Tag: coaching

How to cox (and coach) novices

Coxing How To Novice Rowing

How to cox (and coach) novices

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Previously: Steer an eight/four || Call a pick drill and reverse pick drill ||  Avoid getting sick || Make improvement as a novice || Protect your voice || Pass crews during a head race || Be useful during winter training || Train when you’re sick (as a rower) || Train when you’re sick (as a coxswain) || Sit in the boat

Coxing novices when you’re all novices isn’t that hard but doing it as an experienced coxswain  … that can be tough (at first). There aren’t many things you’ll encounter during your career that tests your ability to communicate quite like working with novices will. There’s a quote from Einstein that says “if you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough” and you realize how true that is when you’re trying to explain the stroke sequence or the nuances of the catch to a group of people who are completely new to the sport.

Related: My coach has enlisted the help of the rowers who’ve finished their last season at school to help with a learn to row program for the new recruits. We’ll be taking them out in quads for a couple of weeks. Do you have any advice on how to teach them to get the basics down? My learn to row experience is just a big blur now!

Twice in my career I’ve had moments where I’ve questioned if I actually knew anything about rowing – once as a senior when I coxed our novice eight and again four years ago when I started coaching. I’d think that what I was saying was clear and made perfect sense and it’d only be after the fact when someone would say “I knew what you were saying because I’ve rowed for ten years but they didn’t understand it at all…” that I’d realize how ineffective my communication style  was given the audience I was working with.

Below is some of the advice I’ve gotten over the years that has helped me improve how I cox (and coach) novices.

Consider your audience

Not only are they not rowers, some of them aren’t even athletes. You have to tailor your language so that it makes sense to everyone, regardless of whatever previous exposure they have to rowing or sports in general. Rowing itself has a pretty intense nomenclature that doesn’t make much sense to those who aren’t familiar with it so before you say “sit ready at the catch with the handles off the gunnels and the blades buried”, take the time to explain what all the sport-specific terminology means. Don’t be that person that tries to impress people with big words just to make it seem like you know what you’re talking about – nobody cares what you know if you can’t communicate it to the masses in a way that everyone can understand.

Compartmentalize

Have you ever sat through a 90 minute long lecture and just had no idea what’s going on because the professors are throwing so much information at you? Trying to absorb all of that in a short period of time is hard and you tend to leave more overwhelmed than when you arrived. It’s the same here – you can’t try to teach the entire stroke in an hour-long practice and expect them to get it. (I naively tried once, it was a disaster.)

An analogy that I heard a coach use once was that you have to look at novices like babies who will choke on their food if it’s not cut up into small enough pieces. Rather than trying to feed the rowers the entire stroke at once, break it down … and then break it down even further … and then for good measure, break it down again.

I’m a visual learner so one of the things I did when I started coaching (at the suggestion of another coach) was I’d write out whatever it was I wanted to cover during practice (the recovery, for example) and then I’d make branches from there of what all that concept entailed. It can get pretty involved but it makes it really easy to see each “bite” (and how many there actually are), in addition to helping you organize your thoughts better so you’re not bouncing around from idea to idea to idea while you’re on the water.

Keep your delivery simple

Keep the focus on one or two points at a time and try to only comment on those things. This is something I have to remind myself of all the time (more so when I’m coxing, less so when coaching) because it’s so easy to get caught up in everything you see wrong instead of focusing on improving one specific thing at a time.

If your coach is working on body prep, for example, make sure your calls relate to that and ignore (for now) the fact that the timing is off, 5-seat isn’t burying his oar all the way, and 7-seat is coming out way early. The time will come when commenting on all that will be appropriate but for now when they’re just learning how to take a stroke, keep your focuses narrow.

This also applies when you’re not really focusing on anything and are just trying to get some strokes in. It’s OK to just let them row without getting hung up on every little thing you see that’s “off”. (This is in the same vein of “it’s OK to not talk sometimes”.) If you do want to make a correction, make it something “big picture” so that they don’t get too overwhelmed trying to process what you’re saying.

