Tag: coxswain

Coxing Novice Q&A

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

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

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

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

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

Water safety

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

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

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

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

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Hi! I’m a coxswain for a little club in New Zealand, and thanks to my coach I virtually do nothing. On the water he takes my job away from me and tells them to row instead of me and won’t let me make any calls. He doesn’t let me cox anyone through their 2k and he tells me that it’s not important if I don’t make calls during a race! I’m not a novice coxswain either but I’ve had virtually no training and I’ve taught myself everything that I know because he’s never helped me out! What do I do? 🙁

My initial thought is to say “find a new club”…

Have you talked to him about this? Do you notice or know if he acts this way with the other coxswains too? It honestly seems like he doesn’t know much about coxing in general if he’s telling you that it’s not that important to say anything during a race. I would ask him why he thinks that, not in an accusatory way but rather in a way that gets him to explain his reasoning for saying that. I’ve never experienced anything like this myself so it’s hard to suggest what to do. I’ve known two people that this has happened to though and both of them ended up quitting because being on the team had become pointless for them and it wasn’t worth the money anymore. Honestly, I think your best (and only) option is to talk to him (outside of practice) and figure out what his deal is and then decide from there if it’s worth it to stay on the team. If I was in your position though, I’d be looking for another team so I could actually do what I joined the team to do.

If anyone has any suggestions or advice (especially from personal experience!), I’d love to hear them so please leave a comment down below.

College Coxing Q&A

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I really want to continue rowing in college but I am 5’3″ and my erg scores are not great. Do you think it would be possible for me to cox in college (maybe as a walk on?) even though I have never done it before? If so, how would I go about expressing interest in it?

Definitely! Coxing as a walk-on is pretty much going to be your only option at this point since coaches aren’t going to recruit someone who doesn’t have any experience. Plus, if you’re a senior right now, I think the recruiting period might be coming to an end so it’d be too late to go that route anyways. If you know that’s what you want to do though you might talk to your current coach(es) and see if you can switch to coxing permanently starting this season. If you’re a junior right now that’d give you roughly three seasons of water time, assuming your team has a fall season, which would put you in a really good position if you decide to walk on wherever you go to school. (I’ve gotten the impression that experienced walk-on coxswains are like gold to freshman coaches because it’s one less person they have to teach and it lets them focus on the rowers rather than worrying about teaching the coxswain how to cox while also trying to teach kids how to row.) You could keep rowing if you wanted and walk-on to a team with no coxing experience but I think that if you already know you might want to cox in college, it just makes more sense to switch now and get that year and a half of experience in before college starts.

As far as expressing interest, all you have to do is show up to the boathouse whenever the team hosts their walk-on tryouts. You’ll likely seen signs posted throughout campus and/or you’ll see the team out recruiting during the first few days of school. If your university holds some kind of student involvement fair where all the groups, clubs, athletic teams, etc. show up to promote their stuff, you can seek out the crew team’s table and get put on their general interest sign-up sheet. Someone from the team will then send out an email with details on when/where to show up. You could also send the coach an email once you arrive and say that you’re interested in walking on.

Coxswain recordings, pt. 17

College Coxing Racing Recordings

Coxswain recordings, pt. 17

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Dartmouth University 2011 Eastern Sprints Lightweight 8+ Heat

One early takeaway from this recording is how quickly and seamlessly he gives their position on the crews around there – “half a length up on Cornell, holding our margin on Princeton”. The easiest way to make communicating that information to your crew as effortless as he did is to know who’s in your race (duh/obviously) but if you’re a novice coxswain who isn’t used to racing six crews across, a simple hack is to write the crews (in lane # order) on a piece of electrical tape (with a Sharpie) and tape it above your foot.

Around 4:20ish you can see that Princeton’s already taken the rate up and Dartmouth … hasn’t. Their coxswain called that lengthen 10 and then the “big focus 5” (personally I think those should have been switched) and seemed to completely miss Princeton taking it up until they were already a few strokes into their sprint and had started to full even. They still won the heat and obviously that’s the most important thing but you’ve gotta make sure that you’re not so focused on calling moves that you forget to look at what’s happening around you, especially in the last 500 (or 300, in this case).

Other calls I liked:

“That’s it Dartmouth…”

“Grip and breathe…“

“Keep your focus internal, they’re not taking seats any time soon.”

