Tag: racing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 12, 2013

Do you have any inspirational thoughts/advice for novice cox’s first spring race?

As far as inspirational thoughts go, check out the “motivation” tag, as well as the “quotes” tag. There’s bound to be something in there that strikes you.

Advice-wise…

Know the rules.

Have a plan (or two or three) and go over it with your boat.

Accept the fact that things rarely go as planned. Stay calm and be flexible.

Have a good attitude, regardless of the outcome.

Breathe at the starting line.

Don’t dwell on anything that goes wrong.

Record yourself.

Be a little nervous but never panicked.

Tell the other teams at the finish line “good race” even if you lose and especially if you win.

Steer straight.

Don’t tell your rowers to “pull harder”.

Embrace everything but when it’s time to race, put your game face and be prepared to go do work. As long as you’re doing your job, there won’t be any time to be nervous about what’s going on.

Coxing Q&A Racing

In regards to steering during a sprint race, do you recommend using the tiller to steer or having the ports/starboards row with more pressure for a stroke or two in order to maintain a straight point?

If you have to steer, always use your rudder. The rowers will be too hyped on adrenaline at that point to be able to coherently give you the pressure adjustment you need and more importantly, it takes their focus off of what they should be doing.

Plus it all goes back to steering being your responsibility so you have to get a good point before the race starts. Even when it’s really windy out, you’ve got to be on top of your steering to make sure you’re not drifting into another coxswain’s lane. I think my steering improved the most when I was forced to steer in bad conditions. Regardless though, unless you are in the process of getting a point before the start when you’re using bow pair, you shouldn’t be using the rowers at all to maintain your steering.

College Coxing Racing Recordings

Coxswain recordings, pt. 6

By readyallrow March 8, 2013

Purdue university men’s Lightweight 8+ 2012 Milwaukee River Challenge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=KbhgdqCq12M

There’s a lot going on here with the rowing that is pretty … bad … so I’m going to skip over talking about a lot of that and focus on just the coxing. This is also a long recording so I’m cherrypicking what I think is the most important parts rather than pointing out every single thing. Ultimately I think this audio was solidly average. There were a lot of missed opportunities but the stroke seemed happy with it so take what I say with a grain of salt. If your rowers like what you’re doing by all means, keep it up, but at the same time, recognize where improvements can/should be made too.

While they’re sitting there waiting to start, see how 7-seat is moving his oar back and forth a lot? This would have driven me nuts because it messes up your point, not to mention is really irritating (especially up in the stern) since it jerks the boat a little. That’s probably part of the reason why he has to tell 2-seat to tap it a couple times.

At 3:11 he says “we’re in the cute”, which is a good thing to let your crew know, especially in bigger head races like HOCR where the entire starting area is a humongous clusterfuck.

At 4:45, notice how he calls the 10 really sharp and concise (albeit a little forced) but returns to his normal voice in between counts? That’s a good way to maintain the intensity and keep the crew relaxed.

Between 4:56 and 5:07 is a good example of how to communicate with your stroke during a piece or race. They’re not having a conversation or anything, rather the stroke says what he’s feeling in one quick breath and the coxswain translates it to the rest of the crew. In that same vein though, as the race went on this started to annoy me because even though stroke-coxswain communication is important, I wanted this coxswain to be saying all the stuff the stroke was saying before the stroke said it. Everything he said, with the exception of a couple things at the beginning, the coxswain should have already seen and made a call for. The coxswain should not be coxed by the stroke, if that makes more sense.

When he says “we gotta pull something out” … *long pause* … “alright, we’re going for it” at 11:36, I was pretty convinced that he didn’t actually have a plan or know what he needed to do in the upcoming stretch. You can’t say in a semi-aggressive tone that they’ve gotta make a move and then stop talking. You also can’t say “alright we’re going for it” like you’re debating whether or not you should actually go for it. If now is when you need to make a move, get on their asses and tell them you’re taking a fucking move. When you’ve got contact on a crew like this and you’re trying to walk through them, this is where you take a 20 to get even or put your bow ball in front. A 10 might get you to them but it’s not going to get you through them, which is what you want. If you stop your ten and you’re only half a length through them, that’s going to give their coxswain an opportunity to counter whereas if you take a 20 and can get up to their 2-seat, you’ve essentially absorbed them and it will be harder to counter.

