Thought you guys might like some motivation before your next 2k test. His time of 5:48 is about 12 seconds off the world record (5:36.6 by Rob Waddell of New Zealand), his split is a 1:27 average, and he’s pulling an average of 530 watts. His reaction at the end (and the fact that it takes three guys to sit him up) is one of the best parts of the video.
Tag: rowing people
Video of the Week: 2000 meters, 5:48
Video of the Week: Y150 History
Yale always makes some of the coolest videos. Their video on the 1956 crew that competed at the Melbourne Olympics is one of my favorites. This one is an eight-minute long teaser trailer on the history of their lightweight program, which dates back to 1920. (The heavyweight program by comparison first began in 1843, making it the oldest rowing program in the country.)
Related: Yale Men’s 8+ at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics
The entire thing is a really fascinating look inside the program with tons of great photos and anecdotes but one photo that really stands out to me is the one shown at 2:52 of all the guys with their stacks of t-shirts in front of them (with each guy wearing a different shirt from each team they beat that season). That’s definitely one way of measuring how successful your season was…
I also liked how the one guy described Andy Card as “a ferret on amphetamines”. Oh, and the “you’re Vanilla Ice but I need Queen” story at the end is great.
Video of the Week: Dirty Dozen Rowing Club
This is pretty cool. Eyebrow-raising, entertaining, WTF, and cool. The video goes along with this very long article from FOX Sports but it is well worth reading when you have an hour or so to kill (i.e. in the car, at the airport, etc.).
Related: Allen Rosenberg on coaching (and coxing)
The beginning of the video pretty much sums of The Dirty Dozen’s story: “If you know what a rowing crew is supposed to look like then you know this isn’t it.” Basically it’s about a group of guys who get together, decide they want to represent the US at the 1984 Olympics, and then train and compete across the world in preparation for the trials and selection in Princeton. There are a couple names that most people familiar with rowing history will recognize, including Brad Alan Lewis and Allen Rosenberg. It’s a really neat story and one you’ve probably never heard of so definitely check it out.
Coxswain Recordings, pt. 27
Chelsea Lucas 2008 Junior World Championships Team USA W8+ Grand Final
If this recording doesn’t give you goosebumps, check your pulse. This is one of the best recordings out there because it checks all the boxes – execution of the race plan, tone of voice, communication with the crew, etc. She does such a good job of telling them their location on the other crews throughout the race, specifically where they are seat-wise. The rowers could be blindfolded the entire race and still know exactly where they are – that’s what you want!
Once they get out of the start and settle into their base rhythm she shifts her down to a more relaxed tone (still intense, still focused, just a little more chill) but at 2:07 you can sense it starting to shift back up before she hits you with that next level of intensity at 2:14. She demonstrates a lot of vocal control through those first two minutes, which is definitely something worth practicing since that can be a hard part of the race for coxswains to maintain their composure in. As they start walking through crews she continues to do a really good job of telling them they’re moving and by how much with each stroke.
At 3:09 she calls for five to use the hips and then says “hips five, hips four…”, which is a good example of what I’ve talked about in the past with regards to knowing when during the stroke to say the numbers (if you say them). “Hips” is obviously a front end call since you’re engaging your hips at the catch as your press through the drive, thus it wouldn’t make sense to stick with the regular convention of calling the numbers at the catch, which is why she flips to calling them at the finish. Also, notice how all of her calls are “let’s”, “we”, etc.?
Another thing I’ve talked about a lot recently is motivational calls. “Make them remember this” at 3:51 is a great example of a good motivational call. (Her tone building into that call is flawless too.) Notice too how they’re progressively walking through Germany and up on Romania? She’s constantly telling them their position, which is also hugely motivating, especially in races that are tight like this one is. Even though there isn’t video of this race, you, the person listening, should still easily be able to plot out where the United States, Germany, Romania, etc. are based entirely on the positional updates she’s giving her boat. If you can get excited about where they started vs. where they’re at now just based off of listening to her calls, imagine what it’s like for the rowers who are actually in the boat. They don’t have to worry about where they’re at or what’s going on around them, all they’ve gotta do is focus on one thing, which is moving the boat and that is one of the most motivating things a coxswain can do for their crew.
We gotta talk about 4:44 too … if that isn’t the most motivating, most savage fucking call you’ve ever heard, what is?? There’s a reason why you hear so many coxswains nowadays use that and say it the exact same way.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll realize that between the start of the race and 5:10 they went from being 4 seats down on Romania to 5.5 seats up, which makes her call of “we’re 500m away from a world championship” at 5:10 so much more epic. Another example of a brutally motivational call. This is one of the ones you keep in your back pocket though for the big races – we’re talking grand finals at IRAs, last 250m at Henley, etc.
