Tag: coxswain

How to cox (and coach) novices

By readyallrow June 21, 2016

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.

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_

Coxing Rowing

Reviewing the Cox Orb

By readyallrow June 16, 2016

Game. Changer.

That’s the best way I can describe the Cox Orb. It’s one thing to “ooh” and “ahh” over it on Instagram or at the regatta booths but I’m telling you guys, if/when your team is in need of new cox boxes I really hope you alert your coaches to the existence of the Cox Orbs because they are a much more worthwhile investment than NK’s original model. Don’t get me wrong either, I love NK’s cox box – I’ve been using them for 14 years now with minimal issues – but I can’t deny that a competitor in the cox box market as well as an update to what’s currently available is long overdue.

In today’s post I’m going to briefly talk about my experience with the Cox Orb so far and highlight some pros and cons that I and the MIT coxswains have come across as we’ve used it throughout the last several months. To start though I wanna point out the different models that are available, as well as do a price comparison between each one and the standard NK model.

Price comparisons & who each model is best suited for

Below is a Google Sheet that includes the price of each model (the price links to that model’s page on the Active Tools website) as well as the key features of each one (in separate tabs at the bottom). To view the full spreadsheet in a separate tab, click here.

Some notes:

High school clubs/teams don’t need the fancy features that come with the Platinum. Although the GPS would be great to have, the Steel, Cobalt, or Tungsten will accomplish everything you need at this stage in the game.

College programs should consider the Tungsten or Platinum simply because the data you can collect will go farther here than it would at the high school level (and if you coach/cox a bunch of data driven nerds like I do, they’ll appreciate having something else to look at other than whatever data you collect from the ergs).

The full package is, in my opinion, a better deal than just getting the unit, mic, and charger because the full package comes with the carrying case (which is $40 on its own). I’m obsessed with this case because it’s small, lightweight, and has a shoulder strap so I definitely recommend using it over NK’s cases (which should fit these cox boxes, although I haven’t tried to see if it does yet).

Pros & Cons

I’ve had the Platinum model since September and I love it. I raced with it at Head of the Charles and used it regularly throughout the fall while I was coxing. Here’s my pro/con list thus far.

PRO The microphone is loads better than NK’s in nearly every capacity. The sound comes across clearer and even on a low setting it’s still pretty loud. The head strap gets a huge thumbs up from me because, as someone who hates wearing the mic, NK’s drives me crazy. Even their new head straps seem flimsy at best and I always felt like no matter how tight I made it, it never stayed in place, even with a hat on. The Orb’s strap is wider, thicker (I think … or at very least, more durable), and just more comfortable in general so once it’s on I don’t have to think about it again until I take it off.

CON My only con with the microphone is that it doesn’t seem to fare well in strong winds. For as good as the sound is, it seemed to get easily drowned out when the wind was hitting the mic, despite my attempts to shield it with my hand, turn my head a little, etc.

PRO Real time splits and check factor. Speed coaches are great but it’s just one more thing to have to remember and carry whereas with the Orb, the splits are already built in. I never tried it with the impeller but when I compared the splits I had with my Speedcoach they were very similar. Not quite exact but the margin of difference between the splits was consistent and never more than 1-2 splits total. I didn’t play with the check factor very much (this was mainly due to the level of boat I was coxing, I don’t think the data would have been that useful for us) but the fact that it exists is a huge plus (and again would definitely be data that college coaches would appreciate having).

CON There’s kind of a steep learning curve that comes with the more advanced models. The Steel and Cobalt are very similar to NK’s (they’re basically idiot proof) but the added features on the Tungsten and Platinum (particularly the Platinum) mean that you’ve gotta spend quite a bit of time reading through the instruction manual and playing with it before taking it on the water if you want to actually be able to use them to their fullest capacity. It took me a few practices before I felt comfortable just using the basic features and remembering which buttons did what. I didn’t expect to “get it” right away but I also didn’t anticipate how much time I’d need to spend familiarizing myself with it before I practiced with it. I guess this isn’t so much a “con” as it is a friendly warning that this isn’t a piece of tech that you’re gonna want to figure out how to use as you’re trying to use it during practice … speaking from experience, you’ll just frustrate and distract yourself if you try to do that.

