Tag: summer camp

Five Tips for Making the Most of Summer Camps

High School

Five Tips for Making the Most of Summer Camps

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It’s that time of year and I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately on how to make the most of your time at a summer rowing camp. This year will be my third one doing camps so below is a list of tips that I’ve pulled together from several other coaches I’ve worked with and my own observations from the camps I’ve done so far.

You must be an active participant

This means engaging with the coaches, engaging with the other athletes, and taking a lot of notes. All the camps I’ve been too give you a notebook on Day 1 for this exact reason, because we know there’s going to be a lot of information dispensed and you’re not going to remember it all. Don’t wait for coaches to say “you should write this down” either because in most cases, we won’t.

So what should you write down? Any and all questions you want to ask the coaches you’re working with, their responses, feedback you ask for/receive on your individual rowing technique, anything you learn about technique that you might not have known before, any new drills you pick up (and their purpose, how it’s done, what it targets, etc.), any new calls or phrases you learn, post-practice reflections, etc. The opportunities to take notes during camp are endless and it makes it super easy to answer the inevitable “so what you’d do at camp” question your parents will ask on the drive home.

Your experience is a direct reflection of your level of investment and engagement

Have you ever worked on a group project and had that one kid who said nothing, contributed nothing, and made trying to engage with them akin to pulling teeth … and then complained to the teacher after the fact that the other people in their group sucked, they wouldn’t let them do anything, and whatever grade they got isn’t fair? Don’t be that person.

It’s pretty obvious when someone wants to learn and ask questions but is just shy and unsure of how to engage with the coaches or other kids. That’s totally fine and easy to work through. It’s also obvious who’s there just because their parents have the money to spend and want their kid to do something over the summer, even though the kid couldn’t care less about becoming a better rower or coxswain. This one is a lot harder to manage for both the coaches and athletes because … if you don’t want to be there, there’s not gonna be much that convinces you to try and make the best of it.

To quote another coach, “don’t make us pull information or a conversation out of you – it gets exhausting fast and isn’t where we want to put our efforts”. I’ve never worked with a coach who didn’t care about the experience a kid was having. We all want you to have a good time and get something out of being there but the onus can’t be put entirely on the coaches to make that happen. We’ll facilitate it but you’ve gotta work with us and not just sulk in the background whenever the coaches are laying out the plan for the day or trying to create a dialogue. Take ownership of your time at camp and be involved in the process.

Have specific and realistic goals

“Lower my 2k”, “learn about technique”, and “steer straighter” are three of the most common “goals” I’ve seen kids come into camp with and none are specific enough or realistic for a camp that lasts 3-5 days. Coxswains especially, when you say “learn about technique” … what does that mean?? There are umpteen hundred different facets of technique that I can promise you will take longer than our 3-5 90 minute group sessions to go over.

Related: Coxswains and summer camp

The more specific you are about what you want to learn, the better we as coaches will be able to address those things during practice or in group/one-on-one conversations. If the starting point is “I want to become a better coxswain in three days”, it’s like … great! … but how? Break that down into 2-3 things based on stuff that you were working on or struggled with during the previous season. Last summer we had a guy who wanted to pick up some strategies on improving his communication skills because that was something he struggled with throughout the season after unexpectedly getting moved into the varsity eight (as a freshman coxing juniors/seniors). That was a great goal because not only could all the other coxswains contribute their own advice on what’s worked (or hasn’t worked) for them but he also had two opportunities per day for six days to test everyone’s suggestions and find out what worked for him.

We probably weren’t going to see the benefits of the work he was doing at the end of the week but that was never the point … the point was for him to soak up as much information as he could so he could take it home and continue employing and tweaking it throughout the year. He came in with one very specific goal and was able to collect tons of advice from the other coxswains and the coaches (I distinctly remember him asking us about the best/worst coxswains on our team and why they were such) that ultimately paved the way towards him becoming a better coxswain in the long run. That was unlikely to happen though if he’d come in with something more vague and generic.

Come with questions

This goes back to being an active participant. There’s always scheduled opportunities for you to talk with coaches individually and you should take full advantage of that by coming prepared with a list of 5-7 questions that you want to have answered throughout the week. Don’t make them all about recruiting either because nearly every camp has dedicated time where they’ll talk to the entire group about that specifically. This is a good opportunity though to learn more about that specific coach’s program if you’re interested in rowing there but don’t be that guy that goes up to the Cornell lightweight coach to ask about the Harvard lightweight program. Know your audience.

Ask them for advice based on their personal experiences too. Several of the coaches I’ve worked with at these camps have rowed for the national team, been to the Olympics or World Championships, won NCAA/IRA titles (as athletes and coaches), etc. so you should pick their brains and find out what’s worked for them that might also work for you. If you’ve been trying to hit a new PR for awhile but seem to have hit a plateau, ask how they overcame that if/when it happened to them (or their teammates). If your boat had trouble this past season forming a cohesive identity, ask them how they/their coxswains/coaches handled similar situations where there were a lot of strong personalities in the boat who always seemed to be at odds with one another. Trust me when I say rowing coaches have stories that would put your grandparents “back in my day” stories to shame so don’t be afraid to engage with them and ask questions that go beyond “this is my 2k, how recruitable am I”.