The ending is crazy frantic but it’s the right kind of frantic. It’s energetic, it’s electric, it’s just … hard to put into words. If you’ve been in a race like this then you know you can’t really describe it because even though you’re 100% in the moment as it’s all happening, as soon as you come off the water you’re like … what just happened??? Anyways, this is just a great recording and one of the very few that falls under the “gold standard” umbrella. Definitely a lot to be taken away from it and incorporated into your own coxing.
Other calls I liked:
“Lay it on…”
“Let’s close this gap, baby…”
“Stand up!“
“This one’s gonna be close guys, time to sit up and show ’em who we are…”
Steve Young USA Men’s 8+ Practice
This is a super short recording from inside the USA men’s 8+ during one of their steady state practices in the lead up to the 2013 World Cup. Right off the bat I love the “find that confident finish” call and how he immediately responds to the coach telling them to go to 3/4 pressure. How he builds into that 18 – “three quarter press 18, we’ll come up one beat … on this one” – is exactly how you wanna call a shift in rate, not just in terms of response time between when the coach calls it and when you actually do it but also in how he communicates it. Very succinct, no extraneous words, just where they’re at and where they wanna go.
The other call I like is the “long arm stretch” call near the end. I think that’s a good basic call to make to remind the rowers to get the arms out first before swinging over with the bodies.
You can find and listen to more recordings by checking out the “Coxswain Recordings” page.
Racing Rowing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: “Do GoPros have audio?” “Yea.” “Uh oh.”
Some of you might have seen this already but last week row2k posted on YouTube the video from the 10 year reunion row of the 2004 men’s eight that happened back in May. They took it down Sunday night and reposted it on row2k so that’s where this week’s VOTW links to since I can’t share it directly on here. Not only is the banter/commentary hilarious but it’s also fascinating to hear Pete’s stories about what was happening at each point during the race (that race being the 2004 Olympic final in Athens).
College Coxing High School Training & Nutrition Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Katelin Snyder on winter training
This is an interview that row2k did with Katelin Snyder, the women’s national team coxswain, earlier this year on the coxswain’s role during winter training, the difference between what the winter months are like in high school vs. college vs. with the national team, her advice for a coxswain going into their first winter training season, etc. I think we can all relate to her comment about how you can “only rearrange the cox boxes so many times”. Been there, done that, right?
Related: Coxswains + winter training
There’s definitely some good stuff to take away from what she says that you can apply to your own “winter training” so make sure to watch the whole video and also check out the post linked above for more ideas on how to spend the next couple of months.
Video of the Week: Scullers hack
This video is just Gevvie Stone doing a “racing shell 101” with her boat but the reason I’m posting it is because her hack of screwing a water bottle holder to the vent cap is kinda genius. Obviously you can’t do something like that in an eight or a shell you don’t own yourself but if you do happen to own your own boat, how great of an idea is that?
Video of the Week: Coxswains you should know and admire
So, this week’s VOTW is a little different. I’m all for looking up to people with gold medals and whatever else but I also think it’s important (more so, even) to have role models within our sport who aren’t known simply for their athletic achievements because as much as we’d like to think that rowing is the end all be all to life, it’s not. The majority of you that are reading this right now probably won’t continue with crew in college, even fewer will do it all four years, and even fewer will make a run at the elite level. A couple of you might eventually try your hand at coaching but pretty much all of you will do something else entirely. That’s just the way it is which is why it’s important to think about “what’s next”.
I got to know Eden earlier this year and she’s an amazingly talented person, not to mention a kick-ass coxswain as well. She walked on to Princeton’s lightweight women’s team her freshman year, coxed the Canadian national team’s women’s development eight to a win at Henley and at Holland-Beker in 2012 (two years after she started coxing – TWO YEARS), and coxed Princeton’s varsity eight to a 5th place finish at IRAs this year. Oh, and she dropped out of college following her sophomore year after being awarded $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation.
The reason I’m posting this even though it has little to do with actual rowing is because I wanted to highlight someone awesome within our sport that has accomplished a lot outside of rowing while using many of the applicable-to-real-life skills she learned as a coxswain along the way. It’s important that throughout your time as a coxswain or a rower that you develop those skills so that when it comes time to apply for college, go on job interviews, pitch your ideas to potential investors, etc. you can actually put them to use and demonstrate how being a coxswain/rower taught you XYZ and be able to offer some legitimate, non-cliche examples of how you’ve used those skills off the water.