Tag: coaches

College Coxing High School Teammates & Coaches

Coxswain evaluations + how I organize them

By readyallrow December 9, 2014

I get a lot of emails asking about coxswain evaluations. Coaches want to know what they should say, how long they should be, are they even necessary (why would you ask me, of all people, this question), etc. and coxswains want to know how to interpret everything, what they should take seriously, and how much of what the rowers wrote is based on their level of like/dislike for person they’re writing about. Additionally, if you have a coxswain who is new to the team (like us – we have one freshman and two upperclassmen) it can be hard for them to know what to take away from the evaluations since they likely won’t have coxed many of the rowers if you do these early on in the season and the feedback can be scarce and occasionally harsh.

Coxswain evaluations are important and coaches should make it a priority to do them at least two or three times during the year. The problem though is what I said above – coaches don’t know how to make them and coxswains don’t know how to interpret them which renders the time you put into them all but wasted. Coaches also have to realize that part of doing evals is spending 20-30ish minutes going over them with your coxswains, explaining some of the more ambiguous comments, giving them specific things to work on based off the feedback, etc. Done right, yes, it does amount to a few hours of work but at the end of the day it’s a few hours well spent and your coxswains will be that much better for it. And, to be honest, it’s quite literally the least you can do for them in terms of helping them get better.

Sometime in October-ish we did our first round of evaluations for our three coxswains. I was excited but a little apprehensive at the same time because every coxswain evaluation I’ve seen before this has been borderline awful and/or useless. Thankfully the one they’ve been using is actually pretty good and manages to cover all the bases pretty well. (I’ll go into detail a bit more down below.)

Once the rowers had filled them out (this took maybe 10-15 minutes total) I collected them and asked the other coaches if they were going to go over them with the coxswains. They said “nah, we usually just give them the sheets to read on their own” to which I responded with this exact expression (I’m completely serious). Now, let’s think about this for a second. If you were given 20+ evaluations containing a lot of comments but no real indication of which of the three coxswains the feedback was directed towards, how much would you get out reading them? Probably not a lot. So … here’s what I did to make it easier for the coxswains to actually use the feedback they were being given.

To preface this, I’ve made templates of my “system” for you to use with your coxswains if you’d like. Everything is explained down below and can be found in this Google Doc.

First things first – the evaluation itself, which is on the first tab of that spreadsheet. MIT’s used this one for awhile so I can’t take credit for making it but I do like it so at the very least I’m endorsing it. It’s simple and to the point but open-ended enough for the rowers to elaborate if they have any specific comments (which, obviously, the goal is for them to do that with each section).

Once you have your evaluations and they’re filled out the next thing you’ve gotta do is figure out what to do with all that information. The first thing that I did was take all the numerical ratings and average them into one number so that instead of having 20+ ratings for each of the nine sub-sections, they’d only have one number each. (The sheet for this is under “Overall Evaluation” in the second tab at the bottom.) This allows them to get a better idea of where they fall on the 1-5 scale. It’s just like what your teachers do with your grades – instead of giving you a million individual grades at the end of the semester they just give you one that you can then compare to the pre-defined scale in order to determine how you did.

I tend to spend a lot of time on this section because averaging 20+ numbers for nine sections times three people is rather time-consuming. Luckily the day that I crunched all the winter numbers last week was when everyone was either biking or out on a long run so this ended up being a good way for me to pass the time until they got back. I have a pretty good system that works well for me so it only took me about an hour, or maybe a little less than, to get everything averaged out.

The next part is the most time-consuming. I’ve done this twice now and each time I’ve spent about 2.5 – 3hrs total putting these spreadsheets together (so about 45-60min per coxswain). How long it takes you will depend on how many coxswains you have, how many comments your rowers have left/how detailed they are, how diligent you are about dividing them up amongst the coxswains they apply to, and whether or not you boil down the comments to two to four bullet points of specific things to work on (hint: you should).

Each coxswain has their own sheet for each season that we’ve conducted the evals. We just did our second set last week so as you can see, each coxswain has two sheets so far for the year. Each individual sheet (noted as “Coxswain A”, “Coxswain B”, and “Coxswain C” in that spreadsheet) is broken down into four main sections, just like the evaluation itself. There’s a “pros”, “cons”, and “general comments” section where I’ve taken all the comments the rowers have left and divided them up to fit into one of those three categories. Most of the time the rowers will specify if their comments are directed towards a particular coxswain but if they don’t then I just consider it a general comment that’s directed towards everyone and I’ll include it on each person’s sheet.

As you can see, some of the comments are a bit repetitive but I think it’s important to write them all down regardless so that the coxswains can see what the rowers are noticing and how they feel about certain aspects of their coxing. If one person says “steers a great course” it’s not nearly as much of a confidence boost as four people saying it is. Same goes for the negative comments – they might not take “doesn’t steer competitive courses” that seriously when it comes from one person but if six of their teammates say it then it holds a bit more weight.

The “things to work on” section should be two (minimum) to four (maximum) bullet points based on all the pro/con/general comments. These really don’t take that much effort to come up with either. As you read through the comments you should easily be able to get a sense for what areas the rowers think they can or want them to improve on.