Give them actionable takeaways

As we as coxswains all know, it’s a lot easier to work on something when you’re given a tangible piece of feedback vs. something vague (i.e. “steer straighter” vs. “hook your pinkies over the gunnels so you’re less inclined to use your whole hand and end up oversteering“). 

A typical way to end practice for most coaches is to recap what you did that day and then give the crew and/or specific individuals a takeaway that they can continue working on tomorrow. I got in the habit of doing this as we were coming in to dock, usually because everything was fresh in my mind and if for some reason our coach wasn’t able to meet with us, the rowers would at least get some feedback that they could use during the next practice (while it was all still fresh in their minds too). “Keep working on the timing” is too vague but something like “Sam, timing looked better today. Keep working on getting the body set sooner on the recovery so you’re moving right with Matt…” gives them feedback on the “big picture” (timing) while giving them somewhere specific to focus their efforts (body prep).

My lack of patience is one of my biggest weaknesses and it is tested when I cox novices. You will have to repeat things numerous times, you will get frustrated when they keep doing whatever it is you just said to stop doing, and there will be times where you wonder if there are any neurons firing at all in the heads of the novices in your boat. I got a couple emails this spring asking how to deal with that and the best advice I can offer is to take a deep breath and, like I said above, find where you can break things down further. Being able to take a step back, analyze what you’re seeing, and then simplify it from there can/will alleviate that frustration because you’ll almost always pick up on something that you didn’t before that you can then communicate to the rowers.

If you have the chance to cox a learn to row camp this summer or if your coach throws you in with the novices in the fall, don’t begrudge the opportunity. It’s a great chance to work on your communication skills and really test how well you understand the technical aspects of the stroke. If you’re feeling like you’ve hit a plateau it can also help you get out of it by forcing you to abandon auto-pilot and start thinking again about what you’re seeing and the calls you’re making.

Image via // @david_watts_

How To Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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Hi Kayleigh!  I am a junior in college and due to a combination of good and bad experiences with coaches as well as a love for the sport,  I’m seriously considering coaching once I graduate and just had a few questions.  Would you say you need a specific degree to coach,  or is the saying “A degree is worth the paper it’s printed on” true? Do I have any chance of getting the opportunity be a grad assistant if I’m not studying exercise science, sports management or something else related? In general what advice would you give to someone who wants to coach? Thank you!

Ah, I love this question!

You definitely don’t need a specific degree. I studied exercise science because I went into college wanting to do research with/on athletes. (You know the show Sport Science on ESPN? I basically wanted to do all the stuff John Brenkus does.) I guess in some ways having that background has helped with coaching but I can’t think of a specific instance where I’ve actually used my degree in the four years I’ve been coaching. (Literally me.) Off the top of my head, the majors of the other coaches at the boathouse when they were in college were history, law (our head coach was a lawyer for 15ish years before he started coaching), theater, sociology, biology, political science, and English. Ultimately I think it’s less about whatever degree you have and more about how you apply the skills you learned while getting it … which I guess is true for most jobs.

Grad assistants and volunteer assistants are kinda the same and kinda different. Grad assistants sometimes get paid but they also obviously have the added hurdle of getting into grad school first. Volunteer assistants don’t get paid at all (NCAA rules, limit on number of coaches, etc.) and don’t have to be in grad school to coach there. I looked at a few schools that were hiring grad assistants but I’m just so burned out on school that I never pursued it. (Learning is great but school is blech so getting another degree, even if I can do it while coaching, is tabled for the foreseeable future.)

The best way to get into coaching is to just find a junior team that’s hiring coaches and reach out to them. They’re practically a dime a dozen so as long as you’ve got some rowing/coxing experience it shouldn’t be too hard to get involved. I definitely think starting out with juniors is the way to go because even if it’s with a top program, the environment is just more conducive to you being able to figure out your coaching style and trial-and-error stuff to find out what works. In some cases it’s something you can do while you’re still in school too. One of my friends started coaching his junior year and would coach the novices twice a week in the afternoons when they were in season and then four times a week during winter training. In the summers he helped out with the learn-to-row camps they offered and then after graduation he became their head coach for a year or two while working for a local company.

