Tag: coxswain skills

Coxswain skills: Evaluating practices

Coxing

Coxswain skills: Evaluating practices

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel || How to handle a negative coxswain eval || How to cox steady state workouts || How to cox short, high intensity workouts || Race steering || Steering a buoyed course

Raise your hand if after practice your coach, a teammate, your parents, etc. ask “how’d it go?” and you shrug and say “good” for no reason in particular other than nothing disastrous or of note happened. I spent most of my first year or two of coxing doing this before one of the varsity coxswains asked if it was actually good or if I was just saying that because I didn’t know how to actually evaluate a practice. Obviously the latter was the case because I’d just assumed that as long as I didn’t hit anything and the boat had been reasonably set, that’s all there was to a “good” practice.

Related: The four defaults

There’s a ton of different things you could look at to determine how practices went but as a coxswain, here are three you should start with.

Did you make calls throughout practice that reinforced the coach’s technical focus for that day?

Did you make technical corrections that contributed to an increase in boat speed?

An easy way to determine the effectiveness of a technical call is if the boat’s speed picks up within 3-5 strokes and is maintained for 5+ strokes. If you’ve got a SpeedCoach you can determine if your speed is improving by watching for a consistent improvement in splits that is maintained for five or more strokes. If you don’t have a SpeedCoach you can look to see if the boat is running out further between strokes, which is easily determined by watching for an increase in the distance between your puddles.

Did you work towards and/or achieve your personal goals for that day?

Ideally you want to accomplish all of them to some extent but my goal on any given day is to hit two of the three, usually with the priority being reinforcing the technical focus. (If we’re not focusing on something specific that day then I’ll make calls for whatever we did the day before or last week or whenever.) That one is always non-negotiable because it’s like, kind of your job to do that regardless of whatever else is going on.

I don’t always have a personal goal when I go on the water (and if I do it’s usually just making sure I’m steering well) so I’ll try to spend a lot of time watching the blades and relying on boat feel to guide whatever technical calls I’m making, with the goal being to tie in stuff our coach has been saying (to an individual or the crew), maintain what feels good, and/or fix any issues that pop up. That all then obviously falls under the umbrella of hitting our splits when we’re doing steady state or pieces. If those three things are happening then hitting our splits should come easily.

Related: Coxswain skills – Boat feel

Being able to look back at your performance during practice is beneficial to you for a lot of reasons but one that coxswains tend to overlook is that if you’re regularly critiquing yourself and making improvements based off of that, there’s not gonna be a ton of surprises that pop up if/when your team does coxswain evals. It’s always in your best interest to get regular feedback from the rowers but that can’t be the only thing you do to get better. Having an objective eye towards your own coxing has got to be part of the process and that starts with asking yourself these three questions a few times each week.

Image via // @tristanshipsides
How to prioritize and organize your calls

Coxing How To Racing

How to prioritize and organize your calls

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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 || How to cox (and coach) novices

One of the key parts of ensuring you don’t get repetitive or run out of things to say during a practice or race is prioritizing your calls and organizing them (and yourself). When you’re racing it’s also a key part in ensuring your race plan is executed efficiently and cleanly. At one of the Sparks camps I was at last month I was coaching with Malcolm Doldron, who is the lightweight women’s head coach at BU (and a former coxswain), and he laid out a unique plan for organizing your calls that I hadn’t seen before, at least not in this configuration. If being more organized on the water is something you’ve been working on or you have it set as a goal for the upcoming year, try this out and see if it works for you.

Related: Mike Teti’s “Three S’s of Coxing”

The first part of this is prioritizing your calls, which should go something like this:

1. Safety + steering
2. Distance, rate, splits (if applicable), and time
3. Rhythm + technique
4. Motivation

The second part is organizing yourself and knowing where to focus and what to say. Malcolm suggested thinking of it like a clock. To orient yourself, you/the stern are at 6 o’clock, the bow of the boat is at 12 o’clock, and laterally at 3 and 9 o’clock you’ve got the crews you’re rowing with, along with the buoy or shore line.

Looking straight ahead towards where you’re pointed and at your crew should be your main focus. This also corresponds with whatever “safety and steering” calls you make, as well as the “rhythm and technique” ones. From there you’ve got the information that’s right in front of you at 6 o’clock (the data from your CoxBox and SpeedCoach) and then whatever’s on either side of you at 3 and 9. Thinking about it like this is similar to your race plans in that it gives you a framework to go off of vs. just getting in the boat and having all this stuff around you with no semblance of how to cherry-pick the important stuff and communicate it to the crew.

It took me a sec before I fully understood how he was laying it out but once I processed it I realized that this is pretty similar to how I organize myself when I’m coxing. I’ve never laid it out like this but I know that when I’m on the water I’m constantly shuffling between 12, 6, 3, 6, 9, 12, 6, 12, 9, 3, 6, 12, etc. Most of you who have been coxing for awhile will probably realize the same thing it but if you’re new to coxing or like I said earlier, working to better organize yourself and your calls, consider this an option for how to go about that.