After putting all that together then you can go over it with your coxswains. When I sat down with ours I printed out their individual sheets so they could read the comments for themselves as we went over them and essentially just read through everything, pointed out anything that I thought was worth discussing and/or elaborating on, and got their thoughts on how they felt about the comments (did they agree/disagree with anything, have questions, etc.). We did this individually the first time but when we go over the most recent ones I think I’m going to do it as a group just because there’s only three of them and not as many individual nuances to discuss this time around.

The takeaway here is that coxswain evaluations should be a regular thing that you do at least twice per season (for comparison’s sake) and in order to maximize their effectiveness you, the coach, need to spend a few hours organizing them so that you can go directly to each coxswain and say “Here’s what your teammates said, here’s what we’d like to see you work on based on the feedback they’ve provided, let’s discuss…”. Don’t just give them a pile of papers and expect them to sort through all that themselves because they won’t do it (and I don’t blame them). Hell, you can outsource all your evals to me and I’ll organize them for you if it means you’ll actually do evals for your coxswains (…totally serious, by the way).

After the first round of evals that we did all three of us (the coaches) noticed some major improvements in our coxswains so if you want proof that spending the time doing these and providing them with real information actually pays off, just look at the fall vs. winter averages in the first picture. I was a little skeptical initially because I didn’t think there was going to be much of a difference (mainly because I didn’t think the rowers would notice anything, not that I didn’t think our coxswains had improved) but I was really excited to see actual numerical data that backed up what we were seeing on the water.

Anyways, I hope all of this is helpful and encourages everyone to make coxswain evaluations a regular part of your seasonal plans. Coxswains, if your team hasn’t done evaluations before you should pose the idea to your coach(es) and show them the first tab of the Google Doc. If you have done evaluations but want to discuss some of the comments or get some additional feedback/insight, feel free to get in touch.

Image via // @mlcsrs_17

College Coxing High School Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Interview with 2004 M8+ Gold Medalist Coxswain Pete Cipollone

By readyallrow September 18, 2014

Back in July I got an email from Jeremiah Brown, one of Canada’s silver medalists in the men’s eight from London asking if I’d be interested in reading and reviewing the book he’s been working on, “The Four Year Olympian“. It chronicles his journey from being a complete novice to making the Olympic podium in less than four years after picking up the sport. Yea … less than four years. Can you imagine doing that?

As I was reading through his book there were a couple sections that stuck out to me where he mentioned how when times were tense during training, he and the rowers would dish out a lot of abuse to their coxswain, Brian Price. Swearing at him, blaming him for things beyond his control, etc. – you guys all know what I mean because at some point or another in the last two years you’ve emailed me or messaged me on Tumblr trying to figure out how to handle those exact same situations.

This got me thinking … if elite level coxswains are dealing with this, maybe it would help you guys out to hear from them and read about how they handled being put in that position. So, I reached out to Pete to get his insight and see what advice he had to offer.

Here’s part of the email I sent to give you a bit more insight into why I wanted to do this:

“Hey! So I’m wondering if I could possibly persuade you to help me with a project I’m working on. Jeremiah Brown, from Canada’s ’12 M8+, wrote a book on how he made the Olympic 8+ and asked me to check it out before it got sent over to the publishers. While reading it, I had the idea to contact some national team coxswains that have been through the rigors of Olympic training and get their thoughts on how they handled taking the abuse of their rowers when tensions were high.

Jerry mentioned how they treated Brian like a “whipping boy” when things weren’t going so great, which actually surprised me because I didn’t think that that would be something you’d have to deal with at that level. I think I just assumed that by the time you reach that point in your career you’re mature enough or have developed good enough coping mechanisms to not have to take your frustrations out on other people.

It was encouraging though at the same time because I get a lot of similar questions from younger or newer coxswains that read my blog and want to know how to handle the rowers who feel like the only way to blow off steam is to blame them for every little thing that goes wrong. I think it would be helpful/reassuring for them to hear that it’s not something that’s exclusive to just high school rowing – coxswains at every level experience it and have to figure out how to work through it while maintaining positive working relationships with their teammates.”

Since there’s a tendency to hear the same regurgitated or long-winded replies that lack any substance (am I right or am I right…), I tried to put together questions that I haven’t seen be asked before so that the answers would be fresh and hopefully relatable, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or midway through your collegiate career. I hope you find this helpful and enjoy reading through it!

When tensions in the crew were at their highest, how did the guys treat you? Was there ever a point where you were the target of their frustration? (Side question, when during the Olympic cycle was everyone on-edge the most? Was it during the selection period, in the lead-up to the Olympics…?)

“The most tense time was always mid-spring of the Olympic year. By that point everyone had invested a whole lot of themselves and it was becoming clear who would make it, who would not, and who was right on the cut line. The athletes on the line had it worst, since, perhaps oddly, their fate was mostly out of their hands. All they could do was try to stay cool, pull their asses off, and hope things broke their way. The top athletes were focused on getting faster and staying healthy. The “cuts” were looking forward to pair trials and going to the shore with their girlfriends after it was all over.

As for me, I was always treated as an integral part of the team. The only time I caught any heat from the guys was if I made a mistake, or if some random new guy just blew a gasket in a moment of frustration. If I made a mistake, I owned it, apologized and resolved never to do it again. The guys held me to the same standards that they held themselves. Obviously, they were not happy with any miscue, but I think they respected the fact that I gave it everything and did not make excuses when I came up short. In the other case, new guys who could not take the heat had short half-lives. Teti definitely selected for composure under pressure. The more someone got wound up, the more Mike would push his buttons. There was a dark humor to it, and those guys either figured out they were getting played, or they blew up.”