Dartmouth University 2011 Eastern Sprints Lightweight 8+ Grand Final

Following the previous recording, this is the grand final from Sunday afternoon.

His intensity is great and like all good coxswains, it’s not about what he says but how he says it. His calls are sharp and concise and the tonal changes in his voice really emphasize what he wants his crew to do. That is the ultimate takeaway from this recording. He also tells them exactly where they are on the other big players in the race, as well as how far into the race they are time-wise. As they’re walking through Yale during the sprint you can feel the energy he’s bringing through his calls and that’s what you want at the end of the race – gun to your head, if you’ve gotta pick one spot in the race to pour your energy into, it’s right there in the last 500.

At 1:30 they’re through the 500 and practically four boats across when you hear him say “swing it and go, pry those puddles, take one seat…”. Take one seat. This is a great move because it’s a small, achievable goal for the crew and when the crews are that tight, walking up or back one seat on the field can be a huge difference maker.

Other calls I liked:

“There’s blood in the water, you’re hungry for this win…”

“Stomp on them, go…“

You can find and listen to more recordings by checking out the “Coxswain Recordings” page.

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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

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

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

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

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

Coxing Novice Q&A

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So as a novice, I’ve been coxing for about 5 months. My learning curve was very fast and I quickly became our top novice coxswain, yet I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I’m not getting any better yet everyone else is improving faster and my top spots are very threatened right now. How do I get better after hitting a plateau? (btw: We don’t have winter training, we are on water all year round) Thanks!

I think the best way to get over a plateau is to find new ways to challenge yourself. When you’ve hit a plateau that typically means that your body, brain, whatever has adapted to the challenges you were presenting it before and now that it doesn’t perceive them as actually being challenging anymore, it’s bored. You’re bored. To become un-bored and get over the hump, think about all the things you’ve learned how to do in the last five months and then think about how you can start fine-tuning each of those skills. You’ve got the broad concepts down so now it’s time to start focusing on the details. If you’re having trouble thinking of stuff, talk to your coach(es). Since they’ve seen you on the water they’ll know exactly what you’re doing really well and what you can improve on. Get some feedback from them and then sit down and create a plan for yourself. Have a list of goals (small, medium, and large ones) that list out what you want to accomplish.

Small goals would be things like incorporating in three new calls for the catch into your vocabulary in the next two weeks (followed by three new calls for the finish in the following two weeks, etc.).

Medium goals would be smoothing out your docking technique over the next month (i.e. gauging when you need to drop down to fours, then pairs before weighing enough and leaning away so that the boat never comes into contact with the dock – this was one of the things I did and is probably the skill I’m most proud of. I’m a freaking amazing docker.).

Large goals usually encompass the whole season but can be tricky for novices, especially novice coxswains, to come up with. I guess one thing you could do is record a practice or race now and then record another practice or race at the end of the season and then compare the two. This would actually be a great way to hear the progress you’ve made with pointing out technique issues, increasing the efficiency of your calls, working on your tone and intonation, and just improving your overall communication skills with your coach and crew while you’re on the water.

Don’t think of this period as a plateau because that gives it a negative connotation and just makes you feel like crap. Think of it instead as that period between levels when the game is still loading. You’ve leveled up but you’re waiting for the next set of challenges to be put together and presented to you.

Coxing Q&A Racing

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Hi, so I’m coxing a race this weekend and its a bit of a funny course. Its raced 2 X 1800m stints so I am unsure how to cox it? As two separate pieces? Or as the full 3.6k? How tired should they be at the mid point, as they get a good few mins rest?? I am also racing the course later in a crew so it would be interesting to know your take on racing such an odd head. Sorry for all the questions, Thanks a lot! 🙂

Personally, I think I would try to cox it as a combination of a head race and a sprint, with the starts being head-race style and the bodies being sprint race style … ish.

A few things, first…

I’m assuming this is set up more like a head race course and less like a sprint race course. I’m also assuming that in between each 1800m you’ll want/have to keep the crew moving (meaning no one completely weighs enough). If you do get to weigh enough, pretty much everything I said in orange doesn’t apply (except for the park about making sure they all drink something).

