Tag: coxswain

Coxing Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

The Mental Game

By readyallrow May 10, 2016

Previously: The language of the first 500 || Getting off the line with world class speed

Dr. Adam Naylor is a sport psychologist at BU and Northeastern and his talk at the What Works Summit on the mental aspect of being ready on race day is the focus of this week’s post. We pay so much attention to making sure we’re technically and physiologically ready but we tend to not give as much thought to preparing ourselves mentally and emotionally. This leads to having lackluster levels of confidence that can manifest itself in many negative ways on race day.

For us as coxswains (especially if you’re new to the sport) it can be tough because not only do you have to sort out your own mental state on race day but you’ve also potentially gotta sort out eight other people’s as well. It’s hard to act as the unifying force in the boat if you don’t know how to do that. Hopefully what’s down below will give you some strategies for how to approach this on race day so you and your crew will be just as prepared mentally as you are physically.

How to help athletes manage themselves

On race day, what do you see in your teammates? The first response given during the talk was “panic”, which prompted a side conversation on how panic manifests itself in the athletes. You can see the look of panic or distress or anxiety in their eyes but what effect is it actually having on their bodies? In my experience, it usually meant my friends were very tense, very quiet, and/or very antsy. Their shoulders would be up around their ears, they wouldn’t be saying a word (which, for high school and college-aged women, is unusual), and they’d be pacing back and forth, walking in circles around the trailer, or incessantly tapping their fingers against their thighs.

The easy response to all of this would be to say “just relax” but the reason why it’s easy is because it’s not helpful. You know how when you’re in an argument with someone and they say “chill out” or “relax” in response to your frustration and it just pisses you off even more? The same thing applies here. Having someone say “relax” when you’re anxious just makes you even more anxious because your brain is going all over the place and you can’t process what you actually need to do to calm down.

The better response is to tell them how to relax. Sometimes this is something you can do one-on-one (a recent example is me putting my hands on our coxswains’ shoulders, looking them in the eye, and saying “breathe … you got this” before they go out) but other times it’s something you can/should do as a crew. One year one of my boats would circle up and we’d actually do breathing exercises together for ten minutes as part of our land warmup. We had this whole “routine” that our five seat (who was really into yoga and meditation) would talk us through that involved a lot of “close your eyes, drop your shoulders, inhale through your nose for a count of five, exhale for a count of five…”, etc.

Similar to coxing rowers on the erg though, you’ve also gotta know when to leave them alone. There are guys on our team who come to the boathouse on race day super tense and completely unlike their usual selves and their way of loosening up is to spend 40 minutes foam-rolling, listening to music, and standing out on the boathouse balcony by themselves. It’s funny seeing them standing 5-10 feet apart just doing their own thing (even though they’re all pretty much doing the exact same thing) but it works.

As the coxswain you have to know your rowers and know which approach is going to be the most beneficial – both of which requires you to communicate with them. If you’re coxing girls the team/social approach might work best whereas with guys, letting them have some time to themselves before getting together as a group might be the best strategy. Regardless of what you do though, consider the language you use on land, on the way to the start line, and at the start line and make sure you’re using words that actually help get in the right headspace vs. saying something useless like “just relax”.

Managing ourselves

So, what about us? I have a tendency to be the most calm and the most nervous person on race day, which can be a really tough internal battle to try and manage. When I was a freshman (aka a novice) I would outwardly try to display a really calm, in-control demeanor not just because I knew it was expected of me but also because I knew my teammates were going to mirror my emotions. The more confident I appeared, the more relaxed they would be. Plus, they were varsity rowers and I wanted to give the impression that I could handle the responsibility of coxing them. Internally though, I was usually bouncing off the walls and visualizing all the things that they were outwardly doing … I’d visualize myself tapping my fingers on my legs, jumping up and down or nervously walking in circles, etc.

Even though I was confident in my skills as a coxswain, despite having only been doing it for a few months, I’d sometimes get into these verbal sparring matches with myself where I’d question why I was so confident when I was just a novice and why I was coxing the 1V or the V4+ because no one else really believed I deserved it … they were all just pretending. I would go from being actually confident and actually calm to putting myself on the verge of full on panic attacks like, five minutes before we were supposed to launch.