If there was ever a point where the rowers started directing their frustration towards you, was that something that you shut down right away or something you just brushed aside since you knew it was the frustration of training talking and not so much the rowers personal feelings coming out?

It was really situational. If I got called out for substandard performance, then I took responsibility for it. If it was someone blowing off steam, I usually made fun of them and reminded them to lighten up. That works well as long as you have their respect and your response does not hit too close to home. People have a chuckle and everyone gets back to business.

There were certain times, usually when tensions were already high, where I would be the go-between for the athletes and the coaches, delivering messages no one wanted to hear. In those times, no one was really happy with me. It was the least fun part of the process, but my role was to help us win, not to be buddies or blow sunshine.

For example, one day Mike wanted to do race pieces for the third day in a row. I knew the guys were already tapped out. Mike asked me if the crew was all jacked up for timed pieces and I told him, no, they were exhausted but would throw everything into the workout and then go home to crash. At first he was miffed, but he countered with, “If you guys break X time in the first piece, the workout is over.” We beat the time, and I think he said, “Let’s just do one more short piece flat out.” Then the workout was really over. We ended up doing less than half of the planned distance, but it worked out.

Being truthful and direct in those interactions is not only the right thing to do. Over time I learned it was also a competitive advantage, even if it meant telling a good friend something awful, like “No, I don’t think you have a path from here to make the team,” or “Athlete X is injured but won’t tell you.” They remember and appreciate that you leveled with them.

When a rower or the crew as a whole was having an off day what was your strategy, if you had one, for getting things back on track and getting the crew re-focused without getting an onslaught of criticism, emotions, etc. thrown at you? Did Teti ever get involved or were you expected to handle it on your own?

My teammates and I occasionally got what Bryan Volpenhein called “the shanks.” Sometimes the only cure was time. We just had to ride it out, and we relied on one another to help us recover. If someone had a really strong track record of winning, Teti would cut them some slack where they had time to rehab themselves. My role there was to help them get back on form as quickly and with as little drama as possible…unless I was the one with the shanks, which did happen once or twice.

If a whole crew was getting slaughtered, I would try to break things down into the smallest possible unit of achievable progress and then drive them toward that. It might be things like “let’s be first off line on the next piece,” or “no matter where we are, let’s neutralize the other crew’s move and then sell it to move on them.” Even if we still lost the piece, even a little win can spur some confidence. A couple athletes in the crew get fired up and that becomes contagious. It takes persistence to find something that lights a spark, but that strategy worked better than any of the others I tried.

Teti never missed a trick, and if a crew was having a bad day, he would give us some time to get it together. A big, common goal was to figure it out before Mike decided you needed his help. If things got that far, you were entering a world of pain.

How did you avoid having “the shanks” interfere with your coxing, particularly on days when everyone was having an off day and tensions were high all around? If there was an instance where it did interfere, did you handle it the same way as before (taking responsibility when someone called you out) or a different way?

As the cox, when you have the shanks, you have to do your best to minimize the impact on the crew, and get yourself back on track as quickly as possible. My version of the shanks was magically forgetting how to go straight. In Teti’s system, going straight was the coxswain’s job #1. It is difficult and you have to practice it. When the shanks happened I would go to as much “silent time” as the crew could handle, and focus my attention on getting my mechanics back. If we were doing pieces, I had drills for myself, namely, taking my hands completely off the ropes and putting them on the outsides of the gunwales. My aim was to get myself back together as quickly as I could, which meant not panicking.

If the whole crew is having a bad day, the cox is expected to lead the crew out of it, or at at a minimum, get them focused on some relevant aspect of rowing. If you can do that, you can mitigate the damage, and then you just take your lumps. It is not personal. It is what happens when you underperform. Accept that you had a crap outing, lick your wounds and put it behind you, then come back for the next row ready to go.

What’s your strategy/advice to keep tense situations from escalating to the point where the rowers go off on the easiest target (usually their coxswain) and/or for preventing it from happening in the first place? Does it really all go back to simple mutual respect for your teammates?

Respect and trust are such huge parts of coxing. If you don’t have those things with your crew, you are a sitting duck. But they must be earned over time. Working hard on coxing fundamentals and being the person who looks out for the well-being of your athletes goes a long way. By looking out, I mean helping them get faster. If the coach has identified flaws in their rowing, work with the athletes to fix them as quickly and calmly as possible. Calm athletes can make changes. Tense people cannot.

I don’t think it is possible to completely avoid getting hammered by the athletes every now and again. What is possible is to build that respect and trust so the rowers know they have their own work to do before coming after someone else, namely the cox.

What advice do you have for junior/collegiate coxswains who may be dealing with rowers who feel like the only way to blow off steam is to blame them for every little thing that goes wrong, keeping in mind that younger coxswains tend to have a harder time maintaining a poker face and not giving in to how the rowers’ treatment makes them feel? At what point do you feel it’s gone past being something they could/should handle on their own and instead needs to be brought to the coach’s attention?

Be honest with yourself, and take athletes’ comments seriously, but not to heart. The former is a behavior change any aspiring champion must embrace; the latter is hard, since emotions form a huge part of our initial reactions and they generally run hot.