For coxswains, one question that should be on your list for every coach you interact with is what’s their best piece of advice for improving communication with your coach. I guarantee every coach will tell you something different based on the experiences they’ve had with their coxswains and everything they tell you will be gold. One question I remember being asked had to do with something I said relating to someone’s technique – the coxswain had honed in on a specific phrase I said and asked how she could incorporate that into her calls because that same issue was something someone in her boat had struggled with the previous season. We spent a couple minutes brainstorming more concise ways of saying the same thing, as well as going over what exactly I was getting at so she understood the background of the technical issue we were working on, how to identify and correct it (using the calls we came up with), and how to tweak those calls based on whether they were doing something like steady state or in a faster-paced environment like a race.

Make mistakes and don’t assume your way is the only way

One of my favorite things that I’ve heard another (coxswain) coach say is that you’re gonna get called out for mistakes at camp because you’re not getting called out for them at home. If you were, you wouldn’t be making them. That applies to your rowing technique, your practice management skills, etc.

Related: Making mistakes

You should go in with a very open mind and be prepared to do things differently than you’re used to doing them … especially if you’ve been doing them wrong. “Suspend all beliefs you have about coxing” was how one coach phrased it last year because if you’ve been taught how to cox by people who have never coxed, you’re in for an eye-opening few days.

If you’ve been to a summer rowing camp (either a week-long one or a longer program like dev or HP camp) in the past, what are your tips for making the most out of your time there?

Image via // @wvllace

Why you should go to a summer camp (and what to do/not to do)

Coxing

Why you should go to a summer camp (and what to do/not to do)

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On Sunday I posted the 2016 Summer Camps list that includes many options for rowers and coxswains if you’re looking to stay active over the summer. The benefits of going to a camp are obvious for rowers but are sometimes less so for coxswains, particularly if there isn’t any coxswain-specific instruction built into the camp, so below I’ve listed some reasons why you should consider attending one and things you should do (and not do) to make the most of the experience.

Reasons to attend a camp

Unlike for rowers, camps give coxswains the opportunity to make substantial improvements in nearly every aspect of coxing in a relatively short period of time. Your steering isn’t going to go from 0 to 100 in five days but you do have roughly 20 hours (two hour practices x two practices a day x 5 days) in just about the most low-key environment you’ll ever be in to try something different so you’d be foolish to not take full advantage of that. That doesn’t just apply to steering either, it applies to every single aspect of your coxing – calls, practice management, communication … all of it. If you are at a camp where there are coxswains on staff or there’s coxswain-specific instruction built into the program, ask questions about the things you want/need to improve on and then pick two or three to implement and work on throughout the week. Keep trying new things until you find something that works and then once you’ve found whatever it is, go all in on working towards making the change stick.

If you primarily cox bowloaded fours be prepared to spend the majority of your time in eights at just about any camp you attend. This gives you a chance to actually see the blades and make the necessary connections between what the coaches are saying and what the blades are doing and how they look.

The last day of the camp typically involves some kind of “racing”, whether it’s a head race-style time trial or your typical spring season side-by-side pieces. You can never have enough practice doing either of these and since this is, again, the most low key, no repercussions environment you could possibly be in, this is a good time to work on getting comfortable steering next to other crews, working and communicating with other coxswains, your time management skills (i.e. you launch at this time, you need to be at the line at this time, and it’s your job to effectively manage the time in between so you’re not too early or late), etc.

Things to do

Get. over. yourself.

At every camp I’ve coached at there have been multiple coxswains come in thinking that they’re hot shit because they cox their team’s top boat and they quickly learn that “good” is a subjective word. You should come into these camps with a humble attitude and be open to receiving feedback on how you’re doing, things you could/should do better, etc. Don’t be that guy/girl who argues with people more experienced than yourselves just because you cox the 1V. Congrats, we all coxed the 1V … that argument means nothing to us.

Be proactive

Go on Google Maps and look at the body of water you’ll be on before you get there. See if you can find a course map that shows what the traffic pattern is, if there are any bridges, etc. Can’t find one online? Email and ask if they can send you one. Bring your recorder and take it on the water every time you go out. This applies during the school year too but there is literally no excuse to not record yourself every day. If you end up not doing anything worth listening to then you can delete it but that’s better than coming off the water after a really solid day and wishing you’d recorded yourself so you could get feedback on it later. Have a notebook as well for all the reasons I talk about on here ad nauseam and also because there will likely be talks and one-on-one sessions offered by the coaches on a variety of topics that you’ll want to take notes on. Also arrive with specific and attainable goals that are reasonably achievable in the given time frame. Don’t try to cram “2 month-long summer program” goals into a 5 day camp.