Keeping all that internalized though is really disastrous though so once my coach picked up on the fact that something was off, we started going on short walks before our scheduled meet-up times and he’d ask how I felt and I’d say “…nervous”, “…ready”, or whatever adjective properly captured my emotions at that moment. It was at this point where he’d stand in front of me, put his hands on my shoulders, and say “deep breaths … breathe … you got this”, which, as I’ve said in past posts, became my starting line mantra (and what I sometimes do with our coxswains now).

Throughout the rest of high school, in college, and even now I figured out that the best way for me to be in a good headspace before a race is to get away from other people and be by myself. I, like a lot of coxswains, know that I can be very tough, negative, and straight up mean towards myself so to actually be calm and actually be confident before races (rather than faking it in order to appear so), I assess how I’m doing and repeat exactly what my coach said to me. Deep breaths … breathe … you got this. Being honest about how you feel, admitting that you’re nervous, and acknowledging that you can’t predict the outcome of the race is confident and shouldn’t be something you’re afraid to do.

The beauty of sports + the acceptance of the unknown

The beauty of sports, especially rowing, is that you have to give up control in order to do well. Once you start racing at a high enough level you aren’t gonna know the outcome of your race ahead of time. Sometimes in high school it’s easy to predict that this boat is gonna blow that boat out of the water but that becomes less so the deeper into the sport you get. Eventually you have to race the entire race to know what the outcome is and that’s the fun part.

As a coxswain the thought of giving up control can be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you’re a major control freak (which most of us are self-aware enough to admit that we are). That’s where your awareness kicks in though and why you can’t go into a race with OCD levels of perfectionist tendencies and being hell bent on just spitting out a scripted race plan. Giving up control as a coxswain during a race means being aware of how it’s evolving around you and being confident enough in your skills, your preparation, and your teammates to say “this is what we’re gonna do … it might work out”. You have to be willing to take risks and remember the stress that comes with it is what makes it fun.

Image via // @hollandbeker

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow April 28, 2016

Hi! So, I have been quite “upset” with my boat. You see, I’m a very competitive coxswain but half of my boat is … not, you could say. Anyways, I want to share my feelings and tell them that I leave practice feeling pissy because of their lack of motivation and the fact that it was such a horrible practice. But I also don’t want to add drama and tension in the boat. I’m that always nice, sometimes getting pushed over, type of coxswain but I have been learning to stand up and put them back in line but it always makes me feel guilty and thus kind of “sucking up” (hugging them, compliments) to the rowers. I want to be feared AND loved but I just can’t balance it out. There’s also a few girls who always WHINE and COMPLAIN every single time we do workouts. I just want to shut her up and tell her to suck it up. But my mind tells me no and just ignore it. Any advice? I so need it! Thanks!

I have no time for people who bitch just for the sake of bitching. It’s one of those things that annoys me on a deeply personal level. If you’re going to complain every single time we do a workout you can pretty much count on me telling you to shut up every single time in response. It just makes no sense to me that you’d join a sport (or any activity really) and then complain about the work that’s associated with it. So yea, I’m all for telling her to deal with it but my approach is to do it one-on-one first and then if it continues (and I know it’s distracting or pissing off other people in the boat) then I’ll say it to them on the water going forward. (This also prevents someone in the boat from saying something, which usually ends up causing more drama than if the coxswain says it.)

Usually what’ll happen is I’ll just lean out of the boat, look at them, put a hand in the air, and be like “Dude … seriously? Stop.” and that’s all it takes unless they’re hell bent on acting like a brat that day … which happens with college athletes more than you think it would. I can really only think of one time off the top of my head that it progressed past that and at that point my coach stepped in and told them that they could either grow up and stop wasting her, my, and the boat’s time or we could turn around, go back to the dock, and they could leave. She quit not long after that.

I know that in the long run I’m going to irritate more people by not saying something than I will by calling them out so that’s a big part of my rationale for how/why I address it. Basically I’d rather have one person be pissed at me for two hours than have the other four, five, six, or seven people think I’m a pushover who can’t handle having tough conversations with a teammate.

I get not wanting to create drama or add tension but I also think you’re undermining yourself by just brushing it off and hugging it out with them afterwards. That, to me, just says to those rowers that it’s OK for them to keep complaining and not putting the work in because you’re never going to actually say anything to them about it. If you want something to change in this situation you’re gonna have to be the one that makes the first move, which is to hold them accountable for their lame attitudes and not coddle them afterwards because their feelings might have been hurt for a whole fifteen seconds.