When they challenge your coxing, come right back and ask: “What can I do better? How should I do it? Coach me and I will work my ass off to improve.” If you take criticism seriously, you train your athletes to give only serious criticism. If you are willing to be coached – which intrinsically means accepting that your coxing is not perfect – and can show that you can make improvements, too, you will get massive respect points. From first principles, racing is about going as fast as you possibly can. Winning is just a byproduct of that. Starting here, getting coached (even harshly) and making changes are simply parts of the process.

Going back to my first answer, there is a difference between the national team and youth/college programs. In our case, the coach ruthlessly weeded out temperaments that would be liabilities at Worlds and the Olympics. Most other programs do not have that luxury, since they need the butts in seats or the massive erg score that occasionally comes with an outsized ego. If something is bothering you with one of the athletes, then my suggestion is to address it one-on-one first, as above – find out what the beef is and see if you can make an improvement. If that does not work, ask a respected crewmate to help you work it out with the person. If it escalates to the coach, you have a major problem. One of you is likely gone, and unfortunately the cox usually loses out. Our job is to glue the team together and lead them. If we cannot do that, someone else will at least get a chance at it.

If there are any rowers and coaches reading this, let me point out that rowers improve faster than coxswains, especially early on. Think of how often second-year rowers make the varsity. I bet you know of several. Now think of some second-year coxswains who made the varsity. Probably not too many. The right answer to this is to coach your coxswains as rigorously as you coach your athletes. Don’t just rely on someone figuring it out on their own. It’s not complicated and pays dividends as the season progresses toward championship racing.

That last paragraph is really important and definitely something that I hope coaches take into consideration. It also reiterates the point I’ve been making for the last two years that you have to coach your coxswains and give them the tools to succeed just as you do with the rowers.

I hope you guys enjoyed that and as I said earlier, are able to taking something away from it that you can incorporate into how you work with your crews. If you’ve got any questions or a follow-up on something that was discussed, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email.

Pete, thanks again so much for your support and your help with this!

Image via // World Rowing

A coach is someone who always makes you do what you don't want to do so you can be who you've always wanted to be.

College Q&A Recruiting Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow July 4, 2014

How involved should my coach be in the recruiting process? I know it sounds bad but I haven’t really talked to him at all about this.

Eh, I think they should be as involved as you want them to be. In theory they’d at least know that you’re looking to row in college since a lot of the initial recruiting questionnaires will ask for their contact info. It’s also helpful to have them know what your plans are so that they aren’t totally blindsided if/when you ask them to write you a letter of recommendation.

Related: Letters of Recommendation

If you have a good relationship with your coach then involving them in the process can only help you, especially if they’ve been coaching for awhile or happen to know people in the rowing community. I was pretty close with my two coaches in high school and they were both really helpful when I was looking at colleges. Both knew all the coaches at the schools I was applying to, which was a huge help because they were able to tell me a bit about them before I actually met them, in addition to talking to them on my behalf.

If you don’t have a close relationship with your coach or there’s been a lot of turnover to the point where you haven’t consistently had the same coach for at least two years then I wouldn’t worry about involving them beyond saying “hey, so I’m looking at these schools and was asked to include your contact info on the recruiting forms I filled out”.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow May 2, 2014

I’m a HS varsity men’s coxswain, but our club spends a lot of time sculling in quads and rowing small boats. As a result, I spend a lot of time sitting on the launch. However, I don’t exactly know what the best way to make use of that time is. Usually I just watch the rowers quietly and mention the occasional technique mistake if I don’t think my coach sees it, but I’m not really sure what the protocol is. Should I tell the rowers directly if I’m seeing something off? Should I try to talk to my coach about what lineups I think are working and what aren’t (he very occasionally asks my opinion on who should get seat raced and stuff like that)? Or is it better to just watch and note what’s going on so I can use it when we do row coxed boats?

I think the best way to make use of your time in the launch would be to do all the things you listed. If you’ve got a camera (an actual camera that you can zoom in and out on), bring that along too so you can get some video of each of the rowers. That’ll give you the opportunity later on to watch it and go over, either with your coach or that rower, the things you’re noticing. From there, you can use whatever you took away from those clips to help you come up with calls to use when you’re in the boat with them. The calls could be boat-wide reminders if you see several rowers doing the same thing or individual ones if you notice certain rowers have their own specific tendencies.

In that same vein, I’d also make sure you’ve got your notebook out on the water with you so that you can jot down anything you hear your coach say that you think would be pertinent for you to use in the boat. Usually when I do this I write down pretty much all the technique things the coach says (I’ll make a note if it’s directed towards a specific person but I tend to just write them down in an “in general” sense), in addition to any miscellaneous quips or phrases that I can turn into a call later on. If the crew is going through drills or doing pieces and he shouts something to them and follows it up with a “yea, that’s it!” (meaning the crew responded to what he said), I’ll also write down whatever it was and what he said it in reference to so I can use it in the future if/when necessary.

Below is an example of what my notebooks tend to look like when I’m riding in the launch as a coxswain. (If I’m actually coaching from the launch and trying to take notes it usually ends up looking like a dyslexic chicken wrote it. It’s hard to write, steer, and watch the boat at the same time.) It’s basically just a mix of lineups, whatever workout we did, any switches that were made, and individual and general comments.