I was at a coaching conference a couple years ago, around the same time I decided coaching at the college level was what I wanted to do, and I asked Kevin Sauer (UVA’s coach) if he had any advice. He said that the best way to start coaching at this level is to go be a volunteer assistant because not only does it give you a lot of valuable experience but also because pretty much no team is ever going to turn down free help. I had a lot – like, a lot – of people tell me that was an awful idea (including other coaches I know who had been volunteer coaches … they compared it to indentured servitude) because you don’t get paid (the biggest deterrent, especially for people my age who are saddled with a ton of student loans and can’t really afford to work for free) and it’s not always a positive experience. One of the coaches I talked to told me that I’ll either figure out exactly what I want in a team or I’ll find out exactly what I don’t want and the latter kind of sums of my first experience with volunteer coaching.

I was initially really excited about it (and blatantly ignored any and all reservations that I had, which was stupid) and then spent the next few months thinking “I’ve made a huge mistake“. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep coaching after that, at least at this level, but my high school coach encouraged me to keep looking and that’s how I found my current job at MIT. One of my friends rowed here so I knew a little about the team and I figured what the hell, I’m moving back to Boston anyways, might as well reach out. I think within like, ten minutes of talking to our assistant on the phone I was like … this is where I want to be. At the end of our conversation he said he still had two or three other people to interview but I flat out said (a lot more aggressively than I’d intended) that I wanted the job and that was pretty much it. It was very much a “when you know, you know” situation for me and I haven’t regretted it once since. (I could seriously go on for days about why this has been such a positive experience for me but I’ll spare you.)

Something I see repeated a lot (and that I agree with) is to not assume that just because you’ve been rowing or coxing for awhile that you can just jump right into coaching (especially at the collegiate level) and be good at it. You do have to humble yourself a bit and put aside your own success and recognize that that has little to no bearing on how good of a coach you’ll be. There’s definitely some work that goes into figuring out how to communicate the things that seem like common sense to you to a group of rowers (especially novices) who might not conceptually understand what you’re saying. I think that’s probably what I spent most of my first year coaching working out how to do.

Definitely work your contacts though and keep your eyes and ears open for coaching or other volunteer opportunities in the summer as a way to get your foot in the door. One of the camps I coach at (Northeast Rowing Center) has college kids work as the counselors so that’d be something worth looking into if there are any camps being hosted near you. (If you want more info on NRC feel free to email me.) It’s super low-key and chill since your main responsibility is to make sure the kids get from Point A to Point B and don’t do anything stupid outside of practice and you get the benefit of being able to spend time with other coaches who could prove to be helpful connections in the future.

There’s probably a lot more I could say on this that I’m just not thinking of right now so if you have any other questions, feel free to ask!

Coxing Drills Novice Q&A Rowing Technique

Question of the Day

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Hi! So I am in my fourth season of crew, and my second season of coxing. Our season started Monday and the novices were already on the water. I was not with either of the novice boats that day but I coxed one today. I found it really difficult to teach them everything. Do you have any advice on how to teach the novices? Also, our first race is in 4 or 5 weeks, so the novices need to get the hang of it as soon as possible so that we can get “normal” boats put together. My boat today was able to row all 8 (6 novices and a 2nd season rower and stroke) fairly well. Any and all advice would be super helpful. Thanks so much!!! I love your blog- I’ve used it since I started rowing.

Therein lies the problem – you can’t teach them everything all at once. Imagine you’re sitting in math class and your teacher starts the day by teaching you to add two numbers together and finishes 90 minutes later by trying to get you to do differential equations … that’s what most coxswains (and new coaches – I was definitely guilty of this) try to do when they’re in charge of a novice crew. You have to start really simple and build from there once you’ve established a solid foundation. 4-5 weeks is plenty of time to get them rowing well enough to race so don’t rush through everything or try to pile on too much in a short period of time just because it feels like you don’t have that much time to work with.