Image via // @lucerneregatta
Coxswain skills: Steering a buoyed course

Coxing Racing

Coxswain skills: Steering a buoyed course

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel || How to handle a negative coxswain eval || How to cox steady state workouts || How to cox short, high intensity workouts || Race steering

Today’s post is going to be a super quick recap-ish post on strategies for steering a buoyed course. I’ve gotten several emails about this lately and with IRAs this weekend and Youth Nationals coming up soon, this will hopefully be a good last-minute refresher for anyone that hasn’t had much experience with buoyed courses (which apparently is more common than I thought it was).

I talked a lot about race steering in the last post (linked below) so I won’t regurgitate what I said there but a point that does bear repeating is that if you’re thinking about steering during your race, something has already gone wrong.

Related: Coxswain skills: Race steering

There are four things you can loosely focus on when you’re on a buoyed course to help you maintain a straight course. They include:

A point far off in the distance (like a building or tower on the skyline)

The center line where the buoys meet

The distance that one side’s blades are off the buoy line

The buoy line that’s just ahead of you

When looking at the buoys just up ahead, it’s similar to standing on the street and looking one block up, then you walk a block and look up at the next block. You’re taking it one chunk at a time as opposed to looking down the whole street, or course in this case. I’m personally not a huge fan of this approach because I think it pulls your attention back to your steering more than it should but if the idea of looking straight down the whole course at once is a little daunting, this could be an approach worth trying.

The center-line approach is a commonly used one but coxswains tend to overthink it and freak out because they can’t actually see where the buoys meet because the rowers are in their way. This is where good coxswains separate themselves from the rest because a good coxswain would be able to use their critical thinking skills and common sense (more so the latter than the former, to be honest) to realize that obviously the point where the buoys meet won’t be visible when you’re actually following a straight course. The goal here is to point yourself at the start so that the center line is “hidden” behind the rowers and then to use whatever’s on either side of that point to maintain a course straight down the middle between them.

The last approach is to use your peripheral vision to maintain an equal distance between the blades and the buoy line. This is best used in tandem with focusing on the center-line or a point off in the distance. It’s also easy to practice too when you’re rowing side-by-side with another crew at home (sans buoys) since keeping the crews close without clashing blades is an important part of practice management. The one downside to it is that if you focus too hard on one buoy line it can tend to pull you over to that side. I have a tendency to do this so my go-to is to always look straight ahead and focus on the center-line.

Buoy lines ultimately are not a hard thing to handle, even if you don’t have a ton of experience with them. The last two years at Sprints I’ve seen a lot of coxswains, mostly freshman/walk-ons I assume, nervously asking their coaches what to point at, how to hold a point between the buoys, etc. and it’s very obvious that they’re thinking way too hard about it. Buoys are your friend so don’t think about them more than you need to – they’re there to make your life easier, not harder.

Image via // @merijnsoeters
Coxswain skills: Working with a bad coach

Coxing How To Teammates & Coaches

Coxswain skills: Working with a bad coach

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As a coxswain, having a good working relationship with your coach is crucial. It’s the same as what I’ve said in the past about your relationships with the rowers – you don’t have to like each other but for two hours every day you do have to be able to work together. There’s no foolproof way to do this either … some coaches just suck, plain and simple. What I’ve laid out below probably won’t work for you if you have a coach that is really disagreeable, has a huge ego, etc. but short of telling you to just quit and go join another sport, this is the best I’ve got.

Related: “Coach problems” tag

Most of this I learned the hard way my senior year when I had a coach who refused to coach my eight, constantly made disparaging comments towards me and my teammates, and refused to be questioned by anyone because he was the coach (which he reminded us of literally every chance he had) and there was absolutely no conceivable reason why we shouldn’t just blindly follow every instruction we were given. I, to the surprise of pretty much no one, rebelled hard against all of this because I thought it was bullshit and, to the surprise of pretty much no one, he responded by taking me out of the varsity eight, not just because I questioned him (which was my first mistake) but because I handled it with the same level of maturity that most 17 year old girls would … which is to say, in hindsight I could have handled it a lot better.

Like a lot of things I’ve put on this blog, I didn’t have anyone telling me “this is how you deal with this” and the only advice I got was everyone basically telling me to just keep my head down, do what I was told, and don’t do anything that would, for lack of a better phrase, rock the boat. That kind of “advice” doesn’t really work for me so below are the things that I eventually came up with (some during the season, some years after the fact) that should hopefully make working with or around a bad coach a little easier.

Do what you say you’re going to do

If you’re going to be a coxswain then you’re agreeing to a lot of rules and expectations that are often unwritten and unsaid. Even if your coach isn’t explicitly telling you what you need to do, you still have a pretty defined set of responsibilities that you know you have to execute on a daily basis. If you aren’t doing these things they’re going to draw a lot of attention and the target on your back is going to become even bigger, which is why it might seem like your coach is always picking on you. It’s up to you to go directly to them and ask “what are your expectations of me…” so that you know what’s expected since they’re probably not going to take you aside to tell you themselves. Don’t expect it to be spelled out for you either … you’re probably going to have to read between the lines of whatever vague non-answer they give you in order to figure out what they really want.

Be transparent

I’ve talked about this before but if you screw up, own it and don’t be that guy that tries to cover it up or make excuses. You can save yourself a lot of grief by taking responsibility right off the bat and avoiding the fallout that comes with a coach who not only has to deal with damaged equipment and wasted practice time but on top of that, a coxswain who’s lying about whatever role they played in the incident. If you have a coach who is prone to kicking people out of boats seemingly on a whim and that’s what you’re trying to avoid having happen, you’re playing yourself. If/when you screw up, say “this was my fault, I take full responsibility for it” and accept whatever happens without making it a bigger issue than it already is.