Regarding talking directly to the rowers, I’d say eight times out of ten I usually say something to the coach first before I say it to the rowers. I still do this as an assistant coach just to avoid undermining their authority. I’ll usually say something like “Katie’s lunging at the catch again” or “Have you noticed how X does Y when we’re doing Z?” and if I’m coxing they’ll either reply with “good call” and then tell the rowers what I saw or if I’m riding along as the assistant coach they’ll let me tell them myself. The other reason why I run past the coach whatever it is that I saw is because there’s always the chance where what I’m seeing isn’t actually what’s happening (aka I’m misinterpreting what’s they’re doing or what the effect of whatever they’re doing is) or it’s not something that’s necessary to tell them in that moment. If the latter is the case then I’ll try to tell them during a water break or once we get back on land.

I would definitely use that time to talk to your coach about lineups, personnel issues, etc. and let him know in general how things are going in the boat. One of the things my coaches would frequently ask me is how I think the drills we’ve been doing are affecting our strokes – have they gotten better (meaning the drill was effective) or stayed relatively the same (meaning the drill wasn’t effective). This kind of information would clue them into how well we were using our time and if certain drills were worth continuing to do or if they needed tweaked or whatever if we tried doing them again.

Coxing Novice Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 27, 2014

Hi. So I am one of 4 coxswains on my team. We primarily have 3 boats: 1 V8+, 1 N8+ and 1 V4+. I have the second most experience coxing of the four of us, yet my coach is putting me with novices. Over the last few weeks I have only been coxing the V8+ and V4+. Our first race is on Sunday, and I have only been in the Novice boat one time since we got back on the water. The coxswain who has the least experience is practicing with varsity this week, but I feel like I should be there since I’ve been working with them the most, and we seem to have found a good rhythm. I want to talk to my coach about it, but I don’t want to sound like I think I’m entitled just because I’m older than the other coxswain. Thanks!

I’ve been in that exact same position before, as the novice coxswain and the experienced one. When I was a novice my coaches put the new coxswains with the 1V, 2V, and JV8s and the varsity coxswains with the N8+, F8+, and whatever fours we had. The purpose for doing that was to give the novice coxswains an opportunity to learn how to steer, practice the basic commands, etc. with people who already knew what they were doing. (Novice coxswains + novice rowers = the deaf and blind leading the deaf and blind, leading to verrrrry frustrated coaches). Learning to steer is infinitely easier if you can practice with people who can already row reasonably well and know how to maintain the set.

Practicing the basic calls is easy too because if you make a mistake the coach doesn’t have to worry about everything going to hell as a result. In most cases, the stroke can talk the coxswain through the warm ups or drills and answer any questions they have, which is also really helpful. It also gives the coach peace of mind that if they somehow get in a bad situation (on the wrong side of the river, stuck in some branches on shore, coming into the dock wrong, etc.), the rowers can talk themselves out of it while the coxswain absorbs what is happening so they know in the future what they should do instead (alternatively, the stroke can tell the coxswain what needs to happen and the coxswain can repeat those calls to the crew, thus learning what they need to say and who they need to say it to).

As the varsity coxswain in the novice boat, this is really for the coach more than anything else because it gives them the chance to work directly with the rowers without having to worry about the coxswain not knowing what to do and/or steering them off a cliff. They can also have you go through the drills with the rowers without having to explain every detail of how it’s done first, which allows them to concentrate their focus on developing the rowers’ technique. Having really good communication skills and lots of patience are also qualities that would entice the coach to put you with the novices. My patience was never that high but I made up for it with my ability to explain what we were doing, how it was done, etc. in a way that new rowers could understand.

Since it seems like a couple of the coxswains are switched around and not just you, I would maybe wait until after this weekend to say something if your coach maintains these lineups through the end of the week. My assumption would be that he wants both the novice eight and the novice coxswain to get a race under their belts without being hindered by one another, meaning the novice eight can focus on rowing their race while being coxed by someone who knows what they’re doing and the novice coxswain can practice steering a straight course with a crew that has good enough technique to not get in the way of that. That way when they eventually get in the same boat, both will know roughly what to do thanks to having the opportunity to first work with people who actually do know what to do. This will also give you the opportunity to work on your communication skills and introducing the novice crew to what racing is really like, in addition to explaining some of the things that you learned as a novice that the coach might not be able to explain.

After this weekend if your coach doesn’t switch you back to your normal boats, then you can approach him and ask if the lineups you’re in now are permanent or if they’re just temporary. I feel like that’s a pretty normal thing to want to know so I don’t think posing that question makes you appear entitled at all. As long as you don’t come off all “WTF this is BS, I’ve been here longer, I deserve the top boat” and get all whiny about it, you should be fine. I asked my coaches the same question two years in a row and they answered it pretty casually both times.

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow February 7, 2014

Hey. I’m a 15 year old rower from Australia. There’s 2 girl’s crews in my year, 9/10s. The A crew recently got one of their friends to cox them, but she’s an average weight and height. I’m in the B crew, which is constantly changing rowers, the cox and seat order. I’m currently 148cm (4’10”) and I weigh 40kg (88 lbs). Two of the girls in A crew and myself think that I’m a good cox and I should be coxing A crew, but I never get the chance to cox them or any other crews anymore. What should I do?

Wow, you’re smaller than me and you row? That’s crazy (and impressive…).

