Tag: qotd

Q&A Training & Nutrition

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Any ideas for a holiday-themed practice?

Santa hats for the coaches, elf ears for the coxswains, and the rowers wearing reindeer antlers while doing a 10k in teams of four (or eight, if you’ve got that kind of space) on linked sliders. Christmas music playing in the background, obviously. Team breakfast/dinner + Secret Santa afterwards.

Alternatively, a 12 days of Christmas themed “circuit”. 1 lap around the exterior of the boathouse, 2 flights of stairs, 3 pullups, 10 spiderman pushups, 11 reverse crunches, 12 second plank, etc..  Holiday-inspired unis optional.

College Q&A Rowing

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Firstly thank you for writing your blog its been really helpful to me!! Secondly I had a question about heavyweight/lightweight in college. I’m a lightweight junior and I’m 5’4”. I would love to row D1 in college and it seems that there’s a possibility my erg score will become competitive enough to get some attention from openweight programs. What do you think the pros and cons would be of being a smaller person on an openweight team?

If you’re a lightweight with times that can get an openweight coach’s attention I’d say you’re probably in a pretty good position to make an immediate impact on the team. That right there is a huge pro, not just for you but for the coaches too. The two other pros/cons that immediately come to mind though are…

Pro: More opportunities/wider range of choices since there are more openweight programs than there are lightweight ones. If you’re interested in the schools that have top lightweight teams (Stanford, Harvard, Wisco, Princeton, BU…) then I definitely wouldn’t rule them out but because there are fewer schools that offer lightweight rowing, you’d be limiting yourself if you only looked at those schools.

Another pro is that since lightweight rowers have to rely a lot more on technique to move boats than heavyweight rowers do (who can get by with raw power and mediocre technique), this could give you an advantage when it comes time to make lineups.

Con: Maybe slightly contradictory to my last point but getting into the top boats will probably be harder if you’re competing with women who are 20+ pounds heavier (and 10, 15, 20+ seconds faster) than you. That’s not to say it’s impossible but I think it’d be an uphill battle to say the least.

Another issue that I hadn’t considered until recently has to do with body image/eating disorders. I was emailing with someone over the summer who said she had a really hard time last year (her freshman year) dealing with the amount of the muscle/weight she gained from training after going from a pretty thin lightweight in high school to openweight in college. I think it was a conflicting issue for her because she was doing really well on the team, had great times, was in good boats, etc. but just seeing her body change from the increased amount of lifting, fueling, etc. was difficult for her to process. There were some unhealthy decisions that cropped up that led to her seeing a counselor on campus and is something that, as of the last time we talked, she’s still dealing with (although in a healthier/smarter way than before).

It might seem out-of-the-box and like I said, it’s not something that would have even crossed my mind if you’d asked the same question in the spring but now that it’s been brought up I do think it’s something you have to at least think about. You know yourself better than anyone else so you’d have to consider how you would fare in a similar situation. Obviously it’s not a make-or-break issue for most people (at least in my experience with the handful of lightweights I know that have rowed on openweight teams) but it’s worth pausing to think about.

Coxing Q&A

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Hi, so I have been a rower for 2 years and on my high school rowing team next year there will be a few coxswains leaving because they are seniors. I am making my transition to coxing so by next year I will a cox. I have tried coxing once and I realized how difficult steering is, I won’t be able to practice steering on an actual boat until spring season in March but how can I practice steering so I will be ready? Are there like video games to help steering a boat that I could try? Any recommendations or advice?

Don’t overthink steering. I’ll always consider it the hardest skill to master with coxing and it is tricky when you first start out (which is normal … cannot stress that enough) but it’s nowhere near as difficult or panic-inducing as people make it out to be. The best thing you can do to “practice” steering before the spring is to learn the traffic pattern of your river/lake, read up on the basics, how to dock, how to spin, etc., and talk to the other coxswains to see what advice they have. The more aware you are of this stuff before going out the less likely you’ll be to freeze up in the moment and potentially put yourself in a bad situation.

Here’s some questions/posts to start with (you can find a lot more in the steering tag here).

Tips & Tricks: How to steer an eight

What do coaches look for in a coxswain?

Cutting corners

Coxswain skills 101, part one (oversteering) and part two (always steering vs. never steering)

Do you have any advice for a novice coxswain who just crashed for the first time? It really shook me up, and I know I won’t be able to get back in the boat for a few days (due to our walk-on coxswain rotation) but I want to get over it.