I run our walk-on program in the fall and what we always start off doing (both on the ergs and in the boats) is a super basic pick drill. We’ll start off doing arms only for awhile (like, 15-20min) and I’ll walk around the ergs adjusting peoples’ form and making sure they’re getting the motion down. It’s obviously not going to look great but if it’s like, 75% there I’m happy. From there we’ll take a break and then do arms + bodies. Same routine, I’ll walk around and coach people as necessary but for the most part I want them to just focus on getting the motions down. Even though there are like, a thousand things I could say to them I try to err on the side of letting them figure it out for themselves (unless it’s so egregious that I have to say something) since I think that’s goes a lot further than if I were constantly in their ear nitpicking everything they’re doing.

Once they’ve got arms + bodies down we’ll go back to arms only and blend the two together, so 10 strokes doing that and 10 strokes adding in the bodies, and then we’ll repeat that once or twice more. The next day we’ll start with what we finished with the day before, cycling through arms and arms + bodies before adding in the slides. We’ll start with determining where half-slide actually is, what it should look like, feel like, etc. and then I’ll have them row at half-slide for a bit, similar to what we did the day before with arms and arms + bodies. Most of the coaching I do here is just reminding them to get the hands away and bodies over before the slides start and to not go too far past where half-slide should be.

Another point of focus is feeling what it’s like to drive off the footboards with the legs at the catch, although I don’t bring this up until I feel like they have a comfortable grasp on the recovery sequence. After they’ve got half-slide down we’ll lengthen it out to full slide and repeat the whole process again. Points of emphasis here are, again, hands away/bodies over before the slides start and not flying up the slide just because your butt is on wheels.

Assuming our first practice is on a Monday, we’ll do all of that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (with Wednesday just being a “review” type day of everything up to that point … nothing new gets added) and then on Thursday/Friday we’ll start off with the pick drill (15-20 strokes each) before going into 3-5 minutes of continuous rowing (ideally in the tanks if they’re available). After that we’ll take a break and then do some kind of drill – like cut-the-cake or a pause drill or something relatively simple like that – before going back to a few minutes of continuous rowing.

Once we get on the water (and after spending the first day doing “admin”-type stuff – i.e. how to set the boat when you’re rowing and not rowing, what stern four, bow six, etc. means, how to spin, and all the other basic stuff) we’ll repeat what we did on the erg, either by pairs or fours depending on if we’re in a four or an eight and what the weather is like. The more stable you can make the boat, the less frustrating practice will be for them and you so always lean towards having less people rowing when it’s safe to do so. Oh, and don’t even think about rowing on the feather for at least a few days (or longer…). Stay on the square while going through the stroke sequence, rowing by 6s, etc. and get them comfortable with figuring out blade heights, setting the boat, etc. before you teach them the feather. Keep in mind that square blade rowing is a pretty useful drill in itself.

Related: Hi, I was wondering about coxing brand new novices. I’m in boats right now where most, if not all, people are still learning how to row and working on figuring out technique so I haven’t been making very many calls other than if the balance is terrible or if people aren’t rowing together because my coach is talking individually to people to work on body form and things I can’t see. I feel bad about not saying very much, but I don’t want to interrupt the coach or focus on things not important right now. Other than steering straight and paying attention to explanations for correcting form, what should I be doing to improve my coxing?

What my coaches always did (with us as novices and as an experienced crew) and what I try to do with the walk-ons is once we were able to row by all eight (and not have it be a total shitshow), we’d row 20ish strokes by sixes and then all eight for 10 on the feather, rotating through the sixes for … probably 30ish minutes or so. A couple practices later we’d do the same thing except reverse it – 20ish strokes by all eight on the feather and 10 by sixes on the square – before eventually making our way to all eight on the feather (at which point we’d eventually work in varying rates and pressures to keep things from getting too boring).

All in all, everything I just said could be covered in roughly three to four weeks, depending on how quickly you moved through it all, which gives you a week or two to introduce them to racing and how all that works.