Hmm. I assume you’ve talked to your coach about this? Not knowing anything about your skills on the water, my guess is that the coaches like what they see and want to keep an oar in your hands because despite being incredibly small for a rower, you’ve actually got some boat-moving ability. If you’re not getting injured from trying to keep up with your teammates and your coaches are happy with the girl that’s currently coxing the A boat, I can see why they wouldn’t want to mess around with the current dynamic. I’d say that, for now, just stick to rowing.

Quick PSA for everyone too: there’s a very, veeerrry fine line that you risk crossing when you tell someone who isn’t your current coxswain (or isn’t a coxswain at all) that they should be coxing the top boat, they’d make a great coxswain, etc. because even if it’s an offhand comment, you’re going to put ideas in their head that might be completely unfounded and/or implausible. Granted yes, there are always exceptions and a lot of them have been posted on here but if you’re a rower and a) aren’t injured in any way, b) have never coxed or have coxed very little (3 months consistently or less), or c) aren’t of coxing size (obviously important) … just don’t entertain the thought. What ends up happening is you start thinking “Oh, I could probably do this better than that coxswain. Pffft, I could call a power 10 better than that. Hmm, looks like she’s struggling with how to dock, no worries I’ll just tell bow four what they need to do because I could probably explain it better than her.” Don’t be that person. Seriously. It’s rude and annoying and can really mess with a coxswain’s head and the chemistry of a crew.

If you think you have the potential to be a good coxswain but aren’t currently one, first determine if switching to coxing is realistic (more often than not it isn’t but again, exceptions exist) and then if you determine it is, talk to your coach about it. They’ll either say “you know what, we actually do need another coxswain, why don’t we try you out in a boat next week” or “we have all the coxswains we need right now, I’d rather see you stay in the boat”. Other times they’ll just flat out say no and unless you’ve got a really, REALLY good reason not to, you should just accept it and stick with what you’re currently doing. Just like with everything else out there, “no” is not code for “convince me”, “incessantly bug me about it until I cave and say yes”, or “search for loopholes so you can do what you want anyways”. You have to trust the fact that your coach does know more than you do and most of the time it’s unlikely that they’re just flippantly ignoring your request.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow February 4, 2014

Hey! So I’m a coxswain, and my coach always puts me in the top two boats with another coxswain. We are very alike coxing wise. Our rowers like us equally and so do the coaches. I’m sure they are having a hard time choosing who to boat higher, but I think they are leaning towards him, so I am wondering: would it be OK to go up to him and tell him “I want this boat and I think I can beat this other coxswain for it. What do you think I should do?” (or something like that). Thank you Kayleigh!

I’ll tell you a secret: coaches love when their athletes make it hard for them to make a decision because it shows that everyone is doing what the need to do. If the decision is easy … man, you done messed up. This quote sums it up nicely:

In the end, the coaches aren’t the ones who made the decision on what boat you would be in this season. You did. You made the decision on whether or not you were going to that optional practice, or whether or not you were going on that run, or giving everything you had on that piece. YOU made the decision. YOU picked your split. You decided your limit and either you passed it or you let it ruin you. Remember that the next time you see the line-up.

If you have a good relationship with your coaches, which it sounds like you do, I would talk to them privately before or after practice one day and say “I know you’re in the process of making the decision as to who’s going to go the varsity boat and I just wanted to reiterate that I really want to cox this boat and think that I could accomplish a lot with them.” Give one or two serious, well-thought out examples of why you should be the one they choose and then leave it at that. Don’t even mention the other coxswain because it really has nothing to do with them. When I hear coxswains say they think they can beat the other coxswain, even though I know what you’re saying, a tiny part of me questions if they want the boat because they really think they deserve it or because they just want to prove that they can cox them better. I’d rather you not even mention them and instead tell me about why you deserve it, what you can bring to the crew, how you can make them better, and how coxing them is going to make you better.

It’s unlikely that you’re going to say anything that’s going to make them completely question their decision but you might end up making a point that they hadn’t fully considered or considered at all. At the very least you’ll remind them why you’re in contention for the boat in the first place and that is never a bad thing.

College Coxing High School Novice Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Teachable moments

By readyallrow January 23, 2014

Yesterday someone posted a thread on Reddit titled “Things I Wish Novices Knew” and when I read it I ended up having a much different reaction than I thought I would. Maybe it’s because I’ve been around the sport for awhile, maybe it’s because I talk to so many novices on here, I don’t know. I cringe at the thought that maybe it’s just because I’m getting older but I’m starting to lean more towards finding the teachable moments in situations like this rather than just reading what’s written, closing the tab, and quietly moving on.

I posted a really long response to the original post (unintentionally, to be honest…) and got a couple emails from people asking me to post it on here because they thought it was “good advice that I wish my teammates would listen to” and “I know several people on my D1 team that need a reminder of how to treat/work with novices if they want them to stick around”. Another person asked “Can you please post this on your blog? I don’t think many of my teammates are on Reddit but I know many of them, including a couple of our coaches, read your blog and this is something I think they should all read. None of them would take it seriously if I brought it up (I’m a junior in high school) but I know they will if they see if on your blog.”.

Here’s the original post:

And here’s my reply:

“OK, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and say that instead of just posting all this stuff on Reddit and snarking on the noobs because they’re all complacent about, well, everything, maybe actually spend some time discussing all this stuff with them. Like [username removed] said, regardless of whether or not this was what he/she actually meant, they just started and they’re still learning. The upperclassmen when we were novices probably/definitely felt the same way about us as we do about the novices right now. There’s no excuse though to not spend the time teaching them all this stuff. And maybe you are, who knows, but if you’re doing it through various offhand, easy-to-ignore conversations or pissed off diatribes before or after practice, your message isn’t getting across.

