used when you have rowers who are shooting their slides or opening their backs too early. Since it isolates each part of the drive (legs –> back –> arms) there’s a lot of emphasis on making sure you’re going through the sequence in the proper order, i.e. not opening the backs before you start the legs or breaking the arms while you’re still on the drive.

Whether you do the drill on the square or feather is up to you/your coach and can be dependent on the conditions or skill level of the crew. When given the choice I rarely do the entire drill on the feather and instead go through it entirely on the square before adding the feather in during the full-slide strokes. Occasionally I’ll do arms and arms + body on the square and the rest on the feather but that doesn’t happen too often. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the reverse pick drill done on the feather so I would stick with staying on the square when you do this one.

Relevant calls

Calling these two drills is literally – LITERALLY – the simplest thing you will ever do as a coxswain. Can you count to 10? Congrats, you can call the pick drill. You can read all about how to do both in the post linked below. It goes into plenty of detail which is why I’m linking it instead of writing it all out again.

Outside of a few calls here or there I don’t talk much during the pick drill. I’ll talk marginally more during the reverse pick drill but with both drills I feel like the rowers need to concentrate more on what they’re doing without the distraction of me talking in the background.

Most of the calls I make have to do with pivot and timing (as necessary). Right after adding the bodies I’ll remind the rowers to “lead with the hands”, “pivot from the hips”, “keep the bodies tall”, “swing through”, etc. to remind them to get the bodies over before they catch.

With timing, I tend to notice more issues pop up once the slides are added since everyone has a different sense for where quarter, half, and three-quarter slide is (more so with younger crews than experienced ones) and that can affect when they catch. In that case I’ll watch the blade angles (as I mention below) and tell them to adjust their position based on how sharp/shallow the angle is to the boat (“Ryan, your blade angle is a little too sharp for quarter-slide. Shorten up the slide a bit on this next one…”). That usually fixes the timing issue without me even having to mention it but if it persists then I’ll just tell them they’re early/late and make any additional calls related to that as needed.

The takeaway from this is that you want whatever calls you make to be relevant to the drill you’re doing. If I noticed someone’s timing was off while doing the pick drill it wouldn’t be very effective for me to just say “you’re early/late” because that doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. If they’re late, watching the blade angles and making sure they’re at half-slide and not three-quarter slide (which makes their recovery longer than everyone else’s –> catching later than everyone else) does address the problem.

What to look for

Some of this is touched on in the “how to” post linked up above but what you’re looking for has less to do with what the rowers’ bodies look like (that’s a secondary concern) and more to do with whether or not they’re completing each part of the stroke in the proper order.

In the boat it can be tough to see what they’re doing since this isn’t a bladework drill so it would be useful to watch them go through this sequence from the launch or while they’re on the ergs/in the tanks so you can see what exactly it should look like. This also means that you have to go off of blade angles to determine if someone is too far up/too far back at each position. The sharper the angle of the oar relative to the boat the closer they are to full slide and the shallower the angle the closer they are to the finish/their seat is to bow.

Arms

You are only using your arms. Don’t cheat and incorporate the shoulders/upper back. Start by sitting at the finish, blades fully buried, bodies stable and in the layback position. The hands will press down and come away with the handle and then when the arms are fully extended you’ll “catch” and “drive” using just the arms to pull the blade through the water.

Arms + body

From the finish, the hands lead with the bodies following by pivoting from the hips while the legs stay flat. You should feel a slight pull in the hamstrings as you swing forward (more or less so depending on how flexible you are). This “pivot from the hips” is important because that’s where your swing comes from, not from the low back. Back and shoulders stay flat here, chin stays up. Once the arms + body are fully extended (again, this will be dependent on how flexible you are), you’ll catch, swing back with the bodies, and finish with the arms.

Quarter/half/three-quarter slide

These are much easier to visualize than they are to explain over the internet so check out these videos of the national team to get an idea for what each slide position should look like. Try to spend time on the erg in front of the mirror so you can see/feel for yourself where each one is too. (None of these videos are actually of the pick drill, they’re just to give you an idea of what each position looks like.)

In the first video, note the difference in how far the knees come up when they transition down from full-slide. Same in the third one, look at how they’re just barely NOT at full-slide. There’s still another inch or two left for the wheels to come up.

Full slide

This is where it all comes together and you’re just taking normal strokes. Here the focus should be on maintaining the sequencing from the earlier parts of the drill. Timing, as a byproduct of proper sequencing, is something you should also watch for.

During the reverse pick drill you start with “legs only” so the arms stay extended and the bodies stay pivoted forward as the legs come down. You can see what that looks like in the video below. (There’s also video of what the drill looks like start to finish in the “how to” post.)