A pro-tip for going around turns like the one at 12:43 is to tell one side to power down to 1/2 or 3/4 pressure and the other to power up. It seems counterintuitive but it’s actually a lot more effective than having one side still at 100% and trying to get the other side to out-pull them. In most cases you should be able to get around in 5-6 strokes. This is something you should practice when possible though so the crew gets used to “powering down” for a few strokes and develops that muscle memory for what it feels like (because 1/2 pressure when you’re consciously thinking about it is a lot different than 1/2 pressure in the middle of a race when you’ve got a shitload of adrenaline pumping through you).

When he says “you’re missing a ton of water” at 15:06, my immediate reaction was “…no shit/OK? How do you want them to fix it??”. You should never assume they know what to do or that something is obvious, especially since it’s your job to tell them what to do and more importantly, when. They’re missing water, you want them to not miss water, but what about their technique needs to change? Just saying “get it in” isn’t going to do much, especially if you’ve already been saying that for 10+ minutes.

Last thing – unless you’re like, 5 strokes from the line, you’re not “almost there” … and even if you are, “almost there” is not a call you should make EVER.

Other calls I liked:

“Together, we move…”

“The boat felt alive…” He said this after the race but this is a great (motivational) call to make during the race when the boat’s running well and you’ve got a good rhythm going.

OARS Lightweight 8+ 2013 Youth Nationals Petite Final

Right off the bat I love that he reminds them to “look at the flag”. This is important and definitely something I recommend coxswains do. Remember, you go on the drop of the flag, not when the announcer says GO. If the flag comes down before he says GO, you go anyways. You can’t see that so it’s important that everyone else in the boat is watching for it.

About a minute in he says ““we’re ahead of everyone” … cool but by how much? If you’re going to tell your boat you’re ahead or behind, always tell them by how many seats. If you only say you’re up or down, inevitably someone is going to look out of the boat because they want to know by how much. Usually I’ll say something like “up on the field, three seats over Lane 3, two seats over Lane 5” and tell them where we are compared to the lanes on either side of us. When everyone is still clustered together it tends to be too difficult to say specifically where you are on five other lanes so a semi-specific overview is generally sufficient.

At 6:15 he says “come on, don’t let them take it…”, which can be a good or bad call depending on your tone. You’re in the midst of a very high-energy situation and you obviously don’t want to give anything up but you also don’t want to make it sound like you’re begging because that just comes off like there’s no hope. Instead of “come on” say “show me what ya got”, “right here, lemme see it”, “stomp on the feet, lemme feel it”, etc. Instead of “don’t let them take it” say “don’t give an inch”, “don’t yield to them”, “show ’em you’re not backing down”, etc. All of this requires a bit of “planning” ahead of time but if modifying how you say something results in a more positive psychological response by your rowers, it’s worth it.

SoCo Crew 2013 Youth Nationals men’s v8+ Heat

The very first thing I noticed – not even joking, the very first thing – is where the starboard buoys are at 0:27 (a foot or two off the blade) and where they’re at at 0:43 (nearly under the rigger). Come on guys. Gotta steer straight. It’s literally your primary/only job.

When you’re counting out strokes try not to just count out the strokes and say nothing in between. I’m definitely guilty of this sometimes, usually when I’m trying to concentrate on something else that’s going on (either where we are, something with the blades, etc.), but it’s something I’m always conscious of and working on. When you’re just counting strokes, especially during a 20, it’s so monotonous. Case in point, the beginning of this race was 50 seconds of straight counting. Go sit in front of someone and count continuously for 50 seconds and see how long it takes for them to get up and walk away. Personally I’m also really anti-counting up and then counting down when calling 20s. If you’re going to count up (1, 2, 3…) on the first ten, do the same with the second ten. Don’t start counting down (10, 9, 8…) because it makes it seem like you’ve hit a peak and you can start coming down now when in actuality you’re still building into the piece. Psychology, guys. Psychology.