Provide solutions, not complaints

It’s really easy to complain when you have a bad coach but as the coxswain, you can’t get sucked into that and you sure as hell can’t be the one starting it. When my coach would purposely drive his launch close to us so he could wake us out during practice, my default response every time was “are you fucking kidding me…” because … who wouldn’t respond that way? During one of our many post-practice therapy sessions, our assistant told me that it wasn’t worth getting frustrated over when we could instead just focus on rowing better so that the next time it happened we could row through the wake like nothing happened.

“Rowing better” is obviously always the goal but for us it became “we’re gonna do it because we know that you think we can’t”, which isn’t always the best mindset to be in (I hate the idea of feeling like you have to prove something just to get people to back off) but it really worked for us. We doubled down on handle heights, body prep, carrying the blades six inches off the water, etc. and literally every single opportunity we had, we rowed square blades. There were practices where, if we were on the water for 90 minutes, probably 60 of them were spent rowing square blades, regardless of what we were doing. If the weather was bad, even better – we’d row square blades through white caps if we had to. Our bladework got so good that the next time we got waked by his launch we didn’t even flinch and he actually stopped to watch us row by. Our assistant yelled over to him, smile on his face, “lookin’ pretty good, huh?”, which to this day remains one of my favorite moments ever.

That whole situation was pretty defining for me as a coxswain and reinforced the notion that every challenge or hurdle is an opportunity to step it up and showcase your leadership skills. You can take the easy route and complain, which I’ll admit is really tempting to do sometimes, or you can be the one that provides a solution by saying “nope, we’re not settling for this, this is what we’re going to do to turn this distraction into a tool that makes us better rowers”.

Anticipate and over-prepare

This was something I learned early on in my career but it’s benefited me the most when I’ve had to work with erratic, unorganized coaches who thought “coxswain” was synonymous with “mind reader”. Getting in the habit of talking with your coaches before practice about what the plan for the day is, what drills you’ll be doing, and what the technical focus will be is just part of being a good coxswain but if they don’t tell you (or you just don’t ask), it’s gonna feel like you’re constantly being put on the spot.

One way to combat this is to pay attention to patterns. For example, on Mondays you do AT pieces and the drills are almost always catch/front end related. Tuesdays and Thursdays are steady state days and you’re usually left to your own devices. Wednesdays are sprint work and the drills typically relate to whatever you struggled most with during the race on Saturday and during steady state yesterday. Fridays you do a race walk-through. If you can recognize the patterns in your training plan then it becomes a lot easier for you to execute practice with little to no direction or instruction given by your coach. It also helps you prepare your calls ahead of time, familiarize yourself with drills, etc.

The best way to not be caught off guard is to be prepared for whatever might get thrown at you, which means you should know every drill, forwards and backwards, and the purpose of every workout (general rule of thumb: steady state = technique, sprints = power).

The final thing to keep in mind is that the most mature (and hardest by far for some of us) way to deal with a bad coach is to not talk back to them. You will be tempted but don’t. It might make you feel better in the moment to argue or get the last word in but in the long run it’s just gonna hurt you because you’ll essentially be undermining your own authority. Be cooperative, try to be cordial and pleasant (even when it means gritting your teeth to do so), and always, always be on top of your game. The lighter you keep the overall atmosphere by doing those three things, the better the rowers (and you) will be able to focus on the task at hand in spite of the fact that your coach is making it harder rather than easier.

Image via // @rowingcelebration

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College Coxing How To Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: How not to enter stake boats

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Urban Dictionary defines a shit show as “A description of an event or situation which is characterized by an ridiculously inordinate amount of frenetic activity. Disorganization and chaos to an absurd degree. Often associated with extreme ineptitude/incompetence and or sudden and unexpected failure.”. See also: the video above.

Related: Stake boat tips and tricks

Just gonna take this opportunity to share this post linked above on getting into stake boats, as well as this post on other how to scull your bow around (linked below) so that you don’t find yourself in the same situation as this coxswain.

Related: How to scull your bow around

This is … well, embarrassing, obviously … but bigger than that, it’s a pretty big indication that somewhere along the line there was a major failure on the part of the coaches to ensure the UCSD coxswain was properly prepared when it comes to getting into stake boats. Being late to the line (which they must have been given that everyone else looks like they’re already locked on) probably didn’t help either.

Related: Coxswain skills: Race Steering

Also, given the entanglement that happened pretty much immediately after the start, check out that race steering post too for a refresher on how to hold the cables, steering straight off the line, etc.

Coxswain Skills: Race Steering

Coxing How To Racing

Coxswain Skills: Race Steering

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel || How to handle a negative coxswain eval || How to cox steady state workouts || How to cox short, high intensity workouts

It’s officially racing season which means your steering is going to be under heavy scrutiny for the next ten weeks. If you steer a straight course you’re not going to get any recognition (and if you do it’s minimal) but any slight deviation towards one buoy line or the other will likely draw the ire of your rowers and/or your coach, depending on their vantage point. You’ve got a lot of “number one” jobs on race day but steering straight is THE number one priority of all your “number one” priorities so make sure it’s a skill you’re honing every day at practice.