I heard that you should just steer whilst the blades are in the water to reduce drag and maintain the set. Does that mean I only move the strings when the blades are in, or do I return them to the straight position during the recovery? The latter doesn’t seem like it would turn the boat much.

The other day I was stuck in the center lane. Let’s just say it didn’t go so well. How do you concentrate on boats on either side of you/your point, your rowers, making calls and stroke rate? Ack, overwhelmed!

Any tips on how to properly dock an 8+?

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Hi I’ve been recently reading your blog and have really enjoyed your posts. I have a question to ask you. I am in a high school crew and last year was my novice year. I spent the whole fall season rowing and also did winter conditioning, but I hoped I could become a coxswain. About half way through spring my coach realized that we needed a coxswain, and since I was light and eager to cox he used me as coxswain about once a week and I was able to cox four 4+ races, but they were always B boats because I was only the “part-time” coxswain. In the summer I rowed. Then this fall, my first varsity season, all but one of our coxswains, a girl who had coxed the guys novice last year during the spring were gone, participating in other activities. The coaches decided to make me the head girls varsity coxswain and, we’ll call her Maddie, the head boys varsity coxswain. At first I struggled a lot because I had hardly any instruction, and I was basically a novice varsity coxswain. Many of the rowers became exasperated with me. They would talk bad about me in the boat and at the boat house, and they would frequently decide to tap or back seat cox. About two weeks into the season, Sarah, a coxswain who has been coxing for 5 years and just last spring took a lightweight men’s 4+ to Nationals and placed 2nd, returned after being begged by one of our coaches. Instantly my problem became worse and the rowers would compare me to Sarah and wouldn’t take me seriously. Sarah and Maddie became close friends and have been excluding me and telling the rowers I am the worst coxswain to ever exist; they don’t take me seriously and think of me as a rower. The problem has only gotten worse as I’ve improved because Maddie seems to feel threatened by me because we are both in the same grade. So, my question is: how can I gain the respect of my fellow coxswains and the rowers after rowing for a year? Thanks for reading my long question, and I really hope you can answer it and help me gain some respect.

Check the “respect” tag as well as the post linked below. There’s plenty of stuff in both those links that’ll give you ideas for how to earn respect from the rowers.

As for the coxswains, you kinda just have to be the bigger person, ignore their bullshit, and find a way to communicate/work with them. Icing out another coxswain because you’re “threatened” by them or don’t like them or whatever is just petty and I get that you’re in high school so that’s like, the norm for that age but at some point you have to wake up and realize that doing that isn’t just hurting whoever’s on the receiving end of it, it’s hurting the entire team. You can say exactly that to them too (nicely but still firm enough to make your point) and to be honest, you probably should. Maybe part of the reason why they say this stuff about you is because they think they can get away with it because (they think) you won’t stand up for yourself or say anything back to them. I don’t think you need to engage them in any way but you shouldn’t let them walk all over you either.

Related: Some things to know as a novice coxswain

If Sarah is a good coxswain, which it sounds like she is, then presumably you have stuff you can learn from her so try to get on her good side by asking her questions, talking to her about how she’s coxed the boats she’s had in the past, proposing hypotheticals like “how would you deal with XYZ if this was your boat…”, etc. Sometimes that’s the best/easiest way to deal with a difficult person … flatter them and make them feel like you getting to learn from them is the greatest experience ever. Don’t be over the top about it or come off super fake because then they’ll just think you’re being passive aggressive (which in turn will only ramp up their collective attitude problem) … just approach it like you would a normal conversation with any other person. Hopefully doing that will give you a chance to develop a better working relationship with her and let her see that you’re not the enemy just because you’re a new-ish coxswain who’s still learning the ropes.

Coxing Q&A

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Hi, do you have any tips on staying motivated through a long winter? This is my fifth year coxing at high school and as usual we are heading into a long winter and the girls are doing a ton of small boats stuff. This means I am rarely out on the water coxing (once since May last year, actually). I feel like I’m losing all my motivation, I don’t want to attend practice as I used to, and dread every session even though I love my team. I really don’t want to be training at the moment but I know if I quit now I will regret it in the summer, thinking about how amazing it was racing at nationals last year, and how much I want to do so again. The summer really is amazing but at the moment it is too far away to even comprehend!! Obviously watching them row in smaller boats from a launch can be beneficial but after so many hours it gets a bit tiresome. I know winter isn’t the most enjoyable for rowers either but at least they are developing and improving… I hope this makes sense! Have you ever felt like this?