At 1:23 he says “we need to get under 1:40 the whole time to win this…”, which might have been something they discussed beforehand but regardless, there are definitely better ways to make this call. Knowing your splits during a race can be both a blessing and a curse and as the coxswain it’s your responsibility to know how to work that information to your advantage. You should go in with a plan – are you going to negative split the whole time or try to hold a steady average? If you go into the race wanting be under a 1:40 you’ve got to communicate and remind your crew of that in an encouraging way. “We committed ourselves to holding a 1:38, let’s see that commitment right now. Sitting at a 1:40, let’s go, big press now … drive it, find that rhythm, 1:39, press swing … 1:38. Connect, press, sssend. YES! Let’s maintain this until we make our move at the 1000m. Commit, sssend. Commit, sssend.”

“I want it bad so we gotta have it…” is a bullshit call and not something you should ever say to your crew. Stop with the separation between you and the rest of the boat. Same goes for the “this is unacceptable” call at 3:17. Yea, maybe it is, but this still is not something you say to your crew in the middle of a race.

The counting between 6:06 and 6:46, randomly calling power 10s in the middle of another power 10 … dude, no.

The biggest thing I noticed in this piece was that the coxswain sounded so irritated the whole time, like he was just pissed to be there. Yea, you’ve gotta stay on them and pay attention to what’s happening around you but saying stuff like “this is unacceptable” or “I want it bad” during a prelim would make me seriously reconsider wanting you in the boat for semis and finals. I went and looked up the heats results from Youth Nats this year and in this race it was first place to semis, next two to the reps. Does going to the reps mean you’ve gotta row another race, yea, but sometimes you’ve gotta cut your losses and know that that’s the inevitable result instead of pushing your crew to beat a team that you’re (most likely) not going to catch. Anyways, I feel like this coxswain has a lot of potential that he’s just not taking advantage of. His voice is great and his intensity (when he’s channeling it properly) is solid but the calls and overall race strategy need work.

You can find and listen to more recordings by checking out the “Coxswain Recordings” page.

Ergs Rowing Technique

Rowing videos for motivation & technique

By readyallrow March 3, 2013

I got a question last night asking me if I had any must-watch videos for motivation and/or technique. Do I ever.

Motivation

http://youtu.be/UuBPxi9M_lE

http://youtu.be/JjYeREIHCsw

Technique

http://youtu.be/DqFZRks9gOA

Image via // @buchancameron

Novice Q&A Racing Rowing Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow March 2, 2013

Question (especially for a novice boat): What defines a winning/champion boat and one that comes up short?

Attitude. There are a lot of things that define champions but attitude is the most important.

Related: Words.

You can still be a championship-caliber team if you’ve lost a race. It’s entirely based on how you react immediately after the race ends, how much time you spend reflecting on everything up to that point (training, practicing, and the race itself), and the commitment you make to yourself and your teammates to go back and worker harder. If you give in to defeat, you’ve already lost all your future races. People aren’t kidding when they say champions don’t quit, they never give up, etc. If you lose a race, especially one you knew you could have won or should have one, you’re allowed to be pissed off with yourself but wallowing in self-pity or taking your anger out on someone else (especially the other competitors or your teammates) is unacceptable. Be angry, but use that anger to motivate you the next time you get out on the water. It’s like the saying goes, let your past make you better, not bitter. Don’t let one bad race affect your attitude or the amount of effort you put into training. If anything, your attitude and the amount of effort you put forth should be better and higher than they were before.

Attitude also defines a winning boat. Championships mean nothing if your attitude doesn’t reflect humility and respect. Look at all the gold medalists from the Olympics last year. One of the common threads amongst all of them was that they didn’t just thank their families, coaches, and teammates … they thanked their competitors too. You have to respect your competition enough to bring it 100% every time you go out to race. Following the rules, stuff like that, that’s obvious but going out and racing to your fullest potential while pushing and being pushed by the competition is one of the biggest signs of respect in sports, at least in my opinion.