Related: How to steer an eight

Steering during a race is, for the most part, exactly the same as steering on any regular day, at least in my opinion. There are very few things I do differently and the things I am doing differently are simply a result of my heightened levels of awareness. One of the hallmarks of steering is that the speed in which the hull responds to the rudder is directly proportional to the speed of the hull itself. The faster you’re going, the faster it’s going to respond to you making adjustments which means that your adjustments have to be that much smaller in order to avoid oversteering and serpentining your way down the course.

Related: Coxswain skills: Steering, pt. 1

One thing that helps avoid oversteering is making sure you’re holding the strings correctly. Don’t just grip them with your full fist like you’re holding a broom handle or something – you’ve got to ground yourself in some way to the boat otherwise you’re not going to know when you’re making conscious adjustments or when your hands (and in turn, the rudder) are reacting to the boat surging, falling off keel, etc.

This is how I grip the strings when I’m coxing. I didn’t do it here because it would have been impossible to take the picture but in addition to positioning my fingers like this, I also hook my pinkies over the gunnels. This forces me to make millimeter adjustments at a time and nothing more, which is great for when we’re doing straight-shot pieces or I’m racing. If I want/need to make a larger adjustment then I have to take my pinkies off the gunnels and since 99.9% of my steering these days is auto-pilot, that conscious movement of moving my finger  “wakes me up” to the fact that I’m steering and forces me to evaluate why I’m doing it.

(During a regular practice I don’t hook my pinkies unless we’re doing pieces, mainly because I have small hands and it’s uncomfortable stretching my finger like that for an hour and a half. If you’re working on limiting how much you hit the rudder though you should spend more time with your pinkies hooked than unhooked.)

That aside, it’s time to think about how steering is integrated into your race plan. The most trouble you’re going to have with steering during a race is going to come in the first 3-5 strokes and this is usually a result of sloppy bladework by the rowers. If they’re trying to muscle the boat off the line instead of taking clean, crisp strokes then the boat is going to be offset and your point will get thrown off.

Related: In regards to steering during a sprint race, do you recommend using the tiller to steer or having the ports/starboards row with more pressure for a stroke or two in order to maintain a straight point?

If conditions are poor (wind, chop, etc.) then this will only exacerbate the amount of steering you’ve gotta do. The only way to try to avoid having this happen is to practice your starts and make sure those first few strokes are clean and together before you add the power in the fourth and fifth stroke. The calls you make here should emphasize this too.

We have a five-stroke start and last year our varsity coxswain would call it as “pry, complete, complete, accelerate, go“, where “pry” = light on the seats, pick the boat up out of the water, “complete” = hold the finishes, complete the strokes (aka don’t get so amped that you’re just throwing water around), “accelerate” = start adding power, and “go” = full commitment with the legs, time to haul on it. The more time you spending getting those first five strokes down (or however long your start is), the easier it’ll be on race day to get off the line with minimal touches on the rudder.

Don’t be afraid to tell the rowers too that the cleaner the start the less you’ll have to steer off the line. I’ve said this numerous times but I have no problem telling my crew that if they want me to not steer during a race then I expect them to take good, clean strokes so I don’t have to steer. I’ll take full responsibility for the other 195ish strokes but they’ve gotta work with me on the first five. I know I can hold a straight point without thinking about it so the less distracted I am by having to think about where I’m going, the more I can focus on executing the race plan.

The last thing to think about is the buoys, assuming the course you’re on has them. I’ve touched on how to get a point on buoyed courses before but ultimately it’s up to you to figure out what strategy works best for you. Some coxswains rely on their peripheral vision to maintain an even spacing between the shell and the buoys on either side of them, others focus on where the buoys converge on the horizon (aka their stroke’s head) and just aim straight towards that.

Related: Hi! Since the spring races all start boats at the same time, do you have any tips on steering straight? I can tell when I’m veering off my lane, but for some reason, I can’t/don’t know how to fix it! I remember you saying it’s all about the small adjustments, then straightening out, but I can’t seem to get it. [Ex today: all 3 boats lined up, me on the outside, I end up too far out away from the other 2]. Tips? Thanks!

There is no right or wrong strategy so utilize the time you have to practice on the course (if you have any) to see which one is easier for you. The first time I steered a buoyed course my coach told me to just go out and steer like I would if there weren’t buoys there and this allowed me to do whatever came naturally when it came to holding a point rather than explicitly focusing on where the buoys converged or where they were on either side of me in relation to the shell.

Not having buoys, while annoying, isn’t the end of the world. Like I said at the beginning, the only differences in my steering on race day is that I’m more aware of and subtle about my adjustments. That’s basically the “trick” for steering on an un-buoyed course. Grip the strings like I showed earlier, pick a point off the starting line (or aim at the markers at the end of the course if there are any – i.e. on the Charles there are 8ft tall lime green markers strapped to the trees on the Boston side across from the BU boathouse), and only make millimeter adjustments as necessary or as dictated by the weather conditions/bladework.

Image via // @rowingcelebration
Coxswain Skills: Coxing sprint workouts

Coxing How To Rowing Training & Nutrition

Coxswain Skills: Coxing sprint workouts

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel || How to handle a negative coxswain eval || How to cox steady state workouts

Last week I talked about the nuances of coxing steady state workouts … this week is about coxing higher intensity, sprint workouts.

