How To Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

How do you fight off the stress of rowing? I can’t just stop because it helps me ease school stuff but at the same time it makes everything pile up and I can’t hold everything in anymore.

I’ve been there. I’ve realized though that my stress from rowing is/was never actually coming from rowing – it was from everything else. When I was in college, I was majorly and unhealthily stressed over school issues, which led to a lot of late nights that turned into early mornings. I’d get maybe an hour or two of sleep before I’d have to get up for practice. I didn’t really hang out with (or like) anyone on the team because we had nothing in common, so I wasn’t particularly thrilled to have to spend my mornings and evenings with them six days a week. I didn’t feel like the coaches were giving me any opportunities to improve or do anything “legitimate”, so I started becoming disinterested – painfully and obviously disinterested.

What was actually happening was I was getting burned out, hard and fast. Even though I wasn’t enjoying myself anymore, the time I was on the water was the only time in the 24 hour span of a day that I was somewhat at peace. I wasn’t thinking about anything – it was like I was in a fog, just floating along. My interest was still waning hard and I was furious that I had committed myself to coxing when it seemed to indirectly be the root of all my problems. It was a double edged sword. After some serious reflection on everything, I ended up removing myself from the team. I then spent the next five years away from the sport and it was the most miserable five years of my life. I literally had nothing to wake up for anymore. For five years all I did was go through the motions. Nothing I did was done with passion or interest or eagerness or desire. I had no one to talk to, no one to turn to, and no one who understood the struggle I went through every morning just to get myself out of bed. My parents were obligatorily concerned but didn’t really understand and my boyfriend wasn’t supportive and acted like I was just being lazy and whining about dumb shit. The ONE thing that had always brought me tranquility and a few hours of stress relief was gone. It wasn’t until I started coaching that I realized how important rowing was to me, not just for what it is, but because it kept me from falling apart. Without it, I fell apart. I had no way to release my frustrations like I did when I was coxing and keeping that energy pent up for 5+ years nearly drove me towards a total breakdown.

I’ve realized over the years and especially since I’ve started coxing and coaching again that rowing isn’t a source of stress for me. It’s a relief from my stress. There are things about rowing that stress me out but it’s never actually rowing. I get upset when I’m coxing because I realize I could have done better or if I’d called the end of that piece differently, would we have met our goal. I get angry at the time commitment and dedication it requires because it’s caused a lot of problems with my relationship. I get upset because I can’t pay my bills or because I’ve committed myself to coaching but finding a real, full time coaching job that pays well is tough. So many things about rowing piss me off that I ask myself at least once a day why I put myself through all of this … but then I go out on the water. I get in the boat and start practice and immediately feel this enormous weight leave my shoulders. For two hours in the morning, I have no stress, no worries, no problems, no bills to pay, no failing relationships, no reason to crawl into bed and cry, no anger … nothing. When I get on the water, that’s MY time. In order for me to have a successful practice and enjoy myself, I have to leave EVERYTHING and EVERYONE else on land. On the rare occasions that I bring practice off the water and let something nag me, I can’t escape it. It infiltrates everything and I do get frustrated and stressed. The only way for me to alleviate that stress is to turn around and throw it all into the next day’s practice. It’s a cyclical process sometimes and it makes NO sense to anyone but me, I think.

The moral of this (most likely unhelpful and far too long answer) is don’t let anything about rowing stress you out. Use what would/could stress you out to fuel you. If something shitty happens at practice, leave it at practice. Don’t take it home with you. You’ve got to teach yourself to cut the stress off. Take a step back and look at what exactly is causing your stress…is it actually related to rowing or is it outside stuff that just exacerbates the normal unavoidable craziness of crew? Figure out what you can do to alleviate some of that stress so that it doesn’t infiltrate your practices. You need that one thing you can turn to when you have nothing else and for me, that’s always been rowing. If I let my shitty life circumstances break that bubble, I might as well stop coaching and coxing because I’ll never be able to give 100%.

If rowing helps you deal with school stuff, that’s OK. Figure out why it makes everything pile up and what you can do differently or better so that doesn’t happen. If you ever need to talk or anything, I’m always here. I know the feeling of being on the brink of losing it and I know what it feels like to not have anyone who really understands. The thing with rowing is that unless you do it, you don’t understand it. My inbox is open, so don’t be afraid to use and abuse it.

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