PRO In the Tungsten and Platinum, the need for an external voice recorder is eliminated because the Orb automatically starts recording your voice as soon as you press “start” to do a piece. To get it off the unit (along with all the other data) all you’ve gotta do is plug it into your laptop via the included USB connector.

CON This may be a user-error issue but I had some trouble with the Orb staying in the holder while I was racing with it during HOCR, as well as when it was cold out. I noticed that the colder it was the less likely it was to stay in place, I assume because the plastic on the holder was less malleable than it is when it’s warm. When I was practicing this wasn’t that big of a deal but it did distract me while I was racing at HOCR. I didn’t have issues with this when we were in Florida though (where it was substantially warmer) so I’m attributing it to either me just not using enough muscle to get it into the holder properly or, like I said, the cold affecting the malleability of the plastic.

(Keep in mind that the Orbs don’t fit perfectly into the standard holders, which is by design. The rounded bottom (hence, “orb“) lets you position it however you want, that way you don’t have to lean forward or adjust your body in any way in order to clearly see the screen.)

PRO You can program workouts which means, for example, you don’t have to remember each individual chunk of time for your interval workouts because you can just program them straight into the cox box. I used this a couple times when I coxed the guys in Florida over winter break and it was a life saver. When you’re on a busy waterway with giant channel markers scattered all over the place (that you need to pay extra attention to since one of the coxswains already hit one, broke an oar, and ejected the bow seat…) all the while actually trying to cox a piece, the last thing you want to be doing is distracting yourself by trying to remember how much time is left in this interval. Programming it and letting the cox box do the work is a god send.

PRO The customer service is A+. I’ve had minimal dealings with NK’s customer service myself but we’ve all heard the stories so … yea. The guys at Active Tools are awesome and I strongly encourage you to talk with them if you come across one of their booths. They are fully committed to creating a product that fits our needs and is something we’ll want to use, not just something we have to use.

PRO My favorite feature – GPS! Unfortunately it’s only available on the Platinum but this alone makes that model worth getting, at least in my opinion. I used it a lot in the fall to track my HOCR course (although I failed at recording it during the actual race so that was a bust) and I used it in the spring to judge/observe the courses our coxswains took during some of our races. Once you connect the Orb to your computer all you’ve gotta do is open the associated GPS data in Google Earth and you’ll be able to zoom in and see every touch of the rudder along your course. In the case of our coxswains it was a huge reality check because looking at it zoomed out you’ll think “that looks like a pretty straight course, yay, go me!” and then you’ll zoom in and be like “… oh”. It’s a great tool to have though and kinda the only one out there that actually holds you accountable for your steering by actually putting in front of your face the exact course that you steered.

Below are some screenshots of the course our varsity eight coxswain steered during practice on a day when we were doing 4x2ks. The blue line is the course he took and the red line is the ruler feature on Google Earth that I used to compare how straight his course actually was. Given that this was a fairly windy practice day, overall I’d say this isn’t too bad. You can see though that it really captures every single time you hit the rudder so there’s no escaping the accountability here.

Throughout winter training in Florida and the spring season I lent the Orb to a couple of the coxswains in the boathouse to get their thoughts on it. For the most part we all had similar pros/cons but below are some that one of our lightweight coxswains shared after using it for a few weeks.

PRO Being able to track the course is huge. If I remember correctly, the GPS it captures has an error margin of +/- 2-3 meters, which, when zooming in on Google Earth lets you see which coxswain had the straightest/most correct course.

CON There is a lot of information of the screen, which is good, but sometimes distracting (and a little bit too informative, if that’s possible).

PRO The ability to position the box is super nice and it won’t move around no matter how soaked it is – see “adventure row”, hahaha. (For context, when we’re in Florida the lightweights do a marathon row around the island we row off of and this year the wind and chop was pretty epic so it was basically like sailing the high seas for them. Below is a screenshot of the course they took this year.)

CON There’s a very harsh/difficult learning curve. A lot of the features are super useful if you know how to use them (i.e. timing pieces). My main issue was not knowing how to set up pieces – if you don’t know how to do this fast (or can’t remember how to do it) you’ll never want to do it while you’re on the water and then you lose the functionality of being able to match up and break down data according to which piece the boat was doing.

PRO It’s loud and can handle being loud. Like, significantly better than the NK boxes can, which was huge for us because my bow pair were having problems hearing me with the cox box. The Orb had no issues at all. At one point, they actually asked me to turn it down (haha).