Related: How to cox steady state workouts

Science

Whereas steady state workouts are all about the long, slow burn of energy, sprint workouts are all about the short and fast use of it. These workouts are anaerobic, meaning they don’t rely on oxygen like aerobic (steady state) ones do to produce energy. It’s created at a much higher rate but the caveat is that whatever pace you’re holding is only sustainable for a few seconds up to around two minutes. Think of it like this – if the body of a 2k is like the 800m or 1500m events in track (where you have to balance your power and endurance without relying to heavily on one or the other), the start and sprint are like the 100m dash (where you’re just going flat out as hard as you can for a very short period of time).

Focus

Power. Power, power, power.  It’s a lot harder to make big technical changes during these pieces so you can’t be making the same kind of long, drawn out “coaching” calls that you make during steady state. This is your opportunity to really cox the rowers and get into it so don’t waste strokes by focusing too much on technique and not enough on getting them used to being in high pressure, racing-type situations (regardless of whether you’re next to another crew or not).

Tone

Since these shorter pieces usually involve being at or near race-pace, your tone should reflect that. Overall it should be alert, direct, and energetic without crossing the threshold of being batshit crazy and frantic (which is a typical novice problem). Your words should still be easily discernible … if they’re not, you need to slow down and focus on the quality of your calls and not the quantity.

Calls

Because the focus is more on power and you don’t have as much time to “coach” the rowers like you do when you’re doing steady state, the best/easiest way to incorporate technical calls into the workout is to tie them into your motivational ones. This is easy to do when you’re doing side-by-side pieces with another crew because you can make calls like “let’s take five to sharpen up the catches and take a seat on the JV” or even simpler, us any variation of “legs send“, “hook send“, “legs accelerate”, “direct squeeze“, etc. followed up with “WALKING” to let them know that whatever they’re doing is resulting in you walking on the other crew.

There’s usually not a ton of rest time (i.e. if you’re doing a 20 on, 10 off stroke rate ladder you’ve got maybe 30 seconds between each 20) so you have to make the most of the off-time by quickly and succinctly touching on the positive/negatives of the piece and reiterating whatever the focus/goals are for the next one. When I’m coxing this usually sounds like “OK guys, first 10 felt good but the second 10 started to sag, let’s make sure we’re staying light on the seats and picking it up together with the hips and not with the shoulders…”. I usually try to get out whatever I want/need to say in the first three or four strokes, that way they can row a few strokes in silence before we build it up again.

If you’ve got a little longer between pieces, like if you’re doing 4x2k and have two(ish) minutes between each one, then that gives you a bit more time to discuss with your stroke seat how it felt and decide what the focus needs to be for the next piece. Keep in mind that you’ve gotta balance that with (in most cases) stopping, spinning, communicating with the other coxswain(s) on your point, getting lined up, and giving the coach(es) time to talk if there’s anything they want/need to say. Even though there’s technically more rest time you might not actually get more time to converse with the crew so keep your feedback short like how I mentioned during the first example and then elaborate as necessary if you have time.

After the piece

You must – must – paddle after these pieces for at least ten strokes so the lactic acid (the byproduct of energy production) can work its way out of the rowers’ bodies. Stopping abruptly after a high intensity piece and not giving the body a chance to remove it can eventually lead to muscle cramps so remind the crew to keep moving and take slow, consistent breaths (since the burning feeling in their bodies is due to both lactic acid build up and a lack of oxygen – remember, anaerobic = no oxygen).

Image via // Boston Magazine
Coxswain Skills: Coxing steady state workouts

Coxing How To Rowing Training & Nutrition

Coxswain Skills: Coxing steady state workouts

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel || How to handle a negative coxswain eval

As disappointed as I am that we got like, no snow this winter, I am pumped that we were able to get on the water a full five weeks sooner than we were last year. We’ve been out for about two weeks now and have been doing our usual mix of steady state workouts and shorter, higher intensity pieces. I know there are several guys that love doing sprint workouts and loathe the steady state ones so on days when we’re doing 3-2-1 @ 18-20-24 for 19 minutes (like we did yesterday with the 1V) it’s important that the coxswains do their part to keep the energy up in the boat. This is accomplished less by knowing what to say (though that helps, obviously) and more so understanding how to cox these types of pieces, which is what today’s post is going to be about.

Science

Steady state (aerobic) workouts are long pieces at low(er) rates with short amounts of rest between each individual piece. In rowing, the longer you can go before the body experiences fatigue the better, so in order to accomplish that we focus the bulk of our training on workouts that work to improve our cardiovascular fitness. Simply put, the stronger the cardiovascular system, the better your endurance, and the further into a 2k you’ll get before you start to get tired. If you can delay the onset of fatigue from, for example, 1300m to 1800m, that could be the difference in who crosses the line first.

Focus

These pieces are prime opportunity to focus on technique and incorporate in the things you’ve heard the coach saying to the crew/individual rowers, as well as continue reiterating the concepts they’re trying to convey when you’re doing drills. For example, this week we’ve really been going all in on the catch. Since that’s the only part of the stroke we’ve really focused on, if I were our coxswains I’d make sure that was my main priority as far as technical calls go. You don’t want to be bouncing around (i.e. making a call for the catch on one stroke, a call for the finish on the next one, etc.) because that’s distracting so make a point to consider what your coach’s main focus has been that day/week so that your calls incorporate and reinforce that.