Break the two pieces up like you would a head race – the first third is all about technique, pace, and rhythm, the second third is starting to incorporate in some motivational calls (sparingly), and the final third is mostly motivation while still keeping them on pace. With this race, your middle third is going to be the end of one piece and the beginning of another so you’ll probably end up doing calls that center around “clean strokes, finish out the first piece strong” and “let’s re-establish that rhythm we had in the first piece, *compliment them on something that felt really good that you want to carry over to the 2nd piece*”.

Make sure you and your crews stretch before you go out, drink plenty of fluids, and eat something small within 30min of your race. Also, don’t forget to go over your race plan one final time with them before you launch. Keep the warmup conservative but if you have room and time to spare, try to get at least one good practice start in at at least 3/4ish pressure. Don’t take too many hard strokes though, you don’t want to tire them out before you even get to the starting line.

You’re right, this is a really odd race but I think the key to racing it successfully is having a coxswain who knows how to pace his or her crew. The rowers also need to know how to pace themselves but I think it’s a lot easier to do that when you’ve got one person saying “this is when we’re gonna go hard, this is when we’re gonna stay relaxed, in 50m we’re gonna hit it, etc.” If you’ve got eight people that are rowing as eight people instead of one crew, you’re not going to be able to pace yourself and you’re going to burn out really fast.

I would say how tired they are probably depends a lot on their individual fitness and stamina but if I had to make a really rough guess, I’d say if they were working hard and you paced them properly they should probably feel like they just did a 2k at about 85-88%, give or take. They should be tired and feeling it but not so tired that they can’t do it again after 3-5 minutes.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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

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

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

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

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

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Hi! I have been a competitive rower for the last three years (lightweight), and I have been trying to get my coach to let me learn how to cox for the last two. I always have been in bow seat and have even bowed a straight four and every time I try to talk to her about coxing she has given me the runaround. The men’s team at my club is in need of a cox, but she still won’t let me try. I just don’t know what to do anymore because I keep getting injuries when trying to continue to row, but love my teammates and want to stay for them. Is there any way that I can convince her to let me cox? Our current coxswain is taller than me, and I only weigh more because of weight lifting.

This is my take on this, which I’ve said on here several times before: if you want to cox for another team, you don’t need your coach’s permission. All you need to do is give them the proper notice (2-3 days sounds reasonable) and say “I heard the men’s team needs a coxswain, I’ve spoken to their coach and they’re interested in having me join the team so I’m going to go to their practice on Thursday.”

I only really advocate doing this in situations where you’re not happy with your current team (and have made that known to your parents/coach) or are trying to cox but aren’t being given the chance. If your team has plenty of coxswains and the other team doesn’t or you feel that you’d get a better shot at coxing the boats you want with them, that’s also legitimate I think. It’s really a case-by-case thing. Randomly just up and saying “Yea so I’m going to cox the boys today and maybe for the rest of the season” doesn’t fly and your coach is well within their right to be pissed at you.

Although bowing a four/quad is a little different than coxing, it’s pretty similar and something that I think would probably be a could indicator to see how well someone could handle the coxswain role if they were to switch from rowing. If you’re rowing though and consistently being injured, that’s a different story. I’m assuming from what you said about being a lightweight and rowing bow seat that you’re probably pretty small, so I’m guessing that most of your injuries come from trying to keep up with the other rowers or compensating for height/strength differences. You’re not an effective rower when you’re injured so it seems counter-intuitive to make you keep doing it, especially when you’ve consistently expressed interest.

Assuming your teammates are also your friends, they probably know all the injuries you’ve had and the fact that you’ve been asking to cox for two years now so hopefully they’d be supportive of your decision to cox the guys if that’s ultimately what you decide to do. They don’t have to be happy about it but they should at least respect your decision.

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Are there rules about coaches making coxswains weigh in to check their weight? Obviously coxswains need to weigh in at certain regattas to make weight. I remember someone telling me that it was against some rule to have coaches require coxswains to report their weight, but I forget where I heard that/if it is actually true.

As far as I know there isn’t a rule that says coaches can’t require coxswains to weigh in and report their weight. When done correctly, I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s when coaches go on power trips with it and try to shame the coxswains (and rowers) for their weight that I start having issues with it. I think it’s good though because it keeps you accountable and helps the coaches keep an eye on everyone (ideally for safety and general well-being purposes).