If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw that last Friday I wrapped up 2.5 years with MIT and on Monday started a new job at Columbia! I’m excited to finally share this since I’ve been sitting on the news since mid-December but back in October I applied for the Director of Rowing Operations role and was offered the job a week before Christmas. Leaving MIT was a hard decision – it’s no secret how much I loved being there – but this felt like a good next step.

The last few weeks have been kinda hectic though and I owe a lot of you replies to emails so keep an eye out for those over the weekend and throughout next week.

Two posts worth checking out from the past two weeks – yesterday’s coxswain recordings and last week’s post on coxing people on the erg. Knowing how to cox people during erg tests is a pretty fundamental skill that we tend to overlook so even if your indoor season is winding down and/or your team is done testing, you should still consider writing in your notebook the stuff from the “things to know” section since all of that can be used on the water as well.

Posted some new recordings last week that included a short clip of the 2012 USA M8+ (with Yale lightweight assistant Ned DelGuercio coxing), as well as one from the Thames Challenge Cup at Henley from 2015. That one is probably one of the best recordings I’ve posted on here so check it out if you haven’t yet.

Also answered a couple really good questions, including this one that asks about helping your former boat when both the coxswains and coaches are apathetic about addressing the problems they’re facing and this one that asks about avoiding repetition with your calls when the crew has trouble hitting the rate. Yesterday’s post also talks about how to avoid being repetitive and lays out a couple steps you can take to work on that.

I unintentionally posted two consecutive training posts last week and yesterday but since both hit different parts of the “training spectrum”, I decided to keep yesterday’s up rather than replace it. Sorry for the redundancy though. On that note, if you’ve got any suggestions for stuff to write about this year hit me up.

Last week’s post is based on a talk that Wes Ng from Penn gave last summer on 10 things you can do to be a better athlete and yesterday’s is on overtraining and burnout, both of which tend to start ramping up now that we’re well into winter training. Wes’s talk was really good and highlights all the little things that we tend to overlook when we’re thinking about what we can do to get better so if you’re starting to think about that for the upcoming season, that post would be a good place to start.

Pro tip: Avoid running into marine wildlife, they’ll rip the skeg off your shell.

Merry Christmas!!

Yesterday I posted a few gift ideas for rowers and coxswains that’ll hopefully make finding the right present a little easier, particularly if you’re a last minute shopper. Also check out last week’s post on “getting on the erg“. This is a great way to improve your technical eye during the winter and work on your understanding of how the stroke feels vs. what it looks like.

Have you listened to the video I posted on Tuesday about what makes a good recording? Don’t forget to also check out the post on soreness vs. pain. Now that we’re getting into the grind of erg season hopefully that post and the one that follows will help you train smart and avoid injuries over the next few months.

I don’t know about you guys but I have never been so ready for a week to just be over. The last few days have been rough and as easy as it would be to just stay angry, all that’s going to do is keep us in the same place we are now instead of moving us forward. I’ve felt pretty lost this week and while I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I can do in the coming weeks, months, and years, I know that in the interim I’m going to be even more determined to help you guys grow into the leaders we need right now. If all of this has proven anything it’s that we all need to stand up for what we want, deserve, and believe in and not rely on others to do it for us. It starts with us and as coxswains, on our teams, it starts with us.

On Tuesday night I wrote a post on leadership and coxswains that I hope you’ll read and share with your teammates. Being a leader is hard. It’s not easy, it’s not always fun, and it’s not always going to make you popular … but if you uphold the values that are important to your team, hold yourself and others accountable to the standards and goals you’ve set for yourselves, and commit to doing what you can to make things better for those around you, it will earn you respect. Freshman, senior, man, woman, it doesn’t matter – we as coxswains need to step it up in all of those regards because it starts with us.

I want to do what I can to help you because I recognize that if I’m asking you to be better, I have to be better too. It starts with me. So, tell me what you need. Tell me how I can help. What challenges are you facing, what questions do you have, what tools haven’t you got. Let me know so that we can collectively move forward with a goal of doing more and being better, not just for ourselves but for each other. It starts with us.

https://play.spotify.com/user/1241641027/playlist/6Ms3rCma3gsxebUVYLoF8Y

On Tuesday I posted a follow-up to September’s post on evaluating practices so if you haven’t read it yet you can check it out here. This one is about evaluating your race performance and gives a couple things you can look at to help you gauge how well you did and where you can/should make improvements. I’ll actually be referring back to that post a few times next week too as the three questions in there will be key points of the conversations I have with our coxswains as we go over the videos from HOCR (both of which I posted earlier this week on YouTube), as well as the feedback they got on the first round of  coxswain evals that the guys filled out yesterday.

https://play.spotify.com/user/1241641027/playlist/43kCqJ17j7XiaDjxkN2r3x