(Biggest) CON When you turn it on, theres a good chunk of time where you can’t see the time. This is huge if you need to restart the box in the middle of practice for some reason (basically turn on and off because you’re stuck on a screen because you don’t know how to use it, which happened to me, or to test connections because a speaker isn’t working) and need to be able to see the time immediately after.

PRO The battery life is incredible. I didn’t charge this nearly as often as I should have and I never had any issues.

Final thoughts

All in all, it’s definitely a well-liked tool in our boathouse. We’ve also affectionately nicknamed it “the Borb” because its faster and more fun to say than “Cox Orb”. The other heavyweight coaches dig it too and have already given me some ideas for how to better integrate it into our practices next year so we can better use the data it’s collecting (for the coxswains specifically, we’re gonna abuse the hell out of the GPS feature … fair warning guys!).

Looking back, I can recall specific conversations I’ve had in the past with my dad (5+ years ago when I was in college) where we talked about what should be included in a cox box, what would make them more effective tools, etc., so to now actually see and have a tangible piece of equipment that embodies everything you could possibly need … like I said, it’s a game changer.

I’d love to hear any questions you have so leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll do a follow-up post sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll also be bringing it with me to the camps I’ll be coaching at this summer so if you’ll be at either of the Sparks Middletown camps or at Northeast Rowing Center you’ll get a chance to try it out firsthand and see how it works.

Image via // @beantownkmd

Coxing

Tracking progress in your notebook

By readyallrow June 7, 2016

Now that our season is officially over and presumably yours will be too by the end of this weekend, it’s time to start thinking ahead to next year. Specifically, what can we as coxswains do to make sure we’re holding ourselves accountable and contributing in the most positive ways to our teams. What I’ve linked to below should help with that.

Related: Keeping a notebook

Last summer one of our seniors was rowing at Riverside and put me in touch with his coxswain who was one of the Harvard heavyweight men’s incoming freshmen. While we were talking she showed me her notebook and it was so well put together that I knew I had to share part of it on the blog. Calling it a notebook doesn’t really do it justice either – it was a full on three-ring binder filled with notes on her rowers, practice, self-evaluations, etc. Her self-evals are what I’m sharing today – I’ve typed them up in a two-page Google Doc that you can find linked below.

The first page allows you to rate your performance on a 1-5 scale based on a variety of skills, responsibilities, etc. that you’re expected to be able to execute (examples include focus on the day’s technical objective, carrying out practice plan/drills, professionalism, collaboration with other coxswains, and facilitating improvement/progression of practice). The second page goes into a bit more detail and asks more introspective questions such as what you didn’t do well during practice, what specific things you noticed about the boat, what the objective of practice was, and what your short/long term focuses are.

What I like about these post-practice evals is that they force you to look at your performance objectively, which we all know can be tough to do … particularly if you’re not used to being held accountable for your actions, at least in the way that our job demands. A huge part of making improvements as a coxswain is doing some regular self-reflection and examining the areas where you’re doing well and the ones where you need to do better. That can be hard though without some kind of framework in place. Coxswain evaluations are, obviously, the best thing for this but those can be a hassle if your coaches/team aren’t fully invested in the idea of doing (or creating) them. With these self-evals though the only person you’ve gotta convince to do them is yourself.

Related: Coxswain evaluations part 1 and part 2

If you’re coxing this summer, particularly if you’re at dev camp or somewhere similar, that would be a great opportunity to start implementing something like this. You don’t need to use exactly what I’ve typed up either – if there are certain things you’ve been working on that you want to track your performance with or there are questions that fit your situation better, download the Google Doc and make whatever changes you want in order to make these work for you. That’s the key (#majorkeyalert) to making this a regular post-practice ritual and something that you can actually use to help you improve throughout the season.

Image via // @merijnsoeters

Coxing Racing

Coxswain skills: Steering a buoyed course

By readyallrow June 2, 2016

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.

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

Coxing Racing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow May 26, 2016

Hi Kayleigh! This weekend our start pushed us to port and we ended up with our blades about 6-9 inches off the buoys, so I decided to stay along the buoy line and go straight there instead of adjusting to the middle and then going straight. Despite this, the guys who have been watching the GoPro have said that I should’ve gone to the middle of the lane and then gone straight. If you had been pushed to one side or the other off the start, would you have adjusted to put yourself in the middle of the lane or stayed just off the buoy line? Thanks so much!

