Tag: mental toughness

The Mental Game

Coxing Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

The Mental Game

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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.

Related: TED Talks, body language and … coxing?

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

Inside every athlete is that one demon, hidden down in the back of your mind that screams at you not to finish the piece. It tells you you’re not good enough, this hurts, let's go home and watch more TV. In a crew it is easier to squash that demon, to beat it down and use those around you to push yourself further. Whilst not easy to do, having team mates makes fighting your demon manageable. It is the single sculler who has the real fight, or the athlete who has decided that the only way they will improve is by training themselves outside of the program. Those who train alone truly come to know their demons; “Who's going to notice if you don't finish this piece”, “what difference is that extra stroke/rep/minute going to really make.” Every stroke the demon screams at you and every stroke is a fight to push him further down. Champions are those who learn to break their demons because come race day when that third 500 starts to scream for everyone else, the thoughts are getting louder and louder, but a champion already knows how to beat that voice, they have spent their summers beating that little voice into submission in the back of their minds and when everyone else starts to hurt they are able to sit up tall and give that little bit extra. Other rowers are easy to conquer, it's our own heads we have to work at.

Coxing Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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Hey, so I am the 2V coxswain and we almost always practice with the 1V. Our coach usually starts us a length ahead (or something like that), but the 1V always comes back up. I was just wondering how I can keep the rowers calmer and still take great strokes as they walk on us (and if that happens in a race situation).

If you know that the 1V is going to come back up on you, a point should come where it doesn’t phase you (and/or the crew) anymore. Ideally you should also get to the point where instead of watching them walk on you, you start trying to hold them off and/or push them back. That’s the only way both crews are going to get better.

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

Something you can do is to tell them what the margin is like when you start, watch your time, and see how long it takes for the 1V to get bow to stern or even with you. Then, on the next piece say “it took them (whatever amount of time) for them to get even with us, I want you to hold them off for 10 more seconds on this one”. Give them something small like that to work towards and then when they hit the point where the “10 more seconds” kicks in tell them this is where they get tough, now push them back. Once the ten seconds are up, see how long they can maintain their pace and/or splits before it starts to fall off and the 1V walks up. Keep doing this each time you go out and keep increasing the time, strokes, whatever that you want to hold them off.

Point out things the other boat is doing too, like having sharp or sloppy strokes, and use that to help drive your crew. If their catches are sharp, say something like “they’re getting their blades in, let’s clean it up over the next five to match them”. If their catches are sloppy, tell them “they’re shortening up, this is where you make ’em work for it, show ’em how it’s done…”. Unless you are straight up doing a race piece where the goal is to see who crosses the line first, your goal here should be to get better (with a slight undertone of beating them obviously because … who doesn’t want to try and beat the 1V?). If your only goal is to beat the other boat, you’re not becoming better athletes.

Both of those calls are incredibly motivating but in completely different ways. Typically the top boat is one that everyone else strives to be in, as well as the boat that everyone looks up to, so you if you can point out what they’re doing well and help your rowers emulate that by pointing out what they can do better with their own technique, you’re not only helping them row better and stronger as a crew but you’re also helping them individually and preparing them a bit more for when they make that jump to the 1V. You’re also helping your coach by creating a deeper pool of athletes to choose from when he creates the 1V lineup.

Here’s a really random analogy that I just thought of  that I think conveys what I’m trying to say in maybe a slightly easier way to understand. You know how when you’re growing up, you reach a certain age (like, 10 or 11) where your parents start to give you more responsibility and trust you with things in the hopes that you’ll start to mature a little? If you rise to the occasion, that’s when people start thinking you’re older than you are because your level of maturity, responsibility, self-awareness, etc. is a bit higher than your peers. On the flip side, if your parents only ever treat you like the age you are, don’t push you or put you in situations where you need to maybe be more mature than you are, your development stays a little stagnant and you don’t really “grow” or mature at the same rate as your peers who are being put in those situations. With your boat, you want to be the parent that treats your kid like they’re a 1V rower even though they’re in the 2V. Don’t let them assume that just because they’re in the 2V that means that they have to accept being passed by the 1V all the time just because they’re the 1V. Push them and force them to mature so that when they are being challenged by the 1V, they can challenge them back and make everyone say “Wow … that’s the 2V?”.