Coxing Racing

Race skills: Coxing from behind

By readyallrow April 26, 2016

Coxing when you’re behind is one of the hardest things you can be tasked with during a race, second only to coxing a race like our JV had this past weekend where they built up a 2/3 length lead by 1000m and then lost by a seat or two of open water. (You can watch the race here if you want.)

The latter has always been hard for me to work out how to do, on one hand because it’s (luckily) not a position I’ve found myself in very often but also because there just doesn’t seem to be a strategy for dealing with a broken crew (coxswain included). Today’s post though is gonna talk about coxing when you’ve fallen slightly back but are still within striking distance or when you’re in the thick of a race and are trying to work your way up to get your bow ball in front.

My strategy when I’m sitting in third, fourth, fifth, or sixth is to make it a two-boat race and work our way up crew by crew. These mini-races within the context of the overall race helps you to manage your calls (instead of bouncing around all over the place with minimal direction or focus) and in turn gives the crew small achievable goals to focus on.

The thing I struggled with initially when doing this was knowing when to demand more of my boat to actually get us past another crew. There were times where we’d slooowly move on them (or we’d move quickly initially and then sit for awhile) but when you’re sitting in fourth and you’ve only got 1100m left to work with, that’s not good enough. Creating these mini-races helped me develop my awareness because it forced me to pay attention to our speed relative to the other boats. I found that when we were sitting on a crew or the amount that we were walking on them slowed, it was usually because I was becoming too focused on what was happening outside the boat, which would dampen our fire a little bit and allow the crew’s focus to wander.

Once I realized this I’d make calls like “we’re in a good position on New Trier but we’ve been sitting for the last 10 strokes … let’s refocus the legs and shut them down … on this one … legs NOW, legs NOW…”. “Now” is a call I use a lot while coxing but in situations like this, the change in my tone when I said it communicated a (controlled) sense of urgency that resonated with the boat and helped us find that next gear and move. That’s the key too – as demanding of a call as “now” is, it was never that that they were responding to … it was how I said it and that can make a huge difference when you’re coxing from behind. One of my stroke seats used to call it my “don’t fuck with me” voice. When that came out during a race (which was only in certain situations) the crew just knew to snap back into it and respond to whatever I was saying in an instant.

Awhile ago I found this anecdote from Marcus McElhenney from when he raced in Beijing in 2008 that touches on creating mini-races and getting your crew excited about moving past the boats around you.

“In the Olympic final we had an okay start but at the 500m mark we were in 6th place. We were in lane two. The Dutch were in lane one and almost ¾ of a length up. Lane three and four had the Brits and Canada, who were WAY out. This left Poland and Australia leading us on the outside in lanes 5 and 6. My crew could not see anyone next to them. Realizing that we could overtake the Aussies and Poles, I started to race them. It was all about getting up just one place at a time.

Over the second 500 meters we were then able to overtake them and were sitting in fourth. In the process we were able to cut the Dutch lead from two seconds to half a second. Then we turned our focused in the third 500m on the Dutch which would put us in medal position. I can remember looking at the bend in the oars. As guys from the bow like Schnorbich and Hoopman could sense the lead and medal, the bend in the shaft grew. That feeling then started to pass up the crew as we began to move, the energy increased and we really started to cook. Stern pair, Volp and Inman, were now foaming at the mouth. We over took the Dutch establishing our Olympic medal spot.

New focus…the Brits! Their commanding lead over us during the first part of the race was now less than half a second. Last 500m and we were charging. We ended up not passing the Brits, but we came home with some hardware.”

If you’ve fallen really far back (like a length of open or more) then your focus has to shift to creating internal targets within the boat. You can’t keep saying “they’re walking away”, “we’re a length of open back”, etc. and expect the crew to suddenly have a burst of enthusiasm and “let’s go get ’em!” energy. Instead, focus on something tangible like dropping the splits by a second (and maintaining it) or re-establishing the rhythm so everyone is rowing together and not doing their own thing. If the boat is getting frantic, eliminating that feeling has to be your first priority otherwise you’ll just waste a ton of energy and have an even harder time trying to walk back on the other boats.

One question that comes up a lot is whether or not you should tell the crew that you’re in last place. For me, it’s 50-50 … if you’re sitting in last by no more than half a length of open water then you should tell them because closing that gap is doable. If you’re more than half a length back then I wouldn’t say anything until you’ve closed the gap to within striking distance of the other crew(s). This lets you focus solely on whatever’s going on with your boat without having to worry about the chaos around you (which honestly isn’t a bad thing).