I actually felt like that this past year. I absolutely love my team but there were times this past winter/spring where I questioned if that was enough to keep me coming back every day. When I first applied for the job  the coach I was talking to told me straight up that the team is small and how much coaching I was able to do would be dependent on our numbers. Last year we were really small and only had an eight and a four, which meant I wasn’t going to have my own boat to coach. Occasionally I’d take the four out if the other coaches both wanted to go out with the eight but I spent the majority of the year being a launch puppy.

Once I get bored with something I lose interest fast and I felt that happening starting sometime in late January. I’d wake up at 5am, be at the boathouse by 6am, sit around for two hours, go to work, come home … rinse, wash, repeat. There were a few times when I thought about telling the other coaches that I was just not coming anymore (during the winter) because technically they didn’t need me but I never did because even though I know they would have been fine with that, I’d signed up for this. Showing up everyday, even on the days I had zero interest in driving the 20+ minutes in sub-10 degree, snowy weather to stare at bunch of ergs, was just part of the job (at least from my perspective). I knew that negative mentality had more to do with not feeling like I had a sense of purpose than anything else so that was when I started to really ramp up what I was doing with the coxswains. I looked at it like if there wasn’t something for me to do I’d come up with something on my own and that’s what I did. We watched video, listened to recordings, shared stories about past races, talked about the technique we were seeing on the ergs, or just sat in the lounge and complained about stuff (which sounds unproductive but it was fun and actually gave me a lot of good ideas). In the spring when I was in the launch I’d take a lot of notes (either mentally or on my phone) on what we were doing, what the other coaches was saying, etc. and then I’d pass that along to the coxswain(s) to use for the next race/practice. It was a good way for me to feel productive and in turn it helped the coxswains, which by that point had been firmly established as my “niche” on the team.

Being bored during the winter is a given. It’s going to happen so you just kinda have to accept that it comes with the territory of being a coxswain. I think it’s good to not always have something to do (like you do when you’re on the water) and to be able to just sit and quietly watch but it does get old after awhile. If you don’t have something to do, come up with something on your own. See if you can get the other coxswains on board with having weekly meetups during practice where you talk about a recent race, film the rowers on the ergs so you can study their technique, crowdsource calls for races, practice, drills, etc., … stuff like that. The winter is a GREAT time to work on your technical eye so try to come up with (as juvenile as it sounds) “activities” that focus on that. (You can obviously do that on your own but I think it’s a good idea to do it in a group when you can.) At the very least, this would be a GREAT opportunity for you to step up (as, I’m assuming, one of the more experienced coxswains on the team) and take the initiative to help train the younger coxswains.

Don’t be afraid to take some time off either. I’ve said this every year but outside of the summer, the winter (particularly the start of winter training/anytime before Christmas) is really the only opportunity that coxswains have to take a break. If you’re feeling burned out, bored, or you need to get back on track with classes, talk with your coaches and see if you can work something out. Obviously don’t say “I’m bored and don’t want to come anymore, hit me up when it’s time to go back on the water!” but just communicate how you’re feeling and if the coaches don’t foresee any immediate need for you to be at practice, see if it would it be possible to take a couple days/week/two weeks off to recharge. If they absolutely insist that you come every day, bring a notebook on the water with you and start taking notes. I try to write down just about everything the coaches say (to individuals and the whole crew) on technique, as well as whatever offhand phrases they say that could potentially turn into calls so I can share it with the coxswains later. “Try less hard to go faster” is one of my recent favorites. I’ve been working on this for most of the fall so I’ll probably spend some time next week now that we’re indoors organizing the Google Sheet I’ve got everything sitting in so it’s ready to go for our training trip in January. A project like that might sound sorta unnecessary in theory but I think it’s useful and it’s a good way to utilize time that I’d otherwise spend mindlessly staring at erg monitors.

Novice Q&A Racing

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Hello! I was wondering if you had any advice for not panicking during a head race? I’m a novice rower who usually rows stroke in doubles. During practices everything is fine. Mock races are great, good start, ratio, and pressure … but during the last two actual regattas I started panicking when the head race started and my rate was too fast with no pressure and I felt like it was endless and I couldn’t push … it almost felt like I had to give up! Do you had any advice?