There’s a tendency when doing this drill, as you can see in that video, to finish “legs only” sitting up straighter than you should be, as well as to finish “legs and bodies” by just barely breaking the arms. Neither of these are that big of a deal so unless they’re really obviously opening the backs or breaking the arms, it’s not something you need to call out. And again, it’s not something you’re likely going to be able to see anyways unless you’re watching the drill from the side.

Effect(s) on the boat

If the sequencing on both sides of the stroke is correct it will help you establish a sense of timing and rhythm within the boat.

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Body Angle

By readyallrow November 11, 2015

Previously: Rush(ing)

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

Body angle is important throughout the entire stroke cycle but the main point where we draw attention to it is at the bodies-over position on the recovery. Other spots where it’ll be brought up are throughout the second half of the recovery, at the catch, and occasionally at the start of the drive but these spots are secondary to the bodies over position and are usually referenced in terms of maintaining the angle rather than setting it.

What does it mean/refer to

Body angle refers to the location of your shoulders relative to your hips. In the bodies over position, the shoulders should be in front of the hips, hence “bodies over“, and you should feel a slight pull in the hamstrings (similar to when you’re stretching and trying to touch your toes). You want to be in this position before the slide begins to move and then maintain that angle throughout the rest of the recovery and into the catch.

If a rower is lacking body angle or you hear your coach tell them that they’re not getting the bodies set early enough, there’s no body prep, there’s not enough forward body angle, forward reach, etc. what they mean is that the shoulders are still in line with the hips instead of in front of them. At the “bodies over” position their upper body and lower body would make a 90-degree angle and on the slides, their hips would be directly under their shoulders. It can be tough to achieve good body angle if you’re not very flexible so working on your hamstring flexibility would be of benefit if you find that’s an issue. (This tends to be the case with guys more so than women.)

Relevant calls

A lot of the calls made in reference to body angle aren’t the singular-type calls like what you would make for the catch or finish. Most of the time when you’re talking about body angle you’re doing so during practice when you’re addressing an issue that requires an explanation or in relation to another part of the stroke.

“Let’s get that early body prep…” and “Get the bodies set…” are both are usually said as a reminder to lock the bodies in the forward angle position before starting the slides. If body prep is something we’ve been focusing on or we did some drills for it at the start of practice I’ll usually work these calls into a longer string of calls (usually in conjunction with some swing calls) over the course of several strokes to get the rowers thinking about where their bodies need to be. It tends to sound something like this:

[Not said in rhythm with the strokes, just in a casual, focused tone.] “Alright guys, we’ve been working on getting the bodies set early on the recovery so let’s keep thinking about that here. Remember, we wanna establish that forward angle and hold it all the way into the catch. [Short pause if necessary so the next call is made at the start of the recovery.] Shoulders in front of the hips, lock [said at the catch] aaand swing [said through the drive and into the finish]. Stay tall with the chests here and swiiing [said at the catch] through [said as they open the angle into the finish]. Set the bodies [said as the hands come away], stay tall in the core. [Said at the catch] Let’s make sure we’ve got that horizontal swing back and we’re not lifting with the upper bodies. [Back to a more relaxed speaking voice, no longer in rhythm with the strokes.] Let’s find that length at the front end … making sure we’re not rounding the shoulders or collapsing into our knees … hands come away together, backs tall and flat.

The time to make a string of calls like that is during steady state rows when you’ve got plennnty of time to talk to the crew. During pieces or a race I only make body prep calls if something I see or feel necessitates it and I’ll (heavily) modify it down to something much more concise, such as “set the bodies”, “get that body prep”, etc. followed by 2-3 strokes of relevant calls to reiterate the message. My go-to follow-ups are:

“Set the bodies go“

“Shoulders in front”

“Chests high”, “Chests above the knees”

“Hold it” (with “it” being the body angle)

I also like to throw in some back end swing calls alongside the ones for body prep. During our practice row at HOCR one of the things I said to my four was “[at the finish] shoulders in front, [at the catch] lock [through the finish] swing, [start of the recovery] shoulders [at the catch] swing, shoulders swing”. You’re still communicating the same general message as what’s up above but in a more digestible and race-appropriate form.

“Watch the lunge…”, “Control the length…”, etc. are calls that are followed up with calls about body angle. If the rowers are lunging at the catch, it’s usually because the bodies weren’t set soon enough on the recovery so in order to maximize their stroke length they overextend at the last second. If you see/feel this happening then make the call pointing the issue out and follow it up with something similar to what’s above.

“Let’s eliminate the extra reach at the catch and make sure we’ve got all our length set by bodies over. Maintain that into the front end and … lock send. Set the bodies, lock send. Hands away, bodies over together … hold that length … swiiing back from the hips. Now feel that pull in the hamstrings as you pivot over and keep the shoulders in front as you start the slide.”