That approach came out of a conversation my freshman year after my novice eight (predictably) fell pretty far behind our three varsity boats while doing pieces. I remember it being one of the few times where I said “I don’t know what to say” and my crew gave me a ton of ideas and feedback that we trial and error-ed over the next few practices to figure out a strategy that worked. That boat was made up of a bunch of two and three-sport athletes so to capitalize on our strength there was a lot of focus put on bending the oars (as long as our technique was good … our coaches drilled into us that that always came first).

This in turn became our rallying point. If we fell back we’d refocus on our technique – I made a lot of loose, breathe, relax, focus, sharp, together, etc. calls – and once we had that on lock I’d make the call to “bend and send”. The pick up and surge that resulted from that call was incredible – it was like lighting the afterburners. If we were half a length down when I made that call we could easily get even within ten strokes and then from there it was back to “regular” race-mode.

Coxing from behind isn’t something you want to have to do but I guarantee you’ll spend more time doing that over the course of your career than you will as the crew out front. You don’t want to find yourself in that situation and not know how to manage it though (because it all comes back to execution and management) so spend time discussing those “what if’s” with your crew so you can establish your Plan B, C, D, etc., as well as the calls you’ll make to get you back on track. For us, it was “bend and send”. By no means was it a “magic” call (there were times when it didn’t work) but it was well thought out, well rehearsed, and positive (in a non-cheesy way) and that was what made it the catalyst to making our “comebacks” effective.

Image via // @washingtonrowing

Coxing Racing

Race Skills: Race warmups

By readyallrow April 21, 2016

First, if you don’t already have a watch – get one. Go to Walmart, Target, or Amazon and get one of those super basic sport watches that cost like $10-$15. I had one in high school that I stored on my cox box (after practice I’d take it off and attach it to the wrist strap) and the only time I wore it was on race day. Your phone is not an acceptable substitute. It’s just not. (And if you really need me to explain why, come to the Sparks camp this summer and see how long it takes before Marcus jumps on your ass for not having your hands completely free. That should clear it up pretty quick.)

Time management is an essential skill for coxswains and there is no day where that is more apparent than on race day. Prior to that, you should know the following:

How long it takes to do your land warmup

(Roughly) how long it takes to walk from where your trailer is to where the docks are

How long it takes to execute your warmup on the water

How long it takes to the get from the launch site to the starting line.

How many minutes prior to the start of the race you need to be locked on

When I’m coxing, the pre-race warmup unofficially starts about 20 minutes before we meet to do our land warmup. Few things piss me off more on race day than having to run around the site trying to round up rowers like a bunch of blind, deaf sheep so 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 2 minutes before our planned start time I’ll say “X minutes til’ we start the warmup”, “last call, we’re starting in 2 minutes”, etc. This prevents a situation where I’m trying to get started and people aren’t ready because they’re changing, running to the bathroom, groggy from their nap, etc. I have enough to worry about so even though it’s still my responsibility to make sure everyone is in the same place at the same pre-discussed time, giving those countdown reminders takes a lot of pressure off of me because if someone is late, I know there’s at least 6-7 other people who will have my back and say “…she said we were meeting several times, you shouldn’t have waited til the last minute to [do whatever].”.

If you’re at a big regatta (IRAs, Youth Nats, Stotesbury, Sprints, etc.) where there’s a lot of crews waiting to launch from only a couple docks, you’ve gotta account for that wait time so you don’t end up having to rush to get up to the starting line. If you’re one of the early races or are one of the first few after the lunch break you won’t have to worry about this but if you’re racing in the mid-late morning or anytime in the afternoon, this is something to keep in mind.

Usually about an hour before our meet-up time I’d go scope out the launch site and ask the officials if things were running on time, if we should consider getting in line a little sooner, etc. If things had been going smooth so far then we’d maintain the same schedule but if it looked like there was already a line forming or there were novice/freshman events before ours (they are notoriously slow AF) then they’d recommend coming down 10ish minutes sooner than we’d originally planned, that way if we had to wait it wouldn’t impact our warmup plans.

Practicing your race-warmup during the week will help you determine roughly how much time it’ll take for you to get through everything you have planned. Ours, for example, tend to take between 30 and 35 minutes with the important stuff being the practice starts – we usually try to get in at least three at half pressure + half speed, 3/4 pressure + 3/4 speed, and 90% 5 + 5 + 5.