If things are good during practice then the issue is more likely you just letting your nerves get to you rather than you getting to the starting line and panicking because you feel unprepared (which is another reason why people freak out at the start). I used to always get really nervous before the start of a race too so before our boat would meet to start our land warmup I’d find a quiet spot well away from the boats, other people, etc. and just sit for 10-15 minutes to try and relax. Sometimes I’d go lay in our trailer if it was a short walk away and other times I’d go into the boathouse and find a stairwell to sit in. I totally sabotaged myself during one of my first races as a novice by letting my nerves get to me and it was a total shitshow (at least on my end) so I learned quickly that I needed to take a few minutes to get out of my own head before we launched. During the row up to the start I’d always try to focus on my breathing too (long, slow, deep breaths), that way I’d always have something to focus on even when I wasn’t making calls to the boat.

Related: I’m a novice rower and I’m racing in my 1st head race this weekend, any tips? I’m freaking out!

The more experienced I got the less nervous I’d be by the time we got to the starting line but even now the buildup of adrenaline still makes me antsy. Once I catch myself drumming my fingers on the gunnels I know I need to close my eyes and take a couple deep breaths to get back to that relaxed baseline feeling I had on the row up. I talk to myself a lot while we’re sitting there too (in my head, not out loud … that’d be weird), usually just to remind myself to chill out, the crew trusts me and has my back, etc. Each of my stroke seats and I (or bow seats if I’m in a four) have always had our own little thing we’d do too (fist bumps, “secret handshakes”, things we’d say to one another, etc.) and that’s kinda the last little thing I need to get me 100% dialed in. At that point there’s no time left to be panicked or antsy because I’ve got a job to do so whatever nervous energy I have left just has to be channeled into calling the race.

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

I’d recommend doing something similar before your next race – find somewhere quiet to collect your thoughts before you launch, subtly focus on your breathing on the row up, and dial yourself in at the line so your start is as controlled and powerful as possible. What works for everyone is a little different so you’ll probably have to tweak all that to make it work for you but eventually you’ll get into a pre-race routine that leaves no room for nerves to take over.

Q&A Rowing Technique

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Hi! I’m racing in a 4+ this weekend at HOCR. I have rowed port for the past 2.5 years, but my coach wants to see if I can row starboard and be bow seat. Do you have any advice on making this transition effectively so quickly? Thank you!!

The main things to be aware of, especially if you’ve been rowing on the same side for a long time, are what side you’re leaning to, what hand your pulling with, and what hand you’re feathering with. Everything will be the opposite of what you’re used to so it might take a bit before you remember that you have to feather with your right hand instead of your left and lean into your rigger on the port side instead of leaning away from it towards where your “normal” rigger is. With knowing which hand to pull with, if you’ve been rowing the same side for awhile then you’ve likely developed a bit more strength in your outside arm by comparison so you might be more likely to initially pull with that hand instead of your “new” outside hand. That and leaning towards the wrong side can cause some issues with getting fully connected at the catch but once you get some time on your new side they go away pretty quickly, especially if you’re aware of the issues and actively working on them.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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Hello! I was wondering if you have any tips for when you feel burned out with coxing. I just don’t feel like I’m really doing my best in the boat and I feel like I have rowers who do not appreciate me or all the stress that I’m putting in to be the best I can be. I’m not getting any feedback even though I repeatedly ask for it and just don’t feel like a respected part of the team and while I love this sport I don’t really know what to do.

It’s easy to get burned out on coxing, especially when you’re trying to get better and feel like you’re hitting a wall with every attempt you make. When it comes to asking feedback, more often times than not the reason you’re not getting any is because you’re not asking the right questions. That may or may not be the case here but whenever you talk to your rowers (or coaches), ask them about one or two specific things rather than just “how did I do today”.

Related: Okay. I know you have gotten questions like this before but how do I get people to respect me as a coxswain? I mean I’m fairly knowledgeable, I know how to correct people’s technique and how to work with them to improve. I do most of the workouts with the team but I feel like there is something about me that makes them not respect me. I’m a camp counselor over the summer and I feel like the campers don’t really respect my authority either.

For example, if you’ve been working on your technical eye say something like “I’ve been trying to get better at spotting and calling out technical issues, particularly when we’re going through drills. Today I was focused on the catch and wanted to know if you had any feedback on the calls I was making – were they still too vague or do you think they were better at pointing out the issues and what changes had to be made?” The caveat to asking the rowers stuff like this is that there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll say “uh…I wasn’t paying attention sooo…” or “I don’t remember…”. To combat that it’s best to talk to a couple rowers before you go out and say “this is what I’m working on today, can you give me some feedback after practice?” and then approach them again later once you’re off the water. The same idea applies to your coach when it comes to stuff like steering, developing a better understanding of drills and workouts, etc. The more specific your questions the better the feedback you get will be.