You can also tie in your technical focus to your team goals. For example, last year we lost to GW at Sprints by an absurd 0.1 seconds, which ended up preventing the eight from going to IRAs. If you consider how minuscule 0.1 seconds is when spread out across 2000 meters, it’s easy to see how all eight rowers consistently getting the blades in just a hair sooner at the catch and maximizing the amount of time they’re in the water can make a difference.

Tone

Tone is an area where a lot of coxswains struggle during steady state. If your tone is passive then the rowing will be too so you’ve got to work to find a balance between the energy you bring during sprint pieces and not sounding like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller (YouTube it).

When it comes to what you’re saying during sprint pieces, you’ll want to be moving between two types of calls – normal coxing calls and “coaching” calls. Your normal coxing calls should be said in a crisp, focused tone that gets the rowers attention without being jarring or too in their face. (If these types of calls are at an 8-9ish during a race, during steady state they should be around a 6-7ish.) Coaching calls are said in a more conversational tone – you’re not necessarily trying to match the rhythm of the strokes or anything like that, you’re just talking to the crew like you’d talk to them during a normal face to face conversation.

Calls

As with all your calls, you should keep your coaching calls as tight as possible and eliminate any filler words but don’t get so hung up on the idea that a call is only right/good if it’s five monosyllabic words or less. That’s not how it works (but that’s a conversation/debate for another post).

During steady state the bulk of my calls tend to be coaching calls but I try to follow up with coxing calls as necessary to reiterate the main point of whatever I was just saying. (I wanna say I do this ~50% of the time.) Below are two examples of some coaching calls based on some of the notes I’ve taken this week and in the case of the first one, what coxing calls I’d follow them up with.

“Let’s get the blades locked in behind us here … making sure we’re accelerating through our full arc. Unweight the hands in the last second of the recovery, find that resistance, … and prrry through. Pick off the catch … and accelerate. Lock, squeeze … lock, squeeze … lock, squeeze.“

“The goal is to let gravity do the work so let’s sharpen up the catches by relaxing the outside shoulder and unweighting the handle before the slides turn around.”

Compared to your normal “lock, send” type of calls, these take a lot longer to say which some of you might try to get around by saying them as quickly as you can force them out of your mouth. Don’t. One, no one can understand you when you do that. Literally no one. Two, as you run out of breath you get quieter so by the time you finish your sentence your bow four probably assumes that you just trailed off because they can’t hear anything you’re saying. Three, in situations like this there’s nothing wrong with taking three, four, five strokes to say something to the crew. You’re rowing for 10+ miles, I think you can spare a few strokes to make a single call.

Related: Since were still waiting for the river to be ice-free, I’ve been thinking about what I need to work on when we get back on the water. I’ve decided that coxing steady state pieces are harder for me to cox. I think it’s because I don’t want to talk to much but I’m also scared of not saying enough or being too repetitive. Do you have advice for coxing steady state workouts?

Another important thing to remember is that you don’t have to talk the entire time, nor should you. Not only is that the easiest way to run out of things to say and set yourself up to become a repetitive parrot, eventually the rowers are just going to tune you out because you’re annoying and not saying anything substantial. Not talking gives you a chance to focus on the bladework and mull over in your head what calls you want to make while also giving them some time to process what you/the coach have been saying (and/or just enjoy rowing in silence for a bit). I try to break up my calls by doing 30 second internal focuses if there’s something specific I want them to think about (“Let’s take the next 30 seconds to listen to the catches and tighten up the timing…”) or I’ll just … stop talking for a bit. I don’t think you not talking always needs to be planned or announced but try to keep an eye on the clock anyways so that you don’t go for more than a minute at time without saying something (unless otherwise instructed).

Related: Today during practice we just did 20 minute pieces of steady state rowing. My crew gets bored very quickly and their stroke rating goes down, so I decided to add in various 13 stroke cycles throughout the piece, but I regret doing it because it wasn’t steady state. I’m just confused as to how to get them engaged throughout without sounding like a cheerleader but at the same time keeping up the drive and stroke.

Miscellaneous reminders

When you’re doing these pieces you want to be aware of any time restrictions that are placed on the piece or the amount of rest since they usually correlate to a specific heart rate zone that you’re trying to stay within. (For example, if you’ve got three minutes of rest between pieces, make sure that it’s actually three minutes and not ninety seconds or five minutes. This is also why you need a working cox box and/or a watch – your phone doesn’t count.) The time between pieces is usually going to be spent paddling, spinning, getting water, discussing the previous piece, or a combination of all four so you’ve got to monitor your timer and not let them sit for too long or waste too much time getting water or lined up because this can mess with how effective the piece is.

Related: (Another reason) Why you need a working cox box

Also keep in mind that when you’re doing steady state with another boat, you’re not racing or competing against them. You can go off of them as positive reinforcement (“yea guys, we took three seats over the last ten strokes just by focusing more on maximizing our length through the water…” or “we’re side by side with the 2V right now, let’s see if we can push our bow ball ahead by getting a little more connection off the front end”) but you shouldn’t be going out and saying “OK, they’re seven lengths of open ahead of us, let’s take ten to walk back a seat”. Like … no. I’ve listened to way too many recordings where coxswains do that.