Related: Managing novice coxswains

All that aside, the best advice I can give you is to talk with your coach and figure out what their plan is for coaching the novices. If they want you to be in charge of coaching them while you’re coxing (which isn’t uncommon) then at least discuss with them what you should cover each day so you’re not trying to come up with stuff on the fly. If you’re going out with your coach then let them do the bulk of the talking/coaching while you act as the reinforcer of what they’re saying as necessary. Make sure that whatever you are saying is communicated as clearly and in the most simple manner as possible too. If it can be broken down into simpler concepts, do it. You’ll end up saving a lot of time in the long run when you don’t have to go back and re-explain something that you didn’t cover initially because you thought it was obvious or assumed. (I touch on that in the post linked above – it’s about coxswains but the ideas behind the first three bullet points could all easily apply in this situation too.)

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I just got the confirmation that I’ll be coaching Juniors for the fall! I’m so excited, but nervous at the same time. I was wondering if you had any tips on effective coaching (or at least tips on staying patient, which I’m afraid will be my issue)? Thanks so much! Your blog has helped me out quite a bit lately.

There are going to be times when someone you’re coaching (or coaching with) makes you go from zero to rage in two seconds flat and 98% of the time you can’t say a single thing about it (because of parents, your spot on the totem pole, etc.). It’s inevitable. In situations like that, the best thing you can do for yourself is just close your eyes, take a deep breath, rage it out in your head for a few seconds, and then get on with whatever you were doing. Being impatient or getting easily frustrated doesn’t make you a bad coach as long as you’re not going off on people Bobby Knight-style every time something happens.

When I first started coaching, if I had $100 for every time I thought this, made this face, or wanted to do this I would be a very wealthy person. I’m not a patient person at all so having to teach people how to do something and watch them initially do it so poorly despite what I thought were the most basic and simple instructions I could give them made me very frustrated on a pretty consistent basis.

When you hit that point where you’re thinking “I’m gonna lose it on this kid” because he can’t seem to do anything right, take a step back and re-evaluate. There’s a good chance that he’s just as frustrated as you are because he can tell that he’s not doing or understanding what you want. This is the part where you have to remind yourself that you’re most likely not actually frustrated at the kid, you’re frustrated with yourself because what you think should be working … isn’t. That was my problem. I was never actually angry at anyone for not understanding something, rather I was getting progressively more and more frustrated with myself because I wasn’t used to my (pretty solid) communication skills failing me.

Because that was an unfamiliar feeling, I didn’t know what to do and that pissed me off. What I concluded though was that instead of getting mad you have to get creative. For example, I found out that I am really good at coming up with analogies to explain what should be happening at different points in the stroke. That happened completely on the fly one day and I’m pretty sure I had no idea what I was saying as I was explaining it but it worked (about 50 million times better than anything else I’d said up to that point) so that became my go-to fallback for when somebody doesn’t understand something.

Have a plan but keep it flexible. If you’re one of those people that can function on the fly with no prep or schedule or planning … cool. I’m kinda jealous of anybody that can do that. Everybody does things a little differently though and has their own system that keeps them at their “most effective” but even if you’re not the planning type of person, try to sit down at least once or twice a week and come up with a rough idea of what you want to do at practice over the next couple of days. It doesn’t need to be planned out in 10 minute increments or anything like that but you should at least know the drills you want to do throughout the week and why you want to do them (to reinforce something you did the other day, to highlight and work on something you noticed a few people having trouble with yesterday, etc.), as well as the pieces you want to get in so that when someone (your coxswains) says “Hey Mike, what are we doing today…” you can say “X and Y to start [reasons why] and then we’ll finish off with Z [reasons why]” instead of “I donno yet, we’ll see once we get out there”. (As a coxswain, I hate you if you’re that kind of coach. It’s infuriating. If you want your coxswains to be on top of their game, you need to be on top of yours.)

The reason I say keep it flexible is because there are gonna be practices where you wanna change it up a bit based on what you’re seeing so far, what your coxswains have seen the last few days, what you saw last night when you finally had time to sit down and watch last week’s race footage, etc. Deviating from the plan is totally fine as long as it’s done in an organizational manner that doesn’t throw off everyone else (your coxswains). Being too attached to your schedule can result in you doing stuff just to check it off and say it got done instead of you actually spending time coaching the kids through the drills, pieces, etc.