If they aren’t used to participating in a sport, let alone one that says “fuck the elements” like crew does, they ARE going to assume that on certain days you won’t have practice because of the weather. That’s what NORMAL people do. They see that it’s foggy and think “I can barely see across the street, there’s no way we’ll be on the water today” or “It’s basically hurricane-ing outside, we can’t row in this”. That’s a NORMAL reaction for someone who hasn’t done crew before. You can say “don’t assume we won’t have practice” but part of them always will, at least for the first year.

Instead of having issues with people missing practice, why not have someone send a text to the novices (or everyone) in the morning if the weather looks iffy and say “practice is on, see you in an hour at the boathouse” or “fog’s pretty thick this morning, we’ll be in the erg room on campus at 7:30am”. I know it might seem like you’re holding their hand and making them less responsible but in situations like this, communication is key. Assuming that someone is going to assume something and then getting pissed when they assume the opposite of what you want them to assume is pretty messed up on your end.

If you want them to respect the boat, have them help you fix it when something happens to it so they can see how much time and effort goes into repairing the damage they caused or contributed to. If you’re a club, ask them contribute to the repair costs if they snapped off a fin or lost all the nuts and bolts to one of the riggers. Just saying it’s worth more than your tuition literally means nothing. It’s a fun fact you can tell people at the beginning of the year but after that, no one cares. I can pretty much guarantee you that the only time you start thinking about how much your tuition actually is is six months after graduation when you get your first student loan payment in the mail.

Saying the boat has won more championships than you is a real asshole thing to say, plain and simple. I bet the boat you row in has won more championships than you too but again, that doesn’t really mean anything. All it does is make them feel less a part of the team and lower on the totem pole than they already do/are. Don’t say shit like that to people who are new to the sport if you want them to stick around.

If you want them to go to bed on time, talk to them about time management. How do you manage your schedule? Give them actual examples instead of just repeating the same shit they hear from their parents, teachers, and advisers. Don’t just say “you’ve gotta be awake for practice”. Yea well, no shit. There’s a difference between being awake and being awake and they’re most likely going with the definition of awake that says “my eyes are open” instead of the one that says “my eyes are open and I’m firing on all cylinders”. Explain to them how just having your eyes open doesn’t count as being awake and why it’s important for everyone to be fully coherent at practice because at the very least, it’s a safety issue if they’re not.

If they say they’re having trouble getting all their homework done because they’re having difficulty understanding the material they’re learning in one of their engineering classes, say “oh, Andrew took that class when he was a freshman too and did pretty well in it … you should ask him for help and see if you guys can get together sometime”. If they’re working on a really big paper, offer to proofread or help them edit it. If they’re terrible at math and struggling with their calculus class, hook them up with the person on your team who just happens to have been a TA for that class last semester.

Even if you did everything all by yourself your entire way through college not everyone is like that and sometimes people need help but have a hard time asking for it. If you want to earn their respect as a teammate, be there for them OUTSIDE of practice, not just when you’re at the boathouse. Offer to help them when you can see they need it. Stuff like this will not only help them understand the close-knit feeling that being on a crew team has but it’ll also help them get their work done, stay on top of their classes, and go to bed (hopefully) at a slightly more reasonable hour.

Tuning out, goofing off, etc. is to be expected until you help/make them understand that they are ONE boat, not five or nine individuals. In order for the boat to run smoothly, everyone’s gotta be on the same page. If you’re that one person who is on page 3 while everyone else is on page 5, the boat will be effected. If you can see that they’re tuned out, figure out why. Don’t just brush them off. Engage them, ask them how the boat feels to them, what’s something they’re having trouble with, how does what we worked on yesterday feel today, DUDE your catch timing looks so much better than it did last week, oh, your back’s hurting and that’s why you aren’t focused? well, your posture’s not great right now so let’s fix that and see if it helps. Stuff like that.

Make sure each member of the crew (including the coxswain) gets an equal amount of attention, regardless of how big someone’s issues are compared to someone else. Don’t give them the chance to goof off or tune you out because if they see it, they’ll take it if they’re that kind of person. You, the coach, and the other rowers might know that they’re fucking around but until one of you steps up and addresses it or finds out the root cause, it’s going to keep happening.

To an extent, I don’t disagree with you on having a healthy fear of the sport. I do disagree with what you said about how it will help you avoid things. People new to the sport (or any sport, really) don’t understand that healthy fear the way we do. All they hear is the word “fear” and think “this is something I should be afraid of” and then they become scared of those things. What happens when you’re scared of things? You become meek, timid, and do everything you can to avoid being out-pulled, running into things, catching crabs, etc.

In the boat, you know what that translates to? Pulling harder than you’re capable of right now which leads to you getting injured. As a coxswain, you become over-zealous with the steering leading you to zig zag across the water or you firmly plant yourself smack in the middle of the river so that you’re far, far away from anything that might impede your path, traffic patterns be damned.