Flexibility and adaptability are two other key parts of being a good race-day coxswain because there will definitely be times when you either aren’t able to complete your entire warmup or you finish early, get stuck on the water, etc. and have to add something in order to keep the crew warm (in the “warm up” sense and also in the sense that if it’s cold out you don’t want to just be sitting there not moving). Adding stuff is always easy because you can just do light steady state at 18-20spm until it’s time to go … it’s cutting the warmup down that is hard.

If Plan A is your ideal warmup (say 35 minutes) then you need to also have a Plan B (if time constraints limit you to 20-25 minutes) and a Plan C (45 minutes) as your contingency plans. These are things that you should go over with your coach well in advance of race day too, that way you can establish what the crew can do without so you’re not just arbitrarily doing some things and not others.

A few other tips/reminders:

If possible, do the bulk of your warmup in the opposite direction of the course and the starts, power bursts, etc. alongside the course.

This isn’t possible everywhere but when you do have the chance to do it it can give you a good feel for how the conditions will effect the boat when you’re moving at race pace. (Pay attention when the officials are going over the traffic pattern during the coaches and coxswains meeting so you’ll know if you can do this or not.)

Time permitting I always try to get in at least one start in our lane before locking on, that way I can get an idea for what it’ll feel like and if I need to make an adjustment to my calls to account for that (i.e. if it’s choppy then I’ll try to incorporate in more “clean”, “down and away”, etc. type calls).

99% of the time the officials want you locked on two minutes prior to the start of your race, which means you should be in the staging area at least 10-12 minutes beforehand.

I’ve been to a handful of races where we had to be locked on three minutes or five minutes prior but two minutes is standard. Just being in your lane doesn’t count as being locked on either, even if you’re backing it down and are six inches away from the stake boat when they call “two minutes to the start”. If the conditions are poor and you know it’s going to take some time to get into the stake boats, pointed, etc. then you must account for that during your warmup. You can’t afford to waste time on a good day, let alone on a day when it’s windy.

Also, if you’re finishing up your warmup by doing starts in your lane, don’t try to do “just one more” or do a full start, 20, and settle so that you end up 250m away from the stake boats. A crew did this when I raced at Oak Ridge one year and we started the race without them … like, five of us were locked on ready to go and she was still trying to back it down (from 200m away) after deciding to do a start with three minutes to go. They protested, they lost, and that coxswain (whose team was in the tent next to ours) got reamed by her coach after the race.

Do a race walk-through a day or two before you race.

Fridays are our race walk-through days, which is exactly what it sounds like … the coxswains run the crew through the race warmup on their own before meeting up with the coaches and hitting the high points of the race along the course. This usually takes about 35 minutes to complete.

Having a chance to run through the warmup uninterrupted is an important part of your race prep so if it’s not something you’ve discussed or practiced during the week (i.e. it’s not a regular part of your schedule like ours is), speak up before the start of practice, ask what it is if you’re unsure (like at the beginning of the season, you’re new in the boat, etc.), and then go through it as part of that day’s warmup. It can be easy for coaches to forget to talk with the coxswains about that stuff so take the initiative and say something if they haven’t.

Once you get into the season and your training becomes more race-focused (like, right now…) you should be running through your race warmup at least once a week (either on your own or at the coach’s instruction). Just like anything else you practice, the more familiar you are with it and the more consistently you run through it the calmer and more focused you (and the crew) will be on race day.

Image via // @petereed

Coxing Ergs Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Coxing 1000m on sliders

By readyallrow April 18, 2016

Next winter when you inevitably are like “how do I work on my coxing in the winter”, “how do I get ready for spring racing while we’re inside”, etc. think back to this video because this is a great idea. It’d also be a great way to walk through your race plan in the spring if for whatever reason you can’t get on the water the day or two before (weather, someone can’t make it to practice, etc.).

Coxing How To Q&A

Question of the Day

By readyallrow April 14, 2016

How to be more personal when coxing a race…?

There are tons of ways but here are my top three.

The best/easiest/most obvious way is to say your rowers names instead of their seat numbers. Calling a rower by their seat number is one of the laziest things a coxswain can do in my opinion (like, I truly can’t emphasize just how lazy I think it is) and it really grinds my gears when I hear them doing that. There’s just no excuse for it.