Oh, and if you’re like me and need (and like) to have a plan in order to be your most effective, don’t take shit from anybody who tries to tell you that that’s wrong, stupid, “not how it’s done”, etc. That goes the other way too – if writing stuff down and adhering to a strict schedule makes you over-think things and spend too much time focusing on unnecessary stuff, that’s fine! Feel free to speak up and say that but don’t let anyone tell your way is wrong just because it’s different from theirs. Be flexible and open to trying new ways of doing things but if you find something that works, don’t be afraid to stick with it.

Last thing. Every so often when you’re out on the water, take a second for yourself to just enjoy being out there. This job is always going to be frustrating to some extent but for every frustrating thing that pops up, there’s going to be ten things that happen that remind you of why you do it. Those five seconds where you hang back in the launch just to take a deep breath and shake out the tension in your shoulders help keep you sane, especially on the days when it took ten extra minutes to get off the dock, traffic is ridiculous, your coxswain is steering like she closed the bar, and now it’s snowing in September because let’s be honest that’s just how the weather’s been this year. Don’t let all the crazy shit that’s going on make forget why you’re out there.  Enjoy the little moments because at the end-of-the-year banquet, that’s gonna be the stuff you laugh about.

College Video of the Week

Video of the Week: 2004 Cal Freshman 8+

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Short, quick bursts of reminders or encouragement like this from your coach during pieces are great for coxswains because it takes no effort to process (aka it won’t take me out of my bubble or throw me off my game) and I can usually turn what you said right around and use it as a call. (i.e. “Here we go, faster now” –> 5 to accelerate the handle and drop the split), which then re-establishes the bond between the coach and the boat. On a slightly more self-serving note, it makes you look good because it shows that you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you and using the coach’s direct feedback to elicit a response from the crew.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I just started coaching, and am worried that I might be a little overwhelmed by dividing my attention between driving the launch and watching the rowers. Any advice on watching what’s happening in the boat while multitasking?

It’s not as overwhelming as you think it will be, I promise. The more time you spend on the water the more of a second nature it’ll become. Similarly to what I tell the coxswains, just make sure you look up and scan the river every 10-15 strokes to make sure there aren’t any crews in front of you or miscellaneous tree limbs, junk, etc. floating around. I would recommend taking the launch out for 10-20 minutes before practice one day and practice steering it while pretending to watch a crew beside you. That’ll get you used to steering straight while your attention is focused elsewhere while also giving you a chance to practice scanning the river every 20-30 seconds. If you can, get another coach to come out with you so you have someone to talk to, similarly to how you’ll be talking to the boat. Somebody recommended doing all of that to me when I was first learning how to use the launches at CRI and it was really helpful. If you were previously a coxswain, the transition won’t be that tough. The only difference is that the boat your steering now is about 50ft shorter. Think of learning to drive a launch like learning to drive a car all over again, except with a boat.

This goes along with what I said at the beginning about scanning the river for other crews – make sure when you go by them you slow down so that you don’t wake them out. There’s nothing worse than a coach that blows by and completely wakes out another crew that’s trying to do stationary drills or have a conversation with their coach. Always throw up a hand wave to the other coach(es) too. It’s just the friendly, polite thing to do. (Harry Parker waved to me once on the Charles and it was literally one of the greatest things ever.)

Also, slightly unrelated, when you go out make sure you have life jackets and a paddle in the launch with you. The life jackets are (obviously) for situations where someone or multiple someones end up in the water and the paddle is if your engine dies and you need to get to shore or back to the dock. (For more info on why coaches are required to carry those items, check out this post near the beginning where it talks about the Level 1 certification thing I went to.)

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

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I’m coxswain captain for my high school team and I want to have a meeting at the beginning of our spring season next week with the novice coxswains to make sure they know what they’re doing. What do you think I should bring up? I know safety and general calls are big ones, I just don’t want to leave out anything important.

Great idea! Way to take the initiative and do that. I think the most important thing that you should talk about with them is water safety. That probably comes as a surprise but I really think that that’s an important topic that isn’t brought up or detailed enough. I’m planning on doing a post about it next week but if you want some bullet points beforehand, feel free to email me.