(Loosely) Related: My girls really like when I cox off of other boats, even if we’re just doing steady state. I’m in the 2V boat so they all want to beat the 1V at ALL times. I find it easy to cox when we’re next to another boat/in front of it. However, I never quite know what to say without being negative and annoying when we’re CLEARLY behind another boat. Yesterday afternoon we were practically three lengths behind the v1, and we STILL didn’t catch up even when they added a pause. What do I say at times like these? I always end up getting rather quiet since the overall attitude of my boat is pretty down. I feel like whenever I call a 10 or get into the piece at this point it does absolutely nothing, since my rowers have practically given up.

If I’m doing a long row with another crew then I’ll spend 98% of it focused on us and then maybe get competitive with them if they’re nearby (while still staying within the confines of the piece as far as rate goes) for the last few hundred meters, just to tie everything together and make sure we end on a high note. It’s not the main, secondary, or even tertiary focus of these pieces though so don’t go out there when you’re doing 12 miles of steady state with the sole goal of “beating” the other boat.

Image via // @stanfordlwtcrew
Coxswain Skills: How to handle a negative coxswain evaluation

College Coxing High School How To Teammates & Coaches

Coxswain Skills: How to handle a negative coxswain evaluation

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  || Boat feel 

This might seem like an unconventional topic to put under the “things you should know how to do” umbrella but after spending many hours on coxswain evals over the last year and a half and occasionally feeling like pulling teeth would have been a more enjoyable experience, I think learning how to handle negative feedback/constructive criticism is an important skill that coxswains need to pick up sooner rather than later.

Feedback, both positive and negative, is essential to your growth as a coxswain. When communicated properly, it should touch on three main things – what you’re doing well, what you need to improve on, and areas where you’ve made improvements since your last evaluation. This is a big reason why I revamped how the info on our evals is communicated to the coxswains. Before the coaches just handed them the 20+ pieces of paper and left them to their own devices but now it’s all laid out in a single spreadsheet that hits the three points I mentioned before.

Related: Coxswain evaluations + my system for organizing them

Where going over evals becomes a contentious and unproductive process is when you take the negative feedback personally. Being told you aren’t doing something well can sting because of the amount of time we put into coxing but if someone is critiquing your coxing, they’re not critiquing you. You have to be able to separate you the person from you the coxswain and look at these situations objectively. On the flip side though, if you’re not putting in the necessary extra effort outside of practice (or hell, even at practice…) or you show up every day with a shitty attitude then you really have no right to complain about whatever’s being said, which I think more coxswains than not need to understand.

With that in mind, here are eight things (some of which may or may not be inspired by our coxswains ?) that you shoudn’t do when going over your evals.

Don’t get defensive

In most cases it’s the natural reaction to have but it can also come off as pretty immature. There’s a difference between defending your actions or making a case for why you did something a certain way and straight up making an excuse. You can defend something you’ve done one time (i.e. going through the wrong arch because you were unsure of which one to use due to construction on the bridge – a common problem on the Charles where this is always changing) but if you’re trying to defend something you’ve done multiple times (i.e. hitting the dock when coming in at the end of practice) then you’re just making excuses for why you haven’t adapted your steering to account for whatever was causing you to run into the dock in the first place (i.e. your speed, angle, line, etc.).

Don’t have an attitude or be sarcastic

Full disclosure, I started putting this post together after a particularly … uh, heated … meeting with one of our coxswains this past fall where this was the biggest issue I faced in trying to communicate with them the feedback that was on the evals. The bottom line is that you can be annoyed all you want but don’t be an asshole to the person taking time out of their schedule to go over this stuff with you because I promise, it just makes them not want to do it in the future … and if you have someone willing to go out of their way to discuss all of it with you, you are foolish if you don’t take advantage of it.

Don’t apologize 47 times for whatever mistake(s) you’ve made

Mainly looking at you, high school girls. Say it once sincerely and move on. Don’t make your coaches coddle you and have to keep saying “it’s fine” – I’ve had to do this recently and eventually it gets to the point where I’m like “I literally do not care if you’re sorry or how sorry you are, just do something different“. The more times you say sorry (especially for really trivial things that don’t require an apology) without actively changing your actions or behavior, the less your apology is going to mean when you really do screw up.

Don’t react immediately

If your immediate reaction to the feedback you’re getting is to blurt out “that’s not fair”, “I completely disagree”, etc. you will look so immature, even if the comments are unfair (which they rarely are) and you do disagree (which is fine but see point #1). Absorb the comments and think about what’s being said so you can try to understand why someone made that comment and then say that you’d like to come back to it later, either at the end of practice, tomorrow, etc., after you’ve had time to think about and process it.

And coaches, if your coxswain goes this route … respect it and say “OK, let’s touch base later”, even if that means spending an extra 20 minutes at the boathouse. If you force the issue by saying”no, we’re gonna do this now” you’re just gonna make them resent the whole evaluation process and their confidence/abilities will suffer as a result.

Don’t dwell on it, let it affect future practices, or use it as a reason/excuse for why you have a bad practice the following day

If you were caught off guard by the comments then that’s fine and you should take some time to deal with that but you also need to commit to letting them go, particularly when it’s time to get on the water. No pity parties or “woe is me” attitudes because the rowers don’t give a shit and the coaches are just gonna get annoyed because we have other stuff to focus on.