Related: Listen to Kaitlin’s recordings (here) as well as Connor’s (George Washington University – there are six, all found here) for examples of this. You always hear them address the rowers by name, not number.

Something I do a lot is call moves for pairs, which I talked a bit about in the post linked down below. I do it most often in the latter half of the race, usually between 1250m and 1750m since that chunk between your mid-race move and right before the sprint is when the boat can/will start to sag. Calling a pair out, especially when the race is close and saying “Quinn and Mik, you wanna be first across the line? Let’s get our bow ball in front over the next five...” or “sitting even, [ 5 + 6 ] go take your seats … on this one” are other examples of how I like to do it.

I read an interview awhile ago where Pete Cipollone said that one of his calls during the ’97 Worlds race (I think it was that one) was “on this one, the Americans have no fucking speed”. That was a direct quote from the coach of one of the countries they were racing against and it had gotten the boat really fired up so he turned it into a call that preempted one of their moves. That kind of “bulletin board material” – even though it’s not individually-personal, it’s still boat-personal – is a great thing to bring in the boat with you, provided you save it for the opportune moment for maximum effectiveness.

Coxing Rowing

Maintaining the set while you’re on the rudder

By readyallrow April 13, 2016

When you’re steering around a turn and have to be (hard) on the rudder for two, three, four, five strokes, what does that do to the set of the boat (i.e. which direction does it fall) and how do you have the rowers compensate for it?

I’ve had to remind our coxswains about how this works a few times this year, in addition to getting questions about it via email, so I wanted to lay it out here to clear up any confusion.

You basically need to remember two very simple things: The boat is going to fall to the side that you’re steering towards and to compensate the rowers on that side need to lift their hands. This means that…

If you’re steering towards port the boat is going to fall to port. To compensate, the port rowers need to lift their hands for the duration of the time that you are on the rudder.

If you’re steering towards starboard the boat is going to fall to starboard. To compensate, the starboard rowers need to lift their hands for the duration of the time that you are on the rudder.

Once you’ve got your point and are off the rudder then you need to call the crew back to even handle heights. Don’t forget to do this or assume that the rowers will know when you’re off the rudder and do it themselves – they won’t.

The way I usually call it going into the turn is “on the rudder to port so ports let’s lift the hands for three strokes…” and then when I’m out of the turn I’ll say “OK, off the rudder, back to even hands on this next finish…”. I always specify how many strokes I plan to be on the rudder and I always specify when I want them to go back to even handle heights, that way everyone does it at the same time and at the same point in the stroke cycle.

Image via // Sofia Donnecke

Coxing How To Teammates & Coaches

Coxswain skills: Working with a bad coach

By readyallrow April 12, 2016

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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Coxing How To

How to sit in the boat

By readyallrow April 7, 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)

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to sit in the boat. Seems obvious at first – you just … sit in it – but if you’re working on establishing boat feel or trying to figure out how to not slide into the black hole that is the bow of a four, there are some tricks to it. I’ve talked about these in various posts before but I’ve tried to combine them all here so they’re in one place for easy access.

Bowloaded fours

When it comes to how to properly situate yourself in a four, I see way more coxswains doing it wrong than doing it right. The purpose of these boats (compared to ones where you’re sitting in the stern) is to distribute the weight more evenly throughout the bow and eliminate the wind resistance that comes from having another body sitting straight up. In order to be effective in those two areas you have to actually be lying down. If someone is looking at your boat, they should see you like this, not like this. You being flat in the boat also helps keep it on keel. If you’re sitting straight up like the coxswain in the second picture and the boat is falling from side to side, you are most likely the main contributing factor.

If you’re having difficulty lying completely flat or are avoiding it because there’s no way to prevent yourself from sliding into the bow when the boat surges then you need to adjust the back (or neck) rest to accommodate your height. This is the equivalent of the rowers foot stretchers … they wouldn’t not change their foot stretchers just because the lineups aren’t set and they didn’t row in that seat yesterday or might not row in it tomorrow so in a similar vein, there’s no excuse for you to not adjust the back rest.

If you’re short, move it forward towards the bow to decrease the amount of extra space between your feet and the end of the boat. If you’re around my height (4’11”) then you still might not be able to reach the very tip of the boat with your feet but you’ll be far enough forward that your feet will be closer to the narrow end of the hull which will make it easier to brace them against the sides of the boat.