The key with having a meeting like this is to avoid giving too much information and overwhelming them. The minute they start feeling overwhelmed by what they’re hearing, that’s when they’re going to start tuning you out (source: every math class I’ve ever taken from like, 4th grade through senior year of college). I would pick five key things and no more than that. If you have more than five things (which you probably will) prioritize the most important ones and then have another meeting sometime next month. (That would probably be a good idea anyways.)

If I was doing it I would probably go in this order but it’s obviously completely up to you:

General responsibilities and expectations (minus the romanticizing and overly-flowery descriptions (words cannot describe how much I hate this); be straightforward and tell them what their job/role on the team is, what is expected of them from their teammates and coaches, etc. The clearer you are about this from the very beginning the less room they have later on when they’re slacking off and saying “I didn’t know I had to do that”.

Water safety

Basic terminology (and by basic I mean the most basic of the basics)

How to cox a boat off the racks, down to the dock, into the water, off the water, up the dock, and back onto the racks (make them actually do it too after you’ve showed them how to do it; you don’t have to actually use the boat but at least have them go through the motions)

How to get information off the ergs. Work with your coach to come up with a standard list of things to write down, that way everyone is always on the same page and the process is fairly streamlined (i.e. every time the rowers do a workout it should be automatically assumed that if you’re writing stuff down you should be getting their splits, average stroke rate, and time). Show them how to do that, then have them go through it a couple times so that you know they know how to do it.

A fairly atypical list I think but if you think about it, this is all pretty important stuff that no one ever goes over with coxswains in the early days of their careers (and if they do it’s on the fly or in a loud erg room). What to do on the water in the event of an emergency (medical, safety, etc.) is NOT something you want to try and figure out on the fly though because … well, I’m sure you can all figure out why.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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What was the best coxing/rowing advice you’ve ever gotten? And the best lesson you’ve learned?

Hmm, best advice I’ve gotten … it’s been a long time since someone’s given me good rowing-related advice. I think the one thing I’ve consistently heard from all the coaches I’ve had and worked with in the twenty years I’ve been playing sports is to never doubt yourself or your abilities. It’s cliche, I know, but the coaches who really mean it wouldn’t keep saying it if it weren’t true. It’s easy to let something insignificant crush your self-esteem and once you’re in that hole it takes way longer to get out than it did to get in. If you’re just starting out, it’s going to take time to learn how to do everything proficiently so you’ve got to trust the process and have the courage to be persistent. Once you’ve been at it for awhile you’ve got to remain confident in knowing that if you weren’t skilled, talented, etc. you wouldn’t have made it as far as you have. That’s the most basic fact there is when it comes to being an athlete.

The best lesson I’ve learned probably has to do with looking for coaching jobs (which I know doesn’t really apply to many people that read this). Without going into too many details, I’ve learned that if I have doubts about something, don’t say yes to it because I will end up bored and/or hating it. I’m definitely one of those people that needs to always be on the go and have active responsibilities or be in charge of something. For some reason people think I’m like, joking, when I say to pile on the work. The more work I have to do (that isn’t stupid trivial stuff), the better. I’m a very hands-on learner/worker so just sitting around watching stuff happen doesn’t work for me. I get bored very easily and once I get bored, I lose interest, regardless of how hard I try to stay engaged. It’s incredibly frustrating (indescribably so) when you’re given the impression that you’re going to get to do or be doing all of the things and then you end up doing none of the things. Consistently asking if there’s something I can do gets pretty old after awhile too.

Think of it like going to school where you expect to always be doing work, learning new concepts, etc. and instead you end up sitting in a quiet, empty room staring at the chalkboard day in and day out. Every so often the teacher will give you menial busy work to do but that takes ten minutes to complete and then you’re right back where you started. Going forwards, as more than one person has told me in the last several months, I need to just not be afraid to speak up and say exactly what I want and if that job can’t give it to me or I have doubts about whether or not it will, I have to pass it up because I know exactly how it’s going to turn out (even if that means turning down a really good opportunity or a paycheck).