Hello! I finished my last race of the season yesterday and my coach and I were talking about what I can do to benefit the rowers more next season. She said that I need to have a couple of calls that come from my deep belly of coxing abilities, that the crews recognize as “shit gets done” calls. She gave the example of “hit the last nail into their coffin” and said that that was too extreme for my team, but that I needed something equivalent to that to finish out close races with. Do you have any favorites? or any good recordings I should listen to? thanks so much!!!
A call that I and most coxswains I know have used at least once in our careers is “stick the knife in” or “twist the knife”. It’s kind of along the same line as the coffin call you mentioned but they’re good calls that can be super effective when called at the right moment and in the right situation. I remember calling something similar with 100m or so left to go in a race once when we were even with another crew and by the time we got to our last few strokes we were up by just enough that “twist the knife” was the only thing I needed to say to get them across the line. One of my friends in college had this call where he’d say “light the fire” at the start of their sprint (instead of actually calling the sprint as a way to fake out other crews) and then with 15-20 strokes left he’d say “throw some gas on it” which would get them to bring the rate up another beat or two and just haul ass to the finish line. For situations like this though I think the best calls (and the ones your crew connects the best with) are the ones that come to you in the moment because then they don’t sound forced or scripted (which is how stuff like this can come off most of the time).
I do agree with your coach that it’s always good to have some calls in your back pocket that, when you use them, your crew knows it’s time to shift gears and get shit done. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gotta come up with super special buzzwords or phrases though – sometimes just the way you say things will convey that message. I always love listening to coxswains, especially collegiate ones, say “NOW” when they want their crew to do something because even though it’s a really simple instruction, just the tone and raw power in their voice lets you know that they aren’t messing around.
I know I’ve pointed out calls I like for situations like this before (I’ve heard a lot of good calls so it’s tough to remember them all) so when you’ve got time definitely read through the recordings posts and listen to some of the recordings to hear how the calls actually sound. All of them can be found here.