If you’re tall, you’ll need to move the back rest back towards the stern. For those of you who are more vertically blessed than the rest of us then that might mean moving it back so you’re right against your bow seat’s backstops, which also means that you must lie down as far as you can because their upper bodies/elbows will probably travel in the plane directly over your head. There’s pretty much no way to be a tall coxswain and comfortably cox in a bow loaded four though (at least that’s what I’ve heard from friends) so sacrifices will have to be made.

If the back rests in your shell aren’t the solid planks (which are amazing) and instead are those mesh nets (second in awfulness only to those stupid neck bars that some Resolutes have), make sure that you tighten them enough so that there’s no tension in your upper body when you’re lying down. The first time I coxed a four with one of those I didn’t think to tighten it and came off with the worst headache and a really sore ribcage because I was tensing my body so much to keep myself in a good position to see and not slide around. The next time I was in that boat I pulled the straps about 75% and that ended up being perfect (and not entirely uncomfortable…). If you don’t have one of those mesh nets I’m almost positive you can buy them online from the boat manufacturer but I’ve also seen crews DIY their own from old t-shirts (it involved grommets, carabiners, and thin rope or bungees), which is easier to do that it sounds.

Going back to the “sliding into the bow” problem, it took me forever to figure out how to deal with this. I can lay completely flat in every four I’ve ever been in but if I move the back rest up to the point when I can actually brace my feet against the boat then I end up with my chest right against the steering lever (the one that moves left and right), which as you can imagine makes it really difficult to steer. The solution was to throw an old soccer ball (the smaller ones that are 18-24″ in circumference work great) or a small beach ball into the bow of the boat to put my feet against. This lets you keep the back rest closer to the stern while giving you better control over your body and not compromising your ability to steer. Please don’t listen to your coaches when they tell you to just throw a life jacket in the bow because that’s stupid and not a legitimate solution. One, they’re split down the middle and have a giant hole in them and two, it is incredibly easy to get your feet tangled in them. Worst case scenario, if you flipped and your feet are caught up in a life jacket, how easy do you think it’s gonna be for you to get out of the boat? Not very. Don’t use life jackets.

Related: Coxswain Skills: Boat feel

Eights

It’s pretty easy to brace yourself in an eight but you’ve gotta know how to sit in the seat for this to actually work. You can casually sit in the boat during less intense stuff but when you’re doing pieces, drills, etc. you should make your body is “one with the boat” so you can feel what’s happening and so you’re not getting jerked around. The way to do this is to press your feet into the footboards on either side of your cox box (like you’re trying to push something away from you) while pressing the small of your back (that inward curve right above your butt) into the back of the seat. Doing these two things allows your body to move with the boat rather than in response to it.

Side note, I had a rude awakening when I was coxing in Florida over winter break when I got in the boat and realized our Resolutes don’t have these footboards. I’ve never been less in tune with a boat than I was that week, which was really frustrating for me because I felt like I was missing out on a lot of things the boat was doing. Having your feet flat on the bottom of the hull just doesn’t provide the same … feeling … resistance … I’m not sure what word to use … so it was tough to establish any kind of boat feel when I was in there. Similarly, when we were doing high rate stuff, like starts at 38-42spm, I felt like a rag doll. It took a lot more effort than I’m used to to keep my body stable, despite having what I consider to be pretty solid core strength. So Resolute coxswains … how do you combat this?

When it comes to your upper body, similar to the rowers you want to keep everything loose. Rather than tensing your shoulders to prevent your upper body from moving around you should instead use your core to keep everything stable. (More motivation to do core workouts.) I’ve heard of pressing your elbows into or around the gunnels to keep you from moving but I tried that in Florida and it just hurt so I can’t vouch for that method personally.

The positioning of your fingers/hands is the final component to how you sit in the boat. I know I’ve been talking about this a lot recently but you shouldn’t be gripping the steering cables with a full fist (this creates unnecessary tension in your shoulders and causes you to oversteer).

Instead you should hook your thumb, index, and middle fingers around them (see the picture illustrating how I do it in the post linked below) and then finish by hooking your pinkies over the gunnels. This helps you maintain full contact with the boat while preventing you from oversteering due to the limited range of motion you now have thanks to how you’ve weaved the cables between your fingers.

What advice do you guys have for sitting in the boat? If you’re a tall/short coxswain in a four, what’s your method for positioning yourself?

Image via // @henryfieldman

College Coxing How To Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: How not to enter stake boats

By readyallrow April 4, 2016

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.

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.