If you’re in a bow loader, how does a cox help the rowers’ techniques? I can feel if the timing or the set’s off, but not much more than that…
I don’t think coxswains should be put in bowloaders unless they’ve got at least a year or two of experience because you can’t see anything. You have to make all your calls based on intuition, feel, what you hear, and what you know about your rower’s tendencies. I know it’s unrealistic to want that but it’s hard for a novice coxswain to get in one and be able to be effective because they just haven’t had enough time on the water to have developed any of those skills yet.
The best ways that I can suggest to be an effective coxswain for your crew is to watch video of them. Every time you go out, ask your coach to take some video of the crew during warm-ups, drills, pieces, etc. The clips don’t need to be that long either – 10, 15 seconds is plenty. After practice is over, spend some time watching the video (in slow-mo preferably) and taking notes on what you see. Whose hands are down at the catch, what does everyone’s posture look like, who is rushing their slide, etc. The more video you watch and the more notes you take, the more you’ll begin to get a feel for what each rower’s individual tendencies are. This will help because you’ll know that during the cut-the-cake drill, Jill is always too slow with her hands away, which tends to make her rush to get to the catch.
Instead of straight up telling each rower what they need to fix or what they’re doing wrong, you’ll be giving them reminders based on what you’ve already observed. Instead of “Jill, you’re rushing into the catch”, which you’d be able to see based on blade movement in a stern-loader, you’d say “Jill, remember to get the hands away from the body smooth and quick, matching Karen, so you don’t rush into the catch.” If she’s NOT doing it, you’ll have at least reminded her of something she tends to do so she can be aware of it going forward; if she IS doing it, she’ll shift her focus to her hands and do something (hopefully) to try and fix it.
Another thing to do is talk with your coach. Ask him/her what they observe about each rower, pair, and the boat as a whole to get a sense of what they’re doing well and what needs improvement. Make notes of the good and bad and when they occur so that during those situations you can say “We’ve been doing a good job with controlling the slides the last few practices so let’s start to shift our focus towards a crisper catch.” That’ll remind them of the work you’ve been doing over the last week on slide control and to also begin cleaning up the catches. As you get more experienced and start to feel the changes, you’ll be able to tell by feel what a crisp catch is vs. a sluggish one. You’ll be able to see it on the video too…maybe the first four catches are crisp but then after that they start to get a little lazy. You can use that in the boat – four or five strokes into a piece or drill you can say “Don’t let the catches fall off, stay on it, grab the water, CATCH“.
It requires a lot of outside work on your part because you’re essentially losing an entire sense, so you’ve got to utilize your other ones to make up for your lack of sight, so to speak. Video of your crew is definitely my number one suggestion though. Watching them on the ergs and taking video of them rowing on there can also be helpful since a lot of erg tendencies will translate into what they do in the boat. Bowloaders can get frustrating because a lot of what you learn about the crew has to happen off the water, outside of practice and when you are on the water, you never really know if they’re doing what they’ve tended to do in the past.
I understand the physics and aerodynamics behind why bowloaders are more effective than stern loaders but I think that unless you have a really good coxswain who really knows his/her crew, the gains you get from them are partially negated by having a coxswain who has no idea what’s happening with their boat. The key is to study, study, study your rowers and figure out what makes them tick so that if you’re blindfolded and they walk into a room, you’ll know exactly who it is based on the sounds of their footsteps.