Related: Words.

You also have to be humble. If you win a big race, like Eastern Sprints in a close race (like say, Brown and Harvard), cheering and whooping it up is always expected but there is a line when it comes to celebrating. Cross it and the quality of your win starts being overshadowed by the way you’re acting. I guarantee you in that race, Brown left the water with a hell of a lot more respect for Harvard than they had going in. If those two crews hadn’t been rowing off each other during the race, it wouldn’t have ended like it did. They were each other’s motivation, they were pushing each other, they were fueling each other and you can’t not have respect for a crew that does that for you.

Champions know that they won’t be champions for long unless they show up for practice every day. They know that they aren’t training to beat their competitors on their best day, they’re training to beat them on their worst. They know that taking one stroke off is a sign of disrespect and that quitting shouldn’t even be in their vocabulary. The team leaders (coxswains, captains, upperclassmen, coaches, etc.) also know that know that attitude reflects leadership.

Coxing Rowing Teammates & Coaches Training & Nutrition

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Your experiences

By readyallrow March 1, 2013

Previously: Introduction || Eating disorders defined + explained || Signs + symptoms || Coxswains || Lightweights

When I decided to do the posts highlighting NEDA this week I knew that this post had to be one of the ones I did. Throughout the week I’ve collected a couple of messages and emails from rowers and coxswains who have experienced, are recovered, or are currently dealing with an eating disorder. One of the biggest things that I hope you guys get out of this post is to realize that you’re not alone if you’re experiencing these issues. You aren’t the only one. Other people have faced and overcome them and if they can, so can you.

These emails have made me sad, happy, angry, encouraged, frustrated, uncomfortable, and a whole range of other emotions. It’s saddening to read about this but at the same time I feel a sense of pride for everyone who says they’re recovered, are in recovery, or want to recover.

Thanks to everyone that reached out and was willing to share their experiences.

“I think it’s amazing that you’re doing this so here’s my story. In the summer before 6th grade (I’m in 9th grade now) I stopped eating. I went from my healthy 130lbs to under 90lbs at my worst. I wore baggy clothes and no one even noticed. When I told my best friend finally she just said, “oh yeah sometimes I won’t eat for like 6 hours if I’ve just had a big meal.” She didn’t get it and didn’t help. Then in 8th grade I discovered rowing. The sport pushed me to regain my health and now I’m recovered completely. Rowing saved me from everything and I couldn’t be more appreciative. But I know my story is a lot better than a lot of people’s and I owe it all to the sport that gave me it all. Thanks again so much for doing this.”

“As a 5’7” rower who isn’t lightweight I felt a lot of pressure to drop weight from my coaches and teammates. “You either need to start eating less or throwing up more.” That’s what my COACH told me to do. Needless to say I have never been more disgusted in my entire life. The saddest part is that at the time, I listened. My coach finally got the message when I passed out just before weighing in. Luckily I’m now being coached under some more level headed people and am happily (and healthily) 10lbs over.”

“I used to row and I was always the smallest on my team (who didn’t race lightweight). My coach used to always tell me to eat heaps to try to gain weight to keep up with the other girls because most of them were 40lbs heavier than me. Now I’ve stopped but I keep over eating and I know I am and it disgusts me and I want to make myself throw up to get rid of the food but that disgusts me too because I should be stronger than that but I’m not. Sorry for telling you all this, I just needed to say it out loud to somebody.”

“I’ve been reading all your posts on eating disorders awareness and I want to tell you about my dick of a coach. Last season we only had one coxswain for 18 rowers so he made this girl who was 60kg (about 130lb I think) cox cause she was the lightest novice and for the first five months he was fine with it. Then about 3 weeks before the biggest regatta of the season for the novices he told her that she was too heavy as another girl (who liked to stir a lot) had been saying that it was the coxswain’s fault that they had been losing because she was overweight (it wasn’t, the girls were just lazy and didn’t have a good attitude). The coach then told the coxswain that she had to lose 10kg (about 20lb) in 3 weeks so she was pretty much starving herself and running in track pants and jerseys every day in an effort to lose weight which didn’t work because she was of a very athletic build due to being a swimmer before and would have struggled to lose weight.

