As a novice rower, I’m just wondering: are coxswains supposed to talk at you all the time [erg or boat] or leave you to get in your own zone?
In the boat, it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re doing drills, most of the time talking consistently is required in order to execute the drill properly. Whether or not you talk outside of executing the drill (i.e. giving them feedback/reminders – normal coxing stuff) depends on whether you’re with your coach or not. If I’m with a boat on my own then I’ll cox them normally while executing the drill but if our coach is with us and he’s actively coaching the rowers then I’ll only talk when it involves executing the drill and save any other comments for later. During long steady state pieces, you can interject some periods of silence to let the rowers focus on their rowing.
Related: Today during practice we just did 20 minute pieces of steady state rowing. My crew gets bored very quickly and their stroke rating goes down, so I decided to add in various 13 stroke cycles throughout the piece, but I regret doing it because it wasn’t steady state. I’m just confused as to how to get them engaged throughout without sounding like a cheerleader but at the same time keeping up the drive and stroke.
During races and other hard pieces, in my opinion, coxswains should always be talking just because there’s so much information that you should/need to communicate to the crew.
Related: Interesting question: How often do you think a cox should talk during a race? I feel really awkward and useless if I stop talking for more than a few seconds, and when I rowed our cox would talk almost constantly during races. However, at a regatta briefing the other day the OU Captain of Coxes implied that coxes should only be talking every few strokes. I guess it depends on the standard and nature of the crew, but what do you think?
On the erg it’s a little bit different. I frequently tell coxswains that for a 2k or other erg test they need to ask the rowers before the test begins if they want to be coxed or not. Rowers often go into bubbles during the test and having someone coxing them can throw them off their focus. If you don’t want your coxswain talking to you when you’re on the erg, that’s fine, as long as you let them know ahead of time.
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