With catching crabs, you try to avoid catching them by fighting the handle which either a) gives you a really sore ribcage for a few days or b) throws you out of the boat, which then causes copious amounts of embarrassment that makes you question whether or not you want to keep doing crew. As a novice, is being out-pulled that high on the priority list? No. Learning the stroke and developing good technique should be WAY above anything involving power. If you want to worry about being out-pulled when you’re just starting out, go join CrossFit. The douchebro attitude you’ll develop and the injuries you’ll sustain will be the exact same. You’re most likely all gonna be in the freshman/novice boats anyways so it’s not like there’s going to be THAT much individual competition.

If you want them to worry about not hitting things, have an experienced coxswain walk them out of the boathouse and down to the water with the novice coxswain beside them so that they can see the path of least resistance that they should take when going out/coming in. Remind them that the equipment is precious and they should treat it as such. That’s all you have to say. Have your experienced coxswains explain how to steer the boat, what to do if they get in various less-than-ideal situations, etc. and then put them in a boat of experienced rowers so that if something DOES happen they’ll at least have knowledgeable people on hand to help them out. If they hit something because they don’t know how to use the equipment because YOU as the coach/experienced teammate didn’t THOROUGHLY teach them how to use it, that’s on you WAY more than it is on them and you HAVE to understand that.

Telling them to be afraid of something is going to do the exact opposite of what you want. Instead of saying “have a healthy fear so you can avoid all these things” explain to them that these are things you should always be conscious of so that you can always be striving to improve. Let the thought of catching a crab MOTIVATE you to really work on your technique so that crabs don’t happen. This will lead to all of those issues becoming less-than-likely to occur because you’ve developed the necessary skills that allow you to avoid them with no effort.

Raising the hands, lowering the blades, etc. is just something that you’ll have to keep explaining to them until it sinks in. I’ve worked with enough novices to know that they think the handle is everything, so if you say “lower the blade” they’ll put their hands down instead of the blade. Come up with some drills or something that will help them distinguish the two. You could do something like a basic catch drill at the finish and have them say “blade” when the blade goes in/hands go up and “hands” when the blade comes out/hands go down. I donno. Do the thing where all the starboards put their hands on the gunnels and all the ports lift their hands up to their faces, then switch, then have them figure out how to balance it on their own. Once they’ve got it, ASK THEM what they did to fix it and how did they know that’s what they needed to do. The more you engage them instead of just talking at them the better they’ll understand and the more focused they’ll be come.

Novices drive me insane so it’s not like I don’t understand how you feel. I’ve been in your position as a coxswain and a coach many times. I’d pick an experienced crew over them any day but working with them has taught me a lot of things that we tend to forget the more experienced we become. 10+ years of coxing more and more experienced crews made me complacent about a lot of the basic stuff. It wasn’t until I started coaching novices that I had to really go back and think about each individual step so that I could break everything down into individual parts so that they’d understand what I was trying to communicate. You really do have to spell out everything for them in the beginning. Is it time consuming and kinda annoying? Obviously, but it pays off in the end.

I’m one of the most impatient people on the planet and I get frustrated very easily when things that seem like common sense to me appear not to be to other people. With novices, everything we think is common sense isn’t to them. You have to be patient and work with them but I promise you that when it clicks and they finally get it, you experience a really rewarding sense of accomplishment, not only for them but for yourself too.

As much as I enjoy snarking on novices for the silly things they say and do (and man, do they say and do some seriously snark-worthy things…), ultimately that doesn’t do anything to help them get better. If they’re (hopefully) working hard to get better we should be working just as hard to help get them develop their skills and become competitive athletes. You most likely had someone like that when you were a novice so now it’s your responsibility to go be that person for someone else.”

I won’t elaborate any more on this since I think I covered everything pretty well already but what I hope you guys will take away from this is what I said in the last paragraph. That doesn’t mean you have to stop getting amusement out of the things novices do – I know I never will – but at least guide them towards the right way of doing things instead of just posting about it on the internet.

Image via // @lucerneregatta

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow November 16, 2013

Hey! So I’m a coxswain in high school and we (all the coxswains) want a coxswain evaluation/ranking from the rowers. Some coxswains feel like they should be in a different boat and we all want feedback from the rowers. How do we go about asking our coach about it?

I would advise against a “ranking” from the rowers. That would only cause … problems. Leave that kind of stuff to your coaches.

I’d talk to your coach and say that you and the other coxswains are looking for some more in-depth feedback from the rowers so that you can get an idea of the things you need to focus on improving over the winter. Ask them if it’d be possible to do a coxswain evaluation at the start or end of practice one day. If it is, ask them if you can make a list of things that everyone wants feedback on and give it to them for final approval within a day or two. Some coaches will want to create the evaluations themselves but others might be OK with you guys coming up with the questions (or some of them) yourselves as long as they get to see what they are first.

If they’re OK with you writing some of them, sit down with the other coxswains and come up with a list of 8-12 things that you think are the most important things for you to be evaluated on. If you need help coming up with ideas, check out the “coxswain evaluation” tag. Also make sure to note whether you want feedback in the form of short answers or a 1-2-3-4-5 system where “5” is very proficient or whatever you want to say and “1” is the opposite. Personally I’m a fan of short answers but the amount of time you have usually dictates whether or not doing that is an option.

Also, when you propose the idea to your coach, leave the part about being in different boats out because that’s not something the rowers have any control over – the coach(es) make those decisions and they’ll have their own reasons as to why you’re in the boats you are. If you or anyone want to know specifically why you were in this boat instead of that one, you should go directly to your coach and ask.