Don’t ignore comments you disagree with

Not all feedback is useful but disagreeing with a comment doesn’t mean you can straight up ignore it, particularly when getting any kind of feedback is so tough in the first place.

Don’t waste the opportunity to discuss, strategize, etc.

It’s like at the end of a job interview when they ask if you have any questions. You should always ask questions. I’m currently in the process of going over our winter evals with the coxswains and I told them ahead of time to bring questions, comments, things they wanted/needed clarification on, an action plan for the rest of winter training, a list of goals based on the feedback that was given, etc. because this is the prime chance to discuss all of that stuff with me. I see and talk to them every single day but direct one-on-one time like this is rare, as I assume it is with most of you and your coaches, so don’t waste the opportunity to pick their brains when it’s offered.

Don’t be resentful

If your coach(es) or the rowers have been telling you something for awhile and then it comes up again in the evals, you can expect that they’re all thinking “well … we told you so”. This shouldn’t piss you off or give you cause to be bitter towards them, it should instead act as a wake up call (or a “come to Jesus” moment, as our head coach calls it) that you need to do some serious self-analysis and get your shit together. They are telling you this stuff for. a. reason. Don’t ignore them just because you don’t think it’s important because it will bit you in the ass later.

Obviously these critiques are about what’s being said but ultimately their effectiveness is measured by how you handle and respond to them. This will also dictate how future evals go – the more receptive you are to feedback and the more diligently you go about addressing whatever issues are brought up, the more likely the rowers will be to continue giving you feedback because they can see that you’re taking it seriously. If you come off as aloof or combative in response to what’s being said, you’re not going to get better because the rowers will stop giving you any sort of feedback because it looks like you’re not taking it seriously. It’s your call.

Image via // @merijnsoeters
Coxswain Skills: Boat Feel

Coxing Rowing Technique

Coxswain Skills: Boat Feel

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Previously: Steering, pt. 1 || Steering, pt. 2  

“Boat feel” is something that you’ve gotta understand regardless of who/what you’re coxing. It most often comes up when we’re talking about bow loaders since instead of seeing what’s happening you’ve gotta feel it but everything below is applicable to any boat you’ll ever be in.

The way my coach approached it and how some of the best coaches I’ve worked with lately have approached it is that you should ideally spend your first season learning the basics of rowing, meaning you focus on just the bodies and blades. The following season, that’s when you start to really tie in the associations between what’s happening with the bodies + blades and what your body is feeling. That’s not to say that you can’t think about what boat feel is/means your first season but like they say, you can’t construct a building on a weak foundation. Plus, if you’re in boats with novice crews it’s pretty likely that nothing is going to feel good to the point where you’ll really be able to develop any sense of real boat feel anyways.

Related: Hi, I never know what it means when someone asks me what the boat “feels” like. Like the rush for example. I’m not sure what that feels like vs. a boat with no rush. Just in general, I’m not sure how to gauge whether a piece felt good or bad. I feel like the only things I can see are blade height, square up timing, catch timing, and if bodies are moving together, and I can tell if the boat was really moving and if there was power. But what else should I be aware of?

Once you’ve developed a fairly solid understanding of the basic mechanics of the stroke, then you should start asking yourself how your body reacts to these three things: the movements of the boat, changes in the stroke, and technical adjustments made by the rowers. That (the italicized) is boat feel if you were to define it.

The first thing you should do to give yourself a baseline to go off of is figure out what your body is doing when the boat is running well and things feel good. What that means is consciously thinking about how every part of your body that is in contact with the shell feels (i.e. feet, legs, hips, core/back, hands, etc.). I like to think about all of this when we’re doing steady state because I have more time to focus on each of the three things I mentioned before. I think about it when we’re doing drills and stuff too but it’s a mid-level priority since my main priority is actually executing whatever we’re doing. I also like to force myself to think about it when we’re doing high rate stuff (30 stroke pieces are great for this) so I can get used to feeling how the boat moves in racing situations and managing doing that while my brain is trying to process fifteen other things at the same time. (This helps a lot when you’re actually racing because it takes less effort to do once you’ve practiced it a lot.)

Once you know how your body reacts to the boat moving well (which basically means it’s balanced, you’re getting good run, and the rowers are taking effective strokes) it’ll be easier for you to pinpoint when something is off. From there you can address the issue by reinforcing whatever your coach has been teaching lately or by making the call for the appropriate technical adjustment (hence why you need to have a good base understanding of the bodies + blades).

Once you’ve done that, give the rower(s) a couple strokes to make a change. During this time you should be feeling the boat again and asking yourself if and why it feels different, i.e. did the rower(s) make a positive change or a negative change. If it doesn’t feel any different or it feels worse then maybe the call you made didn’t fully address the problem or the rower was unsure of how to implement the change. This is something to bring up to your coach the next time you stop. If the boat feels good, meaning your body’s hit that baseline feeling again, then reinforce the change by giving the rower(s) some positive feedback.

Developing boat feel requires two main things – time and focus. The more time you spend in a boat consciously working on this, the better you’ll get at developing it. Same with focus, the more time you spend processing what you’re feeling instead of just spitting it back out at the rowers, the better you’ll be at understanding the relationship between what they’re doing and how the shell responds.

Image via // @henryfieldman