Related: Hey, This past spring season was my first season and I am a novice coxswain. Now I am training with mostly varsity kids for the summer. I want to be be able to get them to respect me but I am really short and weak. I have already tried working out with them. Is there any other way to get their respect? Also, what are some drills that I can do on the water when I am waiting for my coach so my rowers aren’t just sitting around? Thanks for the help!

As far as not feeling like a respected member of the team, talk to your team captains about this (if you have any) and explain why you feel that way. If you don’t have team captains or a varsity rower/coxswain you feel comfortable talking to, approach your coach and ask to meet with them one-on-one. Tell them how you’re feeling and that the result of everything is that you feel really burned out and aren’t sure where to go from here. Hopefully they’ll be able to give you some advice on ways they feel you can improve that you might not have thought of yet and how to work towards earning the respect of the rowers. The thing about coxing is that you have to accept early on that pretty much no one is going to know what you’re doing off the water to get better so you have to take all that behind the scenes work and manifest it into actual actions  on the water … otherwise you’ll just come across as all talk and no game and people will wonder why you’re so stressed for seemingly no reason.

Related: This kind of sounds weird, but I’m a novice coxswain, how do I get my boat to respect me? I feel like (with the exception of calls related to steering and drills) they don’t listen to anything I say in the boat. They talk a lot and I tell them not to but they continue to. They point stuff out to me on the water that I can clearly see and I just feel like they are always yelling at me and telling me what to do. Sometimes I just need to make a decision but I can’t if everyone is yelling at me. I don’t know what to do. I’m learning but the coaches don’t really help me out. Most of the things I’ve learned about coxing I’ve learned from other coxswains on the team or your blog. Do you know how to fix this and get the rowers to listen to me?

If worst comes to worst, you can always take some time off to clear your head and figure out what your next move is. Sometimes taking time off is a good solution because it lets you look at things more objectively whereas when you’re stressed and irritated it’s harder to see where you can do things better/differently. You might also come to the conclusion that as much as you love coxing, the team environment isn’t giving you what you need to make continuing to cox worth it and that walking away from the sport is your best option. The good thing is that we’re nearing the end of the fall season which means you’ll likely have some time to do this before winter training picks up or if your team doesn’t do winter training, you’ll have plenty of time to think about all this before the spring season rolls around.

College Q&A Teammates & Coaches Training & Nutrition

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Hey, quick question: I’m a coxswain on a collegiate club team and lately we’ve been having some issues with sick people missing practices. Our (very old-school) coach’s opinion is unless you’re dying, you’re at practice, but some of my teammates want to stay home if they’re feeling a little sick because they think rowing while sick will make the illness a lot worse and take them out for longer. I’ve also heard that it’s safe to row if the sickness is below the neck but that you should stay home if there’s an issue with the head or throat, but I’m not sure if that’s medically accurate. So I was just wondering, at what point is someone “too sick to row” in your opinion?

I’ve got a post on this exact subject scheduled for next Thursday so keep an eye out for that. The “above the neck/below the neck” adage is pretty standard and what most athletes tend to follow (typically on the advice of their athletic trainers, coaches, or family doctors). Runny noses and sore throats are generally OK to practice with (just back off on your workouts for a day or two and you’ll be fine) but if you develop a fever or your cold makes its way into your chest (like with bronchitis), then you definitely need to take a step back and rest for a couple days.

We’ve got several guys on the team sick right now (one with mono who is out for the fall, one with bronchitis who I haven’t seen in like a week and a half, another who found out last week that his persistent cold is actually asthma (on top of him actually having a cold), etc.) and as tough as it can make putting lineups together, it really is in everyone’s best interest that they take time off to recover and get back to 100%. The guys that have a standard cold will come and erg, row in the tanks, bike, or go for a run in lieu of rowing so they’re still getting a decent workout in but they’re able to go at a more “relaxed” pace (or stop midway through if necessary) based on how they’re feeling. No one abuses the coaches understanding and generosity when it comes to giving them time off or an alternate workout when they’re sick and in return, the coaches trust the rowers when they say they’re sick and as such expect them to follow up with our trainers/doctors accordingly.

