Tag: qotd

Coxing Novice Q&A

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Hey! So do you have any tips for dealing with a boat that you think won’t do well as they are novices that don’t keep a set? So basically I was thrown into a boat that didn’t have a coxswain for the race this weekend, so I’m coxing them. How do I keep a good attitude and work with it? I’m sorry if this sounds really bad, I’m just trying to figure out a way to work with it.

If you’re coxing a boat that you’ve never coxed before and will probably never cox again, the key is having zero expectations and doing every single thing they ask you to do. In this situation, you really have no … authority, I suppose, over the crew (outside of the obvious stuff) so you can’t really jump in there and start telling them all these things they need to do (or do better) or coxing them like you cox your normal crews. And plus, I mean, they’re novices. What novice crew can keep a boat perfectly set? It’s kind of not fair to assume that they’re not going to do well because they’re novices and/or can’t maintain the set.

On a scale of 1-10 in terms of bad attitude and good attitude respectively, if you don’t get in the boat with a 5 or above then you’re basically just giving off the impression that you’re pissed to be in a boat that is beneath you. Going in with a neutral attitude is much preferred over that. Talk to the coach ahead of time, get the warmup from them, figure out what they’ve been working on during practice, what they want the race plan to be, etc. and then do exactly what they ask you to do. Get some input from the rowers or talk to the stroke on the way to the starting line to get some ideas for what they want to hear either motivation or technique-wise and try not to stray too far from any of that. You can really risk coming off as a know-it-all (and rude…) if you jump straight in the boat and try to run the show without knowing anything about the crew. You might be the coxswain and “the leader” by title but the best way to put it is (and I’m stealing this from one of my coaches) that you’re a guest in their boat.

Coxing Q&A Racing

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How should a coxswain deal with pre-race doubts and jitters?

I think you should always be a little nervous before you race. I get nervous going to the starting line but that’s mostly because I try to micromanage everything (not really the best course of action, to be honest…). Granted, being in control of your nerves and not being that person that is a blithering idiot about everything is fairly crucial too. If you’re doubting something before your race, whether it’s your skills as a coxswain or your crew’s ability to have a good race, you didn’t prepare enough, plain and simple.

Related: Once we are underway with an outing or actually in a race, I am completely in control and able to respond to any situation and keep a level head, which is what I think makes me a good cox. I find it difficult to keep that same composure on land or as we navigate up to the start. I panic and stress that we are missing a rower/ late/ something has gone wrong. I find it difficult to not get irate with my crew and my coach tells me to stop stressing but I don’t know how. Help?

Using your time wisely and effectively during practice and practicing the things you need to work on will ensure that on race day you’re adequately prepared to do what you’re there to do. I mean, that’s the entire reason why we practice, right? If you come back from a race knowing you were really nervous going to the start, figure out why. Is it just general nerves or is it because you didn’t have a race plan, were running late, etc.? Once you’ve figured out the root cause, determine how you’re going to do it differently next time. That could be actually coming up with a race plan, getting the crew together 30 minutes sooner than last time so you can launch earlier and not be rushed to the line, etc.

If you’re nervous and it’s just the normal kind of nerves, relax, close your eyes, and take a deep breath or two. (This is commonly called “centering yourself” in the sport psych world.) Outside of trying to micromanage things, I’d say that most of my nerves are nothing more than an adrenaline rush. That helps me out a lot at the start though because once the flag drops, the nerves go away and the adrenaline takes over, which means I’ve got a lot of energy to put into the beginning of the race.

Another thing that helps that a lot of athletes do, particularly pro-athletes, is visualization. If you’ve been watching the Olympics you’ve probably heard at least one athlete from every sport say the spent the previous night or the morning of their competition visualizing their routine or their race. It’s exactly what it sounds like too – you’re visualizing yourself going through every step of your event, from launching to your warm up to back into the starting platform to every part of your race plan. Visualizing how everything is supposed to go helps you build a bit of confidence which ultimately leads to your nerves either being eliminated or at the very least, better controlled.

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.

