Tag: boston university

“All fast crews have three things in common…”

Coxing Rowing Technique

“All fast crews have three things in common…”

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If you’ve been to Northeast Rowing Center and had Coach Lindberg (BU heavyweight men’s assistant) as your coach, then you’ll remember him asking his boats if they can list the three things that all fast crews have in common. Do you know what they are?

Blades go in before the drive begins

While the feet are still light (aka there’s no pressure being applied to the stretchers), the blade touches the water and gets heavy. This has to happen before the wheels change direction.

Hang your bodyweight off the handle all the way through the drive

From catch to finish, suspension is the key to prying and accelerating. You can read more about it in the “Top 20 terms” post linked below.

Related: Top 20 terms coxswains should know: Suspension

Spacing at the back end

Every coach coaches the finish a little differently but regardless of whether you keep the hands moving around the finish or do that weird pause-y thing, the hands and elbows have to be out and away before the body rocks over.

This stuff is so simple you’ll probably read it and think “…duh” but if your crew is trying to gain more speed or figure out what’s holding them back, don’t default to just thinking about pulling harder – go back to the basics and ensure you’re doing all three of these things first. You can make calls for this stuff for at any point during practice too – it all falls under the umbrella of “just one (or three) of those things” that you should always be looking for, correcting, and perfecting.

Image via // @jeffhou_
Female coxswain weight minimums

College Coxing

Female coxswain weight minimums

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If you follow me on Instagram then you’ll know that I’ve been going through about 40 years worth of rowing magazines over the last month. I was going through my latest stack this evening and came across this letter to the editor from the July/August 1991 issue of American Rowing that I thought was worth sharing.

What I appreciated about this letter was that it was coming from a coach (and a very successful one at that) who actually appears to understand how difficult the process of making weight can be for a coxswain.

Related: National eating disorder awareness week: Coxswains

I’ll be honest, I really don’t see that same kind of concern from many coaches these days and that’s pretty upsetting. The number of emails I’ve gotten from both male and female coxswains describing the things their coaches have told them to do to lose weight or the nasty offhand remarks they make about their size disgust me. I’ve witnessed it in person too and it’s taken a lot of restraint to not say anything (although in retrospect I always feel like I should have).

Saying “oh, just do what you have to do” and/or looking the other way when you know that one of your athletes is taking drastic measures like this is really offensive. I mean really, all it does is perpetuate the idea that coxswains aren’t real athletes so why does it matter if they’re doing stuff like this to their bodies? It does matter and for the exact reasons that were stated in the letter – there are serious physical and psychological effects to depriving your body of energy and nutrients and those effects will be felt on race day.

I’m mainly sharing this because I thought it was interesting but if you take anything away from it, I hope it’s that resorting to extremes like not eating, making yourself throw up, taking laxatives, etc. are all dangerous behaviors that will have a serious impact on your ability to perform your duties at the level you need to. Be realistic about your weight and don’t try to force your body down to a number that it’s not capable of being at. Also keep in mind that your skills on the water are worth far more to your crew than whatever the number on the scale says.

Image via // @tsarel

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Rowing to Kabul

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If I had to pick a country that seemed to be the least likely to have a national rowing program, Afghanistan would definitely be in my top five, and not just because of current world politics or anything like that. Matt Trevithick, a BU alumni, is working towards building up the Afghan rowing program in order to potentially, hopefully be able to compete in Rio. FISA and ANOC (Association of National Olympic Committees) have pledged their support, as have local government officials who are planning to help get a boathouse built for the team.

A boathouse … and a rowing program … requiring thousands, nay millions of dollars in funding … in Afghanistan. I find it hard to process not because I think something like this is impossible or that the people there are undeserving but because nearly every day since I was in 8th grade all I’ve seen of Afghanistan is video and pictures of what amounts to nothing more than a sand pit completely encased in poverty and war. It seems crazy because of how dangerous you’d think being in that area would be more than anything else.

This is where they’ll be training…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rii9KS2gvCo

…and this is the route that was driven to bring boats from Germany to Afghanistan. Can you imagine driving nearly 3,500 in three days? That’s about 500 miles less than the distance between Boston and San Francisco and I can’t even begin to imagine driving that in just three days. I like road trips but that’s pushing it.

Oh, and don’t think they’ll be rowing those shitty boats that you typically see novices rowing … oh no. In addition to the quad and double that Matt was already able to get, he was able to talk Filippi into donating some shells to the program. Can you imagine if you were just starting up a rowing program and were able to get one of the best boat manufacturers in the world to donate some shells to your team?

Here’s a great article from the Bostonia about the whole project.