What to look for

Body angle is tough/impossible to see from the coxswain’s seat since you can’t actually see any of the bodies. It’s definitely something that is best viewed from the side so take advantage of being on the ergs or in the launch and watch each individual rower as they move through the recovery so you can learn their individual tendencies. The bodies over position (also referred to as “hands and bodies away”) should look more or less like this (with or without the pause):

Legs flat, arms level and extended, upper bodies pivoted over from the hips (the “pivot from the hips” part is key), etc. Even though you can’t see individual bodies, if you know what good body angle looks like vs. what your individual rower’s angles tend to look like, you can make the necessary individual calls to get everyone on the same page.

Another thing to watch for when watching from the side is rowers that lose their body angle as they come into the catch. This happens when rowers start the slide with the shoulders in front of the hips but finish with the hips tucked under the shoulders (which in turn can lead to them opening the backs early on the drive). With the backs perpendicular to the hull instead of angled forward over the thighs you lose a lot of your length, as well as your ability to control the slide.

This is where a double-pause at bodies over and 3/4 slide can be helpful (preferably on the ergs or in the tanks but it works in the boat too). Pausing at bodies over lets them set the body angle and pausing at 3/4 slide let’s them check to make sure they’ve maintained that position – shoulders in front of the hips – as they came up the slide. If they didn’t, try slowing it down and setting them up beside a mirror so they can watch their movements through the recovery. In my experience the rowers seeing themselves making that error does a lot more than me just telling them they’re doing it, mostly I think because it’s easier to make the association between what I’m saying and what they’re doing when they can actually see it happening. There’s not a lot of calls you can make here outside of reminding them to keep the shoulders forward, hips back, etc., which is why setting them up by a mirror so they can see what you mean is a lot more effective than just talking about it to them.

What about boat feel and watching the bladework? Although it takes a bit of time and practice you can make reasonable guesses as to what the bodies look like based on catch angles and check in the boat. If a rower’s catch angle (the angle of the oar relative to the hull) is very sharp, meaning the blade is closer to the hull than the other blades are, it could mean that the rower is collapsing their bodies at the catch in order to get more reach. In this case you should remind them to not go after any more length once the bodies are set at the beginning of the recovery.

If you’re feeling check in the boat, body prep should be one of the things you make a call for to re-adjust the ratio. If the bodies aren’t getting set early in the stroke, the rowers will have a tendency to lunge in the top quarter of the slide to get an adequate amount of reach. Sometimes you can see this by watching the speed at which the blades move towards the bow. If they’re moving at a consistent pace and then all of a sudden they speed up, that’s an indication that someone is lunging.

Effect(s) on the boat

As previously mentioned, a lack of body angle can lead to check in the boat and result in a loss of speed. The lack of body angle itself isn’t the direct cause of the check but it’s the cause of something else that is the cause of something else that is the cause of the check, which is why it’s important to know what those in-between things are so you can address everything as thoroughly as possible instead of just saying “set the bodies” anytime you start feeling the boat jerk.

Good body angle is the same way. It’s not the direct cause of solid rhythm and swing but it leads to something else which leads to something else which leads to both those things.

Video of the Week: Analyzing power curves on an RP3

By readyallrow November 9, 2015

Hopefully you guys aren’t completely sick of me posting stuff about force curves yet because I came across another video that talks about what different curves mean relative to your individual technique. Even though these were captured on one of the RowPerfects, the same general idea still applies to the Concept2s so it’s worth watching if you find this stuff interesting like I do. The team now has eight of these RP3s so I’ve been trying to brush up on all this stuff so I can familiarize the coxswains with it as we start using them more regularly in the winter.

If you didn’t get a chance to check out the RP3s at HOCR, I posted a picture of the screens (which are actually Acer tablets about the size of a Kindle) on the team’s Instagram that you can see here.

Coxing Rowing Technique

Top 20 Terms Coxswains Should Know: Rush(ing)

By readyallrow November 4, 2015

This is going to be a new series of posts that go up on Wednesdays that highlight some of the “top terms” coxswains should know and understand. I got this idea from Tom Tiffany, who was the coxswain coach at Northeast Rowing Center this past summer. All these terms are ones that he felt were important for coxswains to be aware of so I decided to take it a step further and include what part of the stroke/stroke cycle does the term apply to, what it means, relevant calls, what to look for, effect(s) on the boat, and links to any elated posts or questions.

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

The recovery.

What does it mean/refer to

Rush(ing) is what happens when a rower (or several rowers) move from the recovery to the catch too quickly, meaning they’re coming up the slide in less time than it took to drive through the water. It lacks ratio and rhythm, in part because it requires the rower to pull themselves up the slide instead of letting the boat run out under them.