Yea, I agree with the guys, I would have eased back into the middle for two reasons.

First, if you’re sitting on one side of the lane instead of in the middle then you’re setting yourself up to potentially row in the wake of the crew beside you (i.e. if you’re in lane 3 and you’re riding the port buoys, you could end up hitting lane 4’s wake). I don’t think this is a super common occurrence but I remember talking about it at IRAs last year (though I can’t remember why) so it’s something I remind our coxswains of now to be aware of when we’re on buoyed courses.

Related: Race steering

The second reason is more likely to happen and has to do with the wind. If you get caught off guard by a gust of wind (and let’s be honest, this happens a lot more than we’re all gonna admit) then it can end up pushing you over so that instead of being 6-9″ off the line, you’re now one touch of the rudder away from hitting them for the next 2-3 strokes before you can steer back out. The other scenario though is your blades go over the buoys and you end up interfering with another crew’s race. That’s obviously the worst case scenario (and one you can get DQ’ed for) but it’s still something you have to be aware of.

I know it seems counterintuitive to say that you should steer back to the middle when literally every other piece of advice says you shouldn’t be steering during a race but you have to consider the alternatives (i.e. what I said up above) and how much time you’ll lose if you get caught up in one of them vs. how much time you’ll lose by just touching the rudder for a stroke to reposition yourself.

If you haven’t already you should figure out why your start pushed you to port (starboards out-pulling ports, ports taking a bad stroke, not having a point, the wind pushing you over right off the line, etc.) so that you can address it and hopefully avoid it the next time you race.

There is a calm that overtakes you. The task ahead requires everything you have, all the savvy, every ounce of competitiveness, and every drop of confidence you’ve earned. Calm washes over you and replaces the last threads of realistic doubt with confidence. Your heart is beating strong. Your mind is no longer crowded with any thoughts except maybe one—the physical task ahead. Winning is an affirmation of your ability and has hardly anything to do with your opponent. You are certain. Any exhaustion, exasperation, frustration, resentment or fear that may have gripped you some other time has been shed in a fine sheen of sweat. What is exciting, what makes your heart pound is anticipation of your performance, the anticipation of demonstrating all you know, all your strength—you are going to live a little beyond yourself, beyond the person you were moments before.
Devin Mahony Harvard University

Coxing How To Racing

How to Lose vs. How to Win

By readyallrow May 24, 2016

It’s obviously not that simple or black and white but that’s the easiest way to frame the points I’m trying to make.

There are two big tactical mistakes that you can make during a race that could cost you a win, a qualifying position, or a spot in the medals. (There’s probably/definitely more but our team had issues with both of these at various points this year so they’re fresh on my mind.) I say you because it’s your job to be aware of how you’re moving and how the race is evolving. If you’re paying attention and not just robotically going through the motions of reciting your race plan then you’ll be able to recognize these situations and say/do something to (hopefully) prevent them from having a negative impact on your crew.

Getting comfortable/sitting on a lead

The longer you sit on a short lead the more confidence you’re giving the other crew(s) to make a move on you. A coach I worked with a few years ago frequently said “hope is not a strategy” – you can’t sit on a six seat lead and hope that you can hang on until you cross the finish line. Leads are fragile and you don’t want to give the other crew(s) any opportunity to think you’ve peaked and “now’s our chance”.

Succumbing to another crew’s move

A crew has broken you if they can get in your head with a single move. In most cases this happens somewhere between 750m and 1250m; you’ll be even or close up to this point, their coxswain calls for a move, they walk four or five seats, and you completely fall apart or scramble to make a counter-move and then fall apart because you’re just spinning your wheels.

You also can’t guarantee a win (it’s foolish to ever think that, regardless of how you stack up against your opponents) but you can put yourself in a good position to succeed, which is what these points address.

Make your moves decisive

Rather than being the one who gets broken, be the one doing the breaking. Once you start moving, regardless of whether you’re walking on a crew or moving away, don’t stop. Racing is a game of inches (see also our race against Wisco) so every move you make has to have an unwavering amount of intent, focus, and discipline behind it. This starts with you – your calls and your tone can/will have a huge effect on how successful your moves are.