There is also another girl who had to cox for similar reasons the season before that and got similar treatment from the coach but he stopped her from coxing about 2 months before the big regattas because she was “too heavy”. She transferred to rowing where she struggled due to being 6 months behind the other novices in terms of experience. About 3 months into the next season her parents pulled her out of rowing due to the fact that she had developed anorexia and they didn’t think that rowing would be healthy for her. Luckily she is alright now.”

“I rowed for three years before coxing and when I started I was about 116lbs, no muscle, and still growing. By the end of the spring season of my freshman year of high school I was 126lbs and an inch taller. I grew a few more inches, gained some weight, and by my senior year was about 140lbs. When an injury worsened and made me unable to row, I asked to cox. To make weight for my freshman year of college I started eating a meal a day, sometimes a meal every other day. I averaged out eating 400 calories a day. I lost a lot of weight but I think the stress on my body actually prevented me from losing some of the weight I could’ve lost.

It’s sad – part of me only regrets that diet because I could’ve lost more weight if I hadn’t stressed out, not because I acknowledge that it was unhealthy for me. It’s twisted. Even today, I struggle to put enough food on my plate at school and it’s a major lose lose situation: I hate myself if I put enough food on my plate because I think I’m going to gain weight and I hate myself if I don’t put enough because I’m falling back into old habits. Long story short: eating disorders suck. People who encourage unhealthy weight loss habits don’t know what rabbit hole they’re pushing someone into. And once you develop one, I’m pretty sure it will always be with you in one capacity or another.”

“I am a lightweight rower, and, at 5’6”, quite happily have a maintenance weight of around 125lbs. I also am recovering from bulimia. My disordered eating started a few years before rowing, and it was very on and off. It started as throwing up my meals, and varied from that, to starving, to over-exercising, and everything in between. When I got into rowing, and learned about weight categories, I saw no reason to try and recover when simply throwing up was a ‘convenient’ (and soon my main) way of maintaining my weight. Despite believing this, my weight has since ranged from 87lbs to 139lbs!

I started to recover when I was weighed (90.4 lbs) after fainting during training. I was dehydrated, starving, and probably smelled of ketones. My coach took me into his office and had a long talk, because a BMI of <15 is not on, no matter who you are. He knew a bit about EDs, and he saw how mine was destroying my rowing, not to mention my health and body. He offered to help, and I accepted. I won’t pretend it was easy, but I‘m so glad I did!

He started to carefully (but not obsessively) monitor my food, making sure I kept at least a protein shake or some small meal, and moved on from there. He’s not qualified, so he also made me get help from professionals, although personally I hated them. It was important I went, but the real help came from my coach and my team. I know the coach/ therapist situation is NOT the norm, but it works for us!

I‘m happy to say that today I am (mostly) recovered. Yes, the thoughts are there, and probably always will be. Do I slip up sometimes still? Yes. But my coach and I always keep an eye on my weight. If it changes madly, we discuss options. Thanks to my collapsing/ catastrophe and being very open with the crew (who were amazingly supportive, and I love then for that), a male openweight also came forward with disordered eating, and now he’s doing really well with recovery. We are proudly an ED-free crew, and we all know each other well enough that we could come and chat if there was ever a problem, and not just ED related.

EDs have no business ruining anyone’s life, so if you’re ever in doubt, talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Catch your club barman, coxswain, partner, librarian, anyone you can trust. You won’t regret it. I promise.”

“I‘m a rower struggling with an ED right now and I thought I‘d share my story. It seems kind of silly to me, to already have this sort of issue, since I‘ve only completed one season. But the problem with rowing is that it consumes your life. You can’t get away from it so when trouble arises, you’re stuck with it.

