You might have noticed that I’ve been posting a lot of things lately that all circle around the same idea – there are no secrets to being a successful coxswain. There’s no secret training regimen, there’s no such thing as a magical call … everything is pretty straightforward, as long as you’re willing to put the work in. Bryan touches on that same idea in this interview from a few weeks ago when he talks about what traits tell him that someone has elite-level potential. The whole interview is worth watching/listening to but that part specifically starts around 4:20.
Category: Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Spracklen’s Motivation
Video of the Week: Gut Check Moments
Video of the Week: The History of Women’s Rowing
This is a neat hour-long interview with Ernestine Bayer, who is often referred to as the “mother of women’s rowing”, on her involvement with the sport, the founding of Philadelphia Girls Rowing Club in 1938, etc . There’s also some photos here that show her rowing in Philadelphia, her husband’s coxless four training for and racing at the Amsterdam Olympics, and other cool memorabilia.
College Racing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Inches
It’s crazy that I’ve been posting videos every Monday for three and a half years and I haven’t posted this one yet. It’s been my favorite rowing video for as long as I can remember … and it’s not even a rowing video. Not really, anyways. I made the decision awhile ago that I wasn’t going to post it on the blog until the time was right because I didn’t want to post it on just any regular Monday … it had to be before something big. Well, now’s that time.
Last year at Sprints we lost to George Washington by 0.1 seconds. 0.1 seconds. Practically a bow ball. We came in 4th by 0.1 seconds and missed out on qualifying the eight for IRAs. One inch.
The inches we need are everywhere around us. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. Claw with our fingernails for that inch because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the fucking difference between winning and losing … between living and dying.
In any fight it’s the guy who’s willing to die who is going to win that inch.
Video of the Week: To the one who endures, the final victory comes
Rowing Training & Nutrition Video of the Week
Video of the Week: It’s an efficiency game
“You can’t out-fit efficiency.” We’re starting to get into the thick of racing season and those inches matter now and they’re gonna matter even more over the next few weeks as we enter the championship regattas.
Video of the Week: Coxing 1000m on sliders
Next winter when you inevitably are like “how do I work on my coxing in the winter”, “how do I get ready for spring racing while we’re inside”, etc. think back to this video because this is a great idea. It’d also be a great way to walk through your race plan in the spring if for whatever reason you can’t get on the water the day or two before (weather, someone can’t make it to practice, etc.).
College Rowing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Technology + Rowing
Princeton posted this video early last month and if you’re into the idea of incorporating tech into your training, you’ll probably find this interesting. We’ve been using our Peach system for about a month now and it’s pretty cool. The guys are really into seeing their force curves after each practice and I’m convinced that the emails that get sent out with each guys’ watts from that practice are a subtle/clever tactic to get them to be even more competitive with each other. Lots of data to pour over but like Greg Hughes said in the video, it gives you a lot of opportunities to see where you can improve.
College Coxing How To Racing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: How not to enter stake boats
Urban Dictionary defines a shit show as “A description of an event or situation which is characterized by an ridiculously inordinate amount of frenetic activity. Disorganization and chaos to an absurd degree. Often associated with extreme ineptitude/incompetence and or sudden and unexpected failure.”. See also: the video above.
Related: Stake boat tips and tricks
Just gonna take this opportunity to share this post linked above on getting into stake boats, as well as this post on other how to scull your bow around (linked below) so that you don’t find yourself in the same situation as this coxswain.
Related: How to scull your bow around
This is … well, embarrassing, obviously … but bigger than that, it’s a pretty big indication that somewhere along the line there was a major failure on the part of the coaches to ensure the UCSD coxswain was properly prepared when it comes to getting into stake boats. Being late to the line (which they must have been given that everyone else looks like they’re already locked on) probably didn’t help either.
Related: Coxswain skills: Race Steering
Also, given the entanglement that happened pretty much immediately after the start, check out that race steering post too for a refresher on how to hold the cables, steering straight off the line, etc.