Execute the race plan

It’s there for a reason. Without it the race lacks structure which makes it impossible for you to manage and if you can’t manage it, you can’t win it. Know when to focus on your boat, when to focus on the field, what your cadence should be, what your moves are, where you’ll take them, what volume/tone is appropriate at different points throughout the race, etc. Your coach not giving you a race plan is not an excuse for you not to have one. Period.

Practice how you want to race

I’ve always viewed this as a standard that the coxswain is responsible for upholding, mainly because attention-to-detail is a core component of what makes a good coxswain and the devil is always in the details. You have to have the discipline to act like an athlete on and off the water and as the coxswain, you sometimes have to be the person that reminds them of that when you’re away from the boathouse and holds them to it during practice. You can’t practice with a lackadaisical attitude and then expect it to all come together on race day – it never works like that.

This post, as you might have noticed, isn’t about giving you bullet-pointed solutions or ideas – it’s about increasing your awareness so you know what to pay attention to when you do pieces during practice, watch race video, etc. From there you (along with your boat and/or coach) can come up with strategies to achieve/deal with each situation so that on race day you’re prepared to manage the race regardless of what happens.

Image via // @tristanshipsides

Coxing Racing

Race calls

By readyallrow May 19, 2016

“What are some good calls I can use during a race to motivate my team?” “Is there anything I shouldn’t say during a race?” “What are some calls that have worked for you…?” “Can you give me some really great calls to use during my race?” (Lol no.)

This question gets asked ad nauseum. I’ve given and highlighted plenty of examples in past posts (all of which are tagged “calls“) but for this post I thought I’d highlight a couple examples that have come up on our coxswain evaluations. When we refined the evals last spring we added a section that asked what calls the rowers liked and didn’t like, which gave them a chance to highlight what they wanted to hear and/or didn’t want to hear during races (and practice, but that’ll be a separate post).

You can see some of their comments, exactly how they were on the evals, up above. Not only is none of it groundbreaking, none of it is “magical” either. Everything they said is pretty straightforward and basic … just like your calls should be. This is just one set of examples of what a D1 men’s crew likes to hear but hopefully this gives you a few ideas for calls to incorporate into your repertoire as we get into the championship part of the season.

Image via // @merijnsoeters

Coxing Masters Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow May 12, 2016

Hi! I have my last race coming up in a couple of weeks and I’m coxing four boats at it. The first boat is our Varsity 4A who I am very used to and have been coxing all year. The second boat is a LWT Novice 4 that was kind of thrown together last minute because we needed to boat everyone. The other two are masters boats for my club team that I’m obviously not a part of because I’m in high school, but they needed an extra coxswain and their coach is my old coach, so he asked me. Do you have any tips for coxing races generally and not super person-specifically, but still well? The two masters boats have real shots at medalling so I want to make sure I do my best with them, even though I’ve never met or worked with any of them before. The LWT4 doesn’t really have much of a shot just because who we’re competing against but I still want them to feel like they had a good end-of-season race. What do you think? Thank you so much!! PS: The two masters boats will be bowloaders and since I won’t have very good boat sense with them because they’re not my teammates, I don’t know how well I’ll do with technical calls.

I wouldn’t be super concerned with the masters boats – your main goal there should be to just steer straight. (Obviously that should be the goal every time you race but in this case it’s really your only responsibility.) I’d ask your coach if he has a race plan he wants them to follow and if he does, go over it with him so you understand it and then just execute it on race day. Don’t worry about technical calls or anything like that unless they specifically ask you to make some (this is something you should ask rather than waiting for them to bring it up).

Masters crews tend to fall into two categories – the ones who are doing it recreationally and should never (ever) be left to their own devices and the ones who are fairly competitive and a little more self-sufficient. If these guys have a chance at medaling then they probably fall into the latter category, in which case they might just ask you steer and handle everything else themselves. When I’ve coxed one-off races with masters boats they usually tell me up front that to keep things simple since I’m new to the boat all I need to do is get them from Point A to Point B and the bow seat will make whatever calls they need outside of rate shifts and transitions. It’s not the worst arrangement and it definitely takes a ton of weight off your shoulders when you’re meeting them for the first time the day of the race.