For me the concept of being a “lightweight” really threw me off. When I joined the team I kept seeing all these varsity girls at my highly competitive club do weigh ins, we had this tradition of really fast lightweights going to D1 schools and all of a sudden I got this idea in my head that that is the only way I‘m going to get into a school. Currently, I am 124 lbs and 5’9″. The average 5’9″ girl on my team is at least 140.

I‘ve always been very tall and very skinny. When I joined my team, I gained 5 pounds, and that was fairly new for me, considering I‘ve never really put on weight quickly.That added weight and the new stimuli, the new idea of lightweight and weight classes and weight efficiency, it all scared me, I suppose. I look in the mirror and I hate what I see. I want my muscles more defined, I want my hard work to show, but I still want to be the twiggy little girl I was. But I want to be strong.

The wonderful part of rowing is that even with all the pressure of weight restrictions and good times for heavies or moving up a boat, even with all of that, you still see the beauty of the human body. I joined rowing because I loved how our US Women’s 8+ moved, how they were able to make it look so graceful but at the same time, holy crap, their muscles. The sport has made me love what my body can do, with the weight or without it. And so I want to keep fighting, I want to eat healthy, get good times, feel GOOD about myself, just because I‘m a goddamn rower and I put in so much effort that I deserve as much from myself.

This is really long winded, but my point is that it’s scary, the idea that if you play with the heavies, you need to get times like them, but if you ‘re a lightweight, you need to keep it down. It’s hard to find a good weight and a good time and everything, it torments me all the time, it’s terrifying, it hurts, half the time I hate my body, half the time I hate myself for hating my body.”

“It’s been almost a year since I first started my battle with my eating disorder. It’s tough to be an athlete and have one. I used to run on the treadmill to prepare for soccer season. When I got down to 107 lbs my mom stopped me. She wouldn’t let me leave the house because it was likely I would be going to the gym and on an empty stomach.

My eating disorder has brought me to my knees, especially today. Today was the start of soccer tryouts. Because I purge constantly my lungs tend to act up. In the middle of a drill it happened today. I lack just about every vitamin and mineral that I need. My back does a weird twitch from it. It’s hard to control my movements with spasms running about. Not only has my eating disorder affected my breathing, but it’s also affected my muscles. It’s true when people say you lose muscle from starving. I was never strong to begin with, but it was hard for me to run today; harder than it should have been. My bones have also lost some density and find it difficult to support myself and kick a ball far.

Playing a game on an empty stomach because you just can’t bring yourself to eat is dangerous. Feeling light-headed and faint isn’t something I wanted. This isn’t how I imagined my life to be, which is why I am where I am. I’m not sure if I want recovery. All I know is that I can’t keep this up forever. Thankfully, I’ve gotten a healthy amount of calories today. Maybe this year I’ll recover. I hope so.”

“I saw your post on EDs and lightweights, and I have a little bit of input. I had developed an ED prior to becoming a rower. I swam for several years, and putting a muscular girl into a swim suit does a number on your self esteem. So when I switched to rowing, and I learned about lightweights, I thought about trying to starve myself that much more just to get to 130. That would have killed me. I‘m 5″8, and I should be about 160 lbs, but I‘m 150 because I still have a habit of restricting. So I thought about trying to hit the light weight mark, but after my first practice with restrictions, I nearly passed out. I knew I couldn’t do it. And staying healthy was more important to me than being a lightweight.

In a weird way, rowing actually helped my ED. I couldn’t restrict my intake like I had done while I was swimming. Rowing took more out of me than I had anticipated, and I ended up dropping weight without even trying. So I learned that I was allowed to eat, even if I wasn’t one of the lightest girls on the team.”