Relevant calls

“No weight on the legs…”, “Zero pressure on the stretchers…”, “Relax the legs…”

“Feel the run on the recovery…”

“Stride…”, “Lengthen…”, “Control…”, “Looong…”

“Get the bodies set early…”, “Hold the shoulders steady in the second half…”

“Match the hands out of bow to the boat speed, maintain that with the slides…”

“7-seat, make sure you’re backing [stroke] up, get on their rhythm and then send it back. 5 and 6, relax, focus on that swing through the back end and matching stern pairs movements up the slide.”

“Don’t pull yourself up the slide, let the boat come to you…”

What to look for

As a coxswain you’re going to feel the rush more than you can see it but there are still visual cues you can look for to tackle the rush before it gets out of hand. The main one is to look for blades/oar shafts that are moving towards bow faster than your stroke/stern pair’s. You can also count the ratio out in your head and if it’s closer to 1:1 instead of 2:1 or 3:1, particularly at lower rates then that’s an indication that the crew is rushing. You should also feel a loose “back and forth” motion that lacks any sense of control, in addition to feeling a jerking motion as the rowers come into the catch that will typically throw you into the back of the coxswain’s seat a little more violently than normal.

Effect(s) on the boat

Rushing the recovery is one of the main killers of boat speed. Lacking a defined contrast between time spent on the recovery and time spent on the drive results in either an individual’s or the entire crew’s weight being thrown toward the stern which creates check and results in a loss of speed.

Question of the Day

By readyallrow October 29, 2015

Hi! I’m racing in a 4+ this weekend at HOCR. I have rowed port for the past 2.5 years, but my coach wants to see if I can row starboard and be bow seat. Do you have any advice on making this transition effectively so quickly? Thank you!!

The main things to be aware of, especially if you’ve been rowing on the same side for a long time, are what side you’re leaning to, what hand your pulling with, and what hand you’re feathering with. Everything will be the opposite of what you’re used to so it might take a bit before you remember that you have to feather with your right hand instead of your left and lean into your rigger on the port side instead of leaning away from it towards where your “normal” rigger is. With knowing which hand to pull with, if you’ve been rowing the same side for awhile then you’ve likely developed a bit more strength in your outside arm by comparison so you might be more likely to initially pull with that hand instead of your “new” outside hand. That and leaning towards the wrong side can cause some issues with getting fully connected at the catch but once you get some time on your new side they go away pretty quickly, especially if you’re aware of the issues and actively working on them.

Rowing Technique Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Physics of boat acceleration for rowing shells

By readyallrow October 26, 2015

I know a 20 minute long video on physics probably doesn’t sound that interesting but it’s actually pretty informative and really well put together. (And, considering it was put together by a rower who also happens to be a physics professor, you know what’s in here is legit.) If you haven’t taken physics in school yet then some of the concepts might be a little over your head but once you hear her explain them in the context of rowing, they start to make a bit more sense.

If you’ve ever heard your coach mention force curves or you want to know how to read them, she explains that here, except instead of using an erg she uses actual video of her and her brother rowing in a double to point out where each of the major points of the stroke are and how they’re translated onto the force curve. She also mentions how they could improve certain parts of their stroke based off of the data she got from the force curve. I think this section of the video is the most helpful because once you know and understand what each part of the graph means you can then use that knowledge to evaluate your own stroke if you’re in a single or your crew’s collective stroke if you’re in a bigger boat. Keep in mind though that this is one of those things that’s easy to “fall down the rabbit hole” with. It’s cool and can definitely give you a lot of good info but if you’re a novice high school crew, you’re not gonna get much from it. It could be a fun to mess around with though during your winter/spring training trip if you’re a top level junior or collegiate crew though.

The app she used is CrewNerd (iOS/Android), which essentially turns your phone into a SpeedCoach for the much-easier-to-justify price of $50. (I used to have the free version on my phone that I’d use on occasion if I wanted to get a rough idea of our splits but didn’t have my SpeedCoach with me. It works the same as the paid version but stops displaying data after 100 strokes or 5 minutes. If you want unlimited use of it for 30 days it costs $1.99.) Once you’ve completed a workout you can pull it up in the “history” tab and export the data from there.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to?

What does it mean/refer to?

Relevant calls

What to look for

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

Image via // @juhi._._

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

What does it mean/refer to

Relevant calls

What to look for

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

Image via // Sofia Donnecke

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

What does it mean/refer to

Relevant calls

What to look for

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

What does it mean/refer to

Relevant calls

What to look for

Arms

Arms + body

Quarter/half/three-quarter slide

Full slide

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

Image via // @rowingcelebration

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

What does it mean/refer to

Relevant calls

What to look for

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

Image via // Kevin Light

What part of the stroke/stroke cycle does it refer to

What does it mean/refer to

Relevant calls

What to look for

Effect(s) on the boat

Related posts/questions

Image via // @drikus_conradie