You have two jobs on race day … steer straight and execute the race plan. If you do those two things well then you’ve done your job. With your lightweight boat, if they’ve raced before then I’d ask them to tell you one thing that motivated them in their race or if they haven’t raced, give you something they want you to say to them during the race (either technical or motivational). That way you’ll at least have something you can fall back on during the race if it starts to feel a little dry. I’ve said this a lot but you can also incorporate them into whatever moves you take, i.e. “lets take 5 for the legs, here we go middle pair…” or “let’s take 10 to take two seats, go get your seat [3-seat]”. Stuff like that can bring a good energy to the boat and it literally takes no effort on your part.

Usually my approach to “generally” coxing a race is to just do what I know works. There were plenty of times in high school where my main boat would be my eight and then on top of that I’d also have a four that we put together that week as an extra entry so everyone could race twice. If it was a light four comprised of four people from my light eight then I’d cox them the exact same as I would the light eight. If it was four people in the 1V and I’d been coxing the 2V then I’d ask the 1V coxswain for a few calls that she’s been using and incorporate that into my race plan, which would more than likely be the same one that I’d use with my regular boat. Very, very little changes for me when I get into a new/unfamiliar boat, especially if I’m only gonna be with them for one race.

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

By readyallrow May 12, 2016

Hello! I’ve seen you mention before that coxswains are supposed to be completely silent during seat-races and that was a huge surprise to me because I’ve been a high school coxswain for three years now and we always talk during our seat-races. We race our boat against the other boats making calls like those that we’d make during races. My coach is a retired olympic rower so I figured he knew how to run seat-races but then I read what you said and it seems to make more sense to have a seat-race be all about the rower. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this (having coxswains cox the seat-races). Thanks!

Ah, I assume you saw my comment on Reddit the other day. I don’t think coxswains should be talking during seat races because seat races are supposed to be about which rower can make the boat go fastest under neutral conditions, not which rower can make it go fastest with someone motivating them along the way. To me that’s just a regular piece and would qualify as “unofficial” seat racing, which is something we do on occasion too. We’ll do normal pieces if we want to compare a couple guys and if the times are close and warrant it, then we’ll set up a day to do actual (no-talking) seat races.

Related: How to: Cox a seat race

Check out the post linked above – it’s all about how the role and responsibilities of coxswains when rowers are seat racing. There’s a lot more info and details in there but here’s what it says about actually coxing the pieces.

Do know what you are and aren’t allowed to say. 99.9% of the time, coxswains aren’t (and shouldn’t be) allowed to say anything more than the stroke rate and the time/distance. If during a normal sprint racing you are talking 98% of the time, during a seat race you should be silent 98% of the time. When I’ve coxed seat races I would tell the crew the stroke rate every 30-45 seconds, point out 250, 500m, and 750m, and let the crew know the time (i.e. 1 minute down, 2 minutes down, etc.). All of that was regulated by the coach too – I didn’t just randomly decide to say those things or when to say them, I was told to give that information and only that information at specific times during the piece (usually 1000m pieces).

You cannot cox them at all. No motivation, no technique, no moves, nothing. In the boat, the most important thing you have to stay on top of is making sure the stroke rate stays consistent and doesn’t surpass whatever cap the coach has given you. If the cap is no lower than 28spm and no higher than 30spm, it’s your job to communicate with your stroke if he/she is under or over that. The only thing you can do to get the stroke rate back in that range if it’s outside of it is to keep reading off the numbers until they get it where it needs to be. You can’t cox or coach them on how to get it there. (In any other situation you should not do this. Seat racing is the only time when reading off stroke rates like this is OK.)

Everybody does seat racing a little differently. Some people take coxswains out of the equation entirely and just do pairs matrices or pieces in straight fours. Sometimes they do regular pieces and call it a day and other times they get super official about it and do it the way it’s laid out in the post I linked to (which is how I’ve done it several times so it’s what I’m most familiar with). I’ve seen them done all three ways though and the most effective/efficient ones are the ones where the coxswains just steer and stay quiet. Pairs matrices/straight fours are fine but then you’ve gotta worry about the rowers being capable enough to steer in a straight line. That usually just ends up being an unnecessary distraction and in some cases can tamper with the validity of the races . When I’ve seen coxswains be allowed to cox the seat races like a normal piece, for whatever reason it always ends up being more disorganized and frantic. Like I said though … everybody does it differently based on what they think works (or is the easiest and least trivial).