“I was in pain for a long time. As is the case in anyone with an eating disorder, or anyone with a mental disorder in general. I was quite underweight – never to the point that I needed to go to the hospital, but I was definitely hurting my body. I didn’t get my period anymore, and I regularly had trouble with my blood glucose levels. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t concentrate, and I couldn’t remember much. How I managed to get a 3.6 GPA by the time I graduated, bearing in my I had been struggling with this for 2/3 of my college years, is still a miracle to me. But I did it, and after an extremely stressful last semester where my ED was the worst of all time, I started feeling peaceful. I don’t know where it came from, but I had ended another chapter of my life, I had achieved my academic goals and had another adventure in front of me. The adventure being moving to another country to go to graduate school. I associated my college town with my disorder, and I associated my hometown with stress and family problems, so I wanted to get away. But I didn’t want to taint my experience abroad with this stupid disorder, I was done with it, I didn’t want it in my life any longer.

There wasn’t a moment where it all clicked. Sometimes you hear that from people, ED survivors, that they went out and did something and suddenly it clicked. Or they went to therapy and had an epiphany. It didn’t work like that for me. I didn’t go to therapy. I didn’t go to the doctor. I wasn’t even diagnosed. As far as I know, no one knew except for the people I told. But I wanted to get better. I started eating more regularly and I felt better. My body image was still very distorted and it was a struggle not to look in the mirror and not to stand on the scale, but at a certain point it became normal not to. It sounds so much easier when I write it down like this, but I promise to anyone who is reading this: it was the fucking hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It is harder than a 2k. It is harder than a 5k, 6k, 10k, power hour, ergathon, anything. But you distract yourself. You find things that make you feel good. Whether that’s a song, or a bath, or knitting, or drawing – anything. YOU KEEP GOING, until it becomes normal.

I was looking at my graduate university’s website and after being sedentary for quite a long time (aside from the occasional yoga and run a bit earlier in my disorder), I wanted to do some exercise. I didn’t know what, until I found information about rowing. I was scared at first, because rowers tend to look quite buff, but I read up on it and I got excited. I watched youtube videos and I got excited. I wanted that connection with people, after being alone in my disorder for so long. At first I thought I would cox, because I was still quite small, but on the open day at the beginning of the academic year I decided I was gonna row. I realised I was only this small because I hadn’t been taking care of myself, and if I would eat normally and work out normally like any other person, I would be too big for coxing, as I am quite tall. I was still scared of the weight gain, but I hadn’t been weighing myself for a long time, and I finally started wanting something more than I wanted to be thin. I wanted to be fast and strong more than I wanted to be thin. I started training with the novices, and although I was obviously out of shape, I caught on quickly and made first novice boat in November. That’s when I decided I was more interested in what my body could do than what it looked like.

It was a struggle, especially during winter training where you pack on the pounds (of muscle, but still) but I got through it. I realised that in order to be a fast rower, you need the calories. You need the food. And if that sometimes means that you have to force yourself to eat, and force yourself to overeat to the point of being uncomfortable every so often, then so be it. I remember vividly the first time I realised that my thighs were touching once more – it’s a silly little thing but for someone with an ED it’s important. It shows your ‘status’. Losing your ‘status’ means failing and failure isn’t fun for anyone. The only way I got over that was by ignoring it. Ignoring it, doing other things, ignoring it some more until it no longer matters. Until you know longer care. Make it angry. Show it who’s boss. I gained the weight and leaped over the lightweight limit over Christmas break, and leaned back down to my normal, pre-ED weight a month and a half later, just within the lightweight zone. But I’m beating PB after PB. I’m winning medals. I’m stronger, and faster, and more determined to move the boat to the finish line as fast as I can, than I ever was to be skinny.”

Coxing Q&A Racing Rowing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow February 28, 2013

I want to try to get this straight [no pun intended]: When boats are racing, if our bow ball is on the other boat’s stern deck, you call that or say like “riding their stern?” and when it’s cox to cox it’s “lined up?” And if the cox is next to the other boat’s 6 seat or is it when our bow ball takes their 6 seat? Thanks!