To keep them calm, there’s only so much you can do. If they’re relying solely on you to prevent them from freaking out because omg there’s another boat, you’ve got bigger issues to address. They’ve got to be able to suck. it. up. and be mentally tough themselves instead of expecting you to be the mentally tough one and project that onto everyone else. Like I said in the post I linked to, the other boat is irrelevant. This also goes back to them maturing mostly on their own but with a bit of help from you. They have to figure out how to not let another crew walking on you flip the “panic” switch in their brains (as individuals) and then communicate that with you so that if/when you are in a situation like that, you know exactly what to say to them to keep them in the moment and focused on what your boat is doing.

Ergs Q&A Training & Nutrition

Question of the Day

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I am doing an 8k sometime this week. I’ve done a 30′ piece before, and I’ve done a few 4k but nothing like this. My split for the 30 minute piece was 2:05.8 but that barely got me into the top 16. I’ve improved a small bit since then but not much. Recently I’ve been making top 3-5 on our erg pieces and I really want to make the first boat, however I know about 3k into it, I’m going to be telling myself I really don’t care and it’s not worth it. How can I approach this physically and mentally?

Have a plan. Break the piece down into whatever size chunks you want (8x1k, 4x2k, etc.) and plot out roughly what splits you want to shoot for during each chunk. Be reasonable and realistic with these. It’s better to say your goal is a 2:05 split and then actually be at 2:04.6 instead of shooting for 2:03 and then being above for the majority of the piece.

Related: On a lot of rowing blogs I hear people mention “negative splits”, especially when discussing 2k’s. What exactly are they and can it be beneficial to know how to properly use them?

Mentally, think about this. You said you want to make the first boat but you also said that 3k in you’re going to be saying you don’t care and it’s not worth it. I think all rowers question whether or not it’s worth it while they’re in the pain cave but deep down they know it is otherwise they wouldn’t have started the piece in the first place. No one that’s truly serious about the sport or making the top boat would say to themselves that they just don’t care in the middle of the piece though, no matter how arduous it is. If making that top boat is your goal then putting yourself through 8000m of pain is worth it by default.

Pushing yourself for that long is going to test your endurance, it’s going to hurt, and at some point you are going to want to quit. What makes you a stronger, more resilient athlete isn’t pulling the fastest splits or coming in first, it’s pushing through the pain and finishing the piece regardless of what happens in the middle. As a coxswain (and a coach) I obviously want fast people in my boats but even more so than that, I want people who know what pain feels like and who know how to overcome it.

Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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I had the shittiest practice ever today … I was so offset and I’m the slowest rower on the team and my coach won’t even follow me with his launch, that’s how far behind I get. I thought I had good technique but there’s a few basic things I don’t do properly and when I get corrections it’s so fucking hard for me to make those corrections and I can feel my coach giving up. I hate feeling so stupid after working so hard and idk like why the hell am I doing this, I’m not even strong. UGH I need a hug.

I’ve had shitty practices like that too – they’re the worst because you know you’re trying or you can see the people in your boat trying and for whatever reason things just aren’t clicking. It’s more mentally exhausting than anything else.

When we’ve fallen behind our coach or the other boats sometimes I would end up running my own practice. More often than not our coaches would make me push them to stay with the other boats, which is a good thing, you need to push yourself and be pushed like that, but other times I think they recognized that the neurons just weren’t firing that day so trying to push them to keep up would have only made things worse.