Q&A Training & Nutrition

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I’m looking to gain weight, however at the same time I want to lose fat. There are two other girls my height and I am the lightest of three of us. Girl A is 6 lbs heavier, Girl B has 14 lbs on me. I’m already at the heavier end of healthy for my height, but on any given day girl A can beat me, and once girl B gets her endurance up, she’ll be kicking both our asses. I know weight isn’t everything in erg times but it surely does help. Do you have any advice?

So if I understand you correctly, what you’re aiming for is not so much about gaining weight as it is about building muscle. It’s not the amount of weight that you’re carrying that helps you on the erg, rather it’s the amount of muscle mass you have that allows you to generate increased amounts of power. Not knowing anything about you and the other two girls, my guess is that’s probably where they’ve got you beat right now or at the very least, it’s playing a part.

When you’re trying to burn fat at the same time, what most people tend to do is focus on burning fat first and building muscle second before transitioning to the opposite once they’ve got their body fat where they want it. To do that you’ll need to do a couple basic things.

Determine the number of calories you need

The simplest way to do this is to just use one of the calorie calculator things online. My suggestion though would be to do it three or four times with separate calculators and then take the average since they don’t always use the same formulas, meaning you could see differences of 150-200 calories between them. Make sure the ones you use have a thing that lets you choose your activity level since that plays a pretty big part in how much fuel you need to consume. If burning fat is your priority then you’ll need to eat at a deficit in order to eliminate the excess calories, meaning 300-500ish calories less than what it says you need. This can easily be done though by swapping out certain foods for healthier options and exercising (which shouldn’t be hard considering you’re probably training right now).

Eat smarter

Plain and simple, you lose weight by decreasing the amount of calories going in and increasing what’s going out. The general population would say that all you need to do then is eat less food (2/3 of the general population is also obese so … there’s that) but what would be more beneficial, especially for an athlete, is to just be smarter about the foods you’re eating so that even though you’re ingesting fewer calories, you’re maximizing the nutritional benefits that you’re getting. “Eating less” is a dumb concept because you could easily say “Oh, I’m only going to eat half the box of Thin Mints for lunch today instead of the whole box.” and then change nothing else about your diet. Yea, you’re eating less but if you changed nothing else it’s probably not going to make that much of a difference. You have to consciously think about the foods you eat, think about what you could eliminate and replace with healthier options, and then actually commit to doing it. The hardest part is committing but if you go about it the right away, it shouldn’t be a hard transition to make. For example, make simple switches like swapping out white bread for whole grain, regular yogurt for Chobani, bagels for English muffins, etc. The most important thing is to make sure you’re still getting all the nutrients you need (especially protein!) so that your health and/or training isn’t adversely effected.

Exercise

Obviously, right? Cardio-based workouts (like erging, biking, running, etc. (aka steady state)) will aid in burning fat while strength-based workouts (weight lifting/training) will aid in developing muscle. Since the initial focus is on burning fat, there should be a higher cardio:strength ratio when it comes to your workouts at the beginning but you’ll eventually want to transition that after a couple of weeks so that you’re doing more strength workouts and working towards increasing your muscle mass.

Eventually you’ll hit a plateau both with your diet (it’s not really a diet, per se, but you know what I mean) and workouts, which is completely normal, and you’ll have to readjust everything to match that.

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.

Q&A Training & Nutrition

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I’ve started running a lot on the elliptical in preparation for the crew season. I erg too, but not as much. Does the elliptical actually help or is it a waste of time?

I wouldn’t say it’s a waste of time because something is usually better than nothing but there are definitely better alternatives, such as getting on the bike and going for 45 minutes. I think 80-90 RPMs is what you’re supposed to aim for. Actually going for a run too is always good but if you can’t run because of knee problems or something else, the bike is still going to be a better alternative. The problem with ellipticals is that most people tend to get on there with little to no resistance and let momentum do the work for them, which essentially renders it useless for what you’re trying to do. Plus it’s boring as hell…

My suggestion would be to do a combination of running, erging, and biking. Actually go out and run if you’re able (keeping in mind any injuries or weather issues that would make it unsafe) 2 days a week and then do a core circuit when you finish. On the other 2 or 3 days, do something like 30 minutes of erging at a couple splits over your 5k pace followed by 20 minutes on the bike and a 10 minute plank circuit. If you want to challenge yourself with a really solid plank workout, I highly recommend this one.

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.