The specific wording might differ from coxswain to coxswain, but yes, you’re basically right. When our bow ball is on the other boat’s stern, I’ll say “sitting on their stern deck”. If the coxswains are lined up I’ll say “sitting on their coxswain” or “it’s coxswain to coxswain”. Most of the things I say with regards to this is something along the lines of “[rower’s name] is sitting on [seat #, bow/stern, etc.].” If we are walking on a boat and are behind them, I’ll use the bow ball to say where we are until I get even with the coxswain, then I’ll start using myself to say where we’re at.

College Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: University of Washington vs. Cambridge University Boat Club

By readyallrow February 25, 2013

Last weekend, while those of us in USA were prepping for CRASH-Bs, the University of Washington Huskies headed across the pond to race Cambridge University on the Tideway. Matthew Pinsent served as the official umpire of the race, which saw Washington come away with a 3 length victory over CUBC.

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow February 25, 2013

I just read your post about intimidating your opponents, which is perhaps one of the greatest things I’ve seen, but I wanted to ask what are some of your favorite/most effective calls?

If we’re under a bridge or something, I love to say “attack now” because I think the echoing of my voice just heightens the intensity of the call. I borrowed “Do not sit, do not quit” from Pete Cipollone and use it during pieces or races to remind my boat that we can’t take a single stroke off. I also like quick, monosyllabic calls like “pop”, “BOOM”, “sharp”, etc. basically because I can say so much without actually having to say anything. I also like directly calling out people in my boat so doing bursts for or with each pair is a good way to do that.

I think the effectiveness of your calls lies not within the call itself though but in how you say it. It’s like when your parents tell you to do something in their normal voice and it’s like “yea ok, gonna get right on that” and then there’s the times when they tell you to do it and you can actually sense Satan in their voice. That’s one of the reasons why I try and constantly reiterate that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it that makes the difference. If there’s no passion or intensity behind your voice, how and why would you expect the rowers to respond with intensity in their rowing? In the posts I’ve done on coxswain recordings I’ve tried to point out good and bad examples of this so check those out if you need some inspiration on what an effective tone sounds like.

Related: Coxswain recordings

The way to really make a call do something for your crew is to match your tone of voice to what you want to get out of the rowers. If you want the rowers to relax, your voice has to be relaxed. If you want them walking on a crew, the intensity of your voice should be increasing with each stroke that you get closer to or walk away from them. Your tone of voice is by far the biggest asset to your crew and how effective you are at utilizing it is what in turn makes your calls effective.

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

By readyallrow February 24, 2013

What are some calls you make during a 2k when you know the other crews can hear you to get in their head and psych them out?

I usually tend to ad lib as we go along and just go with what I see but usually I’ll pick out something I notice about their rowing and try to capitalize on that. Sometimes I’ll say something about the entire boat (their rowing is sloppy, they’re looking at us, they went out too hard, etc.) or my personal favorite, I’ll pick out a specific rower in the other boat and then talk to the rower in that same seat in my boat. I’ll tell them something I notice about that rower and then tell the rower in my boat to get us up to or past that seat.

If we’re locked in with them in a dead heat, I simply tell my crew that this is where we’re gonna break them, right here, this stroke. I make sure I say it loud enough that the other boat hears me and I always make it a point to look directly at their coxswain when I say it. That’s the only time I’ll let on to another crew that I’m about to take a burst, just to tease them and let them think they can counter it. (It’s never worked because we’re calm whereas they’re frantic.) Sometimes I expect us to be able to get past certain crews pretty easily and we don’t, so I’ll end up saying something like “We’re gonna walk and we’re gonna walk NOW!!”.

One time I was so bored at the starting line so I just picked one of the coxswains beside me and stared at her the entire time we were staging and while the official was doing the countdown start. She kept giving me the weirdest looks but I know I got in her head because as soon as the official said “GO” I snapped forward like everything was normal and she was still at the start, completely confused. They were about three seats behind us from the very beginning because of it. I definitely thought she was going to protest it but she didn’t. One of the officials who was on the starting platform behind us came over to us after we crossed the line and said that was one of the most intense and crazy tactics he’s ever seen a coxswain use to psych out their opponents and congratulations, because clearly it worked.