As far as what defines being “too sick to row…” … I don’t know if you can say what being too sick to row is because it’s going to be different for everyone. Obviously if you have a fever, a cough that’s making it hard to breathe, or something like that then you should definitely not be at practice but if it’s just a regular cold then I think you have to trust the person who’s sick when they say how they’re feeling. I would give them the benefit of the doubt if they say they need a day off because faking your symptoms just to get out of practice or whatever is just pathetic (especially as a college student/adult) and if they’re an otherwise committed member of the team, you don’t really have any reason to not believe them when they say they’re not feeling 100%.

Since you’re a club team, I assume that the majority of the policies in place are enacted by team-elected student officials…? It might be worth discussing with them some sort of official “sick” rule that lays out when people should and should not be at practice, what the alternative workouts/plans are if you’re not well enough to go on the water but still OK to practice, and then present that to your coach so that there’s no (or at the very least, fewer) issues going forward. Old-school coaches tend to be very set in their ways (I had two in high school and while they were great in so many ways, we did occasionally have issues similar to this) and of the opinion that if they can survive all the ailments and maladies they had to deal with growing up (without the benefits of modern medicine), then the rest of us should be able to do that too. Different times call for different measures though so sitting down with the team leaders and hashing out a “team sick policy” is probably your best long-term solution.

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

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I am a girl and I recently joined a new club team that has a very small group of girls and a very large group of guys. I started out coxing the novice guys so I know them pretty well and we work well together but recently I was switched to coxing the for girls. I feel like I work better with the guys and would like to go back to coxing for them. How do I approach my coach about this without sounding like I am complaining or being a team player?

I would first talk with the guys coach to see if there’s even a spot available for another coxswain on the team before you talk with your coach. (Even if you think there is, don’t assume anything until you’ve heard confirmation from the coach.) It’s like looking for a job – you shouldn’t quit your original job until you’ve landed another one otherwise you’re probably gonna get screwed. Same general principle applies here … at least in my opinion. You don’t have to go into all the details but I’d say something along the lines of you enjoyed being on the guys team, felt you worked well with him (the coach) and the rowers, and wanted to know if you were to switch back to the men’s team in the spring season (not mid-season, because that’s a shitty thing to do and not indicative of a “team player”), would there be a spot open for you and would you be able to compete right away for whatever boat it is you want. I’d let them know that you haven’t talked to your coach about this yet either but plan to do so within the next few days, just so they don’t end up saying something to them that puts you in an awkward position by giving your coach the impression that you’re going behind his/your team’s back.

If the men’s coach says there’d be a spot for you then the next step is talking with your coach. I would ask to meet with them one-on-one before or after practice and just lay out that when you started with the club you coxed with the men’s team and really enjoyed it because of XYZ. Explain to them your reasons for wanting to switch back to coxing them and try to avoid throwing anyone on your current team under the bus or saying something that implies you just like the other people better. Doing that is just going to come off wrong and won’t do you any favors. You don’t want to burn any bridges in the process of switching teams so you have to be as professional as possible about it and frame everything so that your reasons are about how/why you’ll thrive and have the kind of success you want with the other team and not about just liking a certain group of people more than another.

If the men’s coach says there isn’t a spot for you, accept that and figure out a way to work with your current teammates. Try talking with some of the varsity coxswains to see if they have any advice or if there’s something more serious going on, talk about it with your coach and ask them what advice they have for developing a better working relationship with the girls in your boat. Figuring out how to work well with people that you don’t necessarily get along or see eye-to-eye with is a solid life skill and this is a good opportunity to figure out some strategies for how to do that. (I always felt it came in handy in high school and college when working on group projects since group projects, you know, suck…)

I’ve always been of the opinion that a coach can’t tell you that you’re not allowed to switch teams – I just don’t think it’s within their power to do that – so talking with them is more of a courtesy thing to let them know what’s going on more than anything else. I do think they have the right to be a little annoyed though but that shouldn’t really stop you from doing what you think is best for you/your rowing career. Like I said,  you don’t want to burn any bridges but I also think you need to stick to your guns in situations like this. Coaches have a tendency to guilt trip people into staying on their current team and I personally don’t think that’s fair, for coxswains in particular since how well we work with the people in our boat can literally be the make-or-break factor in determining how well that crew does. Whatever you decide to do, be mature about how you approach things and you should be fine.