We’d usually stop rowing for at least two or three minutes, just to give everyone a mental break. We’d talk about whatever wasn’t feeling right and begrudgingly we would start over from the very beginning except much slower. If we were doing a drill or something, we’d break it down even further or if we couldn’t do that, we’d start off by pairs instead of fours or fours instead of sixes. We’d go through everything much slower until we had it down at that stroke rate, then we’d bump it up a beat or two and do it again, from the beginning, until we had it down at that stroke rate.

From there we’d cycle through all the pairs/6s before taking another break for a minute to figure out what went better that time and what we need to take away from it so we can keep doing it that way in the future. I don’t think there was ever time where doing it this way made things worse. Granted it took up a lot of time and sometimes we didn’t accomplish whatever the actual goal of practice was that day but the stuff we did accomplish from taking things slower and focusing more on our issues tended to, in some small way or another, be more helpful to us than whatever else we had planned on doing.

Related: What do you like to do to cheer yourself up after a lost race or tough practice?

Talk to your coach when you’re on land, preferably when you’ve cooled down, and explain the problems you’re having. Tell him how you’re frustrated because you’re having problems grasping the technical changes that you need to make and that you feel like he’s giving up on you because you either don’t understand what you’re being asked to do or are having trouble making the changes. Ask him, either then or before your next practice, if he can get on an erg with you and explain exactly what the changes are that he wants to see you make, what they should look like, and how what it should look/feel like compares to what you’re doing right now. If you don’t know or understand why something you’re doing is wrong, ask.

Also talk to him about what happens if you fall too far off the pace and end up further behind everyone else. Tell him that it’s frustrating for you but you don’t want the rest of practice to be wasted so does he have any suggestions of things you can do on your own (drills, steady state pieces, etc.). Also ask him if he’d be able to double back every so often to check in. It’s not safe for you to be completely without a coach, especially if you haven’t been rowing that long and/or are out there by yourself (I’m assuming you were in a single), so asking him to check on you for safety purposes alone is the least he can do.

You shouldn’t feel stupid after having a bad work out. Weaker people than you have gone through the same things and quit because it’s too hard so just by being persistent you’re already doing better than most. Bad practices happen. Are they infuriating as hell? Of course they are. The thing is though, you can almost always take something away from them that will ultimately make you a better, stronger rower in the long run. For me I’ve found that the best way to avoid letting crew mess with my head is to leave everything that happened on the water on the water until I’m calmed down enough to look at the situation from a more logical and objective perspective. When you’re pissed off you never see things how they actually are.

After a few hours, think back to practice for a few minutes and try to figure out what went wrong. What were you having trouble with, why was the technique stuff so hard today, etc. Jot down two or three things (and only two or three things so as to not overwhelm yourself) that were particularly difficult and come up with a plan to combat those things over the course of your next two practices or so. Whether it’s giving yourself a two minute break to take a deep breath and clear your head when you find yourself getting flustered or focusing all your energy on moving the legs and arms together on the drive so that it’s more powerful and consistent, give yourself a plan. If you’ve got something to work towards you’ll be able to focus more when you’re out instead of going out and trying to just blindly accomplish things to the point where you get so frustrated because nothing is working that you start doubting yourself.

Don’t use not being strong as an excuse. You can always get stronger, either by going to the gym or by pushing yourself to do better right at the point where you want to give up the most. If you do a 1000m piece and your brain starts telling you to quit at 800m but you push through it, sprint hard, and finish the piece, you got stronger. If you do 8x500m and you decide to quit after seven because you’re tired, you got weaker. If you make lifting a priority, you will get stronger. If you start thinking about the stuff you’re doing well and committing yourself to working harder to improve the things you’re not doing so well, you will get stronger. Any time you unnecessarily beat yourself up over something you’re backtracking on any progress you’d made up to that point. Sometimes you do have to kick your own ass and that’s fine, but know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not.

You’re not the first person to have a bad practice or feel like this and you’re definitely not going to be the last. Something to remember: you’re not defined as an athlete by how well or poorly you perform at one practice – what defines you is whether you show up the next day clear headed, focused, and ready to do work, regardless of how the previous day went.