Seek out coaches yourself and talk to them

We’re not going to come find you. This is your chance to pick our brains about what they look for in recruited coxswains, what being a coxswain on a college team is like, what they like about their current coxswains, how could you improve your coxswain-coach communication skills based off the practices you’ve had together so far, etc. Most of these coaches have decades of experience and when asked the right questions, they’ll be able to give you some really great feedback and advice.

Things not to do

One of the first things I remember Marcus saying at the Sparks coxswain camp was that everyone should be prepared to accept that some, if not all, of what they’ve learned up to this point will be dispelled (such as motivation being the most important job a coxswain has since that’s what lazy coaches tell you so they don’t have to do any work – FACT). This means you’ll probably be asked to do things you’re not used to doing or things that might not make sense right off the bat. Don’t come back with “this isn’t what we do on my team” or “that’s not what my coach said”. There’s an appropriate way to have that conversation and none of them start with either of those two sentences.

Do not – do NOT – complain about what you’re doing or being asked to do. If you’re new to coxing (hell, even if you’re not) and you spend more time complaining about coxing eights when you’re used to being in fours or coxing women when you’re used to coxing men than you do learning how to handle new situations then you might want to reconsider what you’re doing there. This probably isn’t the sport for you if you can’t commit to something as low-key as a summer camp when opportunities to learn and get better are being handed to you left and right. If you’re just going to rebuff everything … well, it must be nice having that kind of money to just throw away.

Camps are what you make of them so whatever you take away is more often than not going to be a direct result of how prepared you were coming into the camp, how present you were each day, and how committed you were to going outside your comfort zone in order to get better.

Image via // New York Times

College High School Rowing

2016 Summer Camps

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The 2016 camps spreadsheet is up – click here to check it out.

Similar to last year, you can see all the camps on the first tab, arranged by what area of the country they’re located in. Highlighted camps in each section indicate that they’re aimed at college rowers and coxswains (everything else is for juniors). I’ll try to keep this updated throughout the spring but if you know of any camps that I haven’t included that have their 2016 info up, feel free to send me an email.

College High School Rowing

2015 Summer Camps

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So I did things a bit differently this year and posted everything in a spreadsheet in an attempt to keep it all a bit more organized and easier to find/read. You can find it here. There are a few programs not on there yet because they haven’t posted their 2015 stuff but when they do I’ll update the spreadsheet and link to it here.

A couple quick notes…

Camps are color-coded and divided into the regions where they’re located, that way it’s easier to see what camps are offered near where you live. All the camps I have info on so far are listed on the first tab titled “2015 SUMMER CAMPS”. The individual tabs that follow include the location, dates, cost, website, any social media links belonging to the hosting team/program, and any reviews that I got from you guys.

“Experienced” in the context of these camps implies that you’ve been rowing for at least one full year. Doing a learn to row camp in the spring  but not actually training and racing does not make you an experienced rower/coxswain. If your school only has a spring season or that’s the only time you can participate due to playing another sport in the fall then you should be OK but you can always email the camp directors to make sure.

A lot of the camps are not cheap but you shouldn’t let that deter you from reaching out to the coaches and inquiring about whether or not they offer some kind of financial assistance if you’re interested in attending but aren’t sure if you can afford it.

There are a couple programs in here for college-aged rowers (Thompson Boat Club’s open men/women and Penn AC’s U23 team) so if you’re looking to row over the summer check out those two programs.

Keep in mind that some of these camps require rowing resumes, erg scores, letters of recommendation from your coaches, etc. to be submitted when you apply. Make sure you’re aware of which programs ask for that so you don’t send in an incomplete registration.

I hope all that helps you start narrowing down your plans for this summer. Let me know if you have any questions or know of a camp that hasn’t been added yet. Also, feel free to email me if you’ve been to one of the camps that doesn’t have any reviews as I’d really like to get something posted for each one.

Click here to view the 2015 Summer Camps spreadsheet.

College High School Rowing

Help me out with summer camp stuff!

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One of the questions that I’ve gotten most frequently is about summer camps for this year. I’m going to start working on that stuff over the next week and hope to get it all up by mid-February-ish. I’d like your help though! Last year a lot of people (mainly parents) asked my opinion about various programs and for most of them, I knew nothing. I think it’d be good to include some anecdotes about the experiences other people have had, that way people can get a real idea of what the program is like and whether or not it’s worth the money.

If you’ve attended a summer camp at a university or done a summer-long program like Penn AC, Vesper, or the USJNT (dev camp included), send me an email (rowingandcoxing@gmail.com) and let me know the following:

Which program you attended, where it was held, and how long it lasted (i.e. One week-long camp at XYZ University in [city, state]).

Pros/cons – what did you like and/or not like (preferably one of each so as to keep it fair)

Was it worth the money?

Would you recommend it to other people?

What was your biggest takeaway from the program, i.e. what was the biggest/most helpful thing you learned

Extra special bonus points for programs aimed at coxswains, programs held outside the US for the non-US readers, and programs not on the East Coast. I always get questions for programs in the Midwest, on the West Coast, etc. and have a hard time finding stuff or knowing where to look since I’m on the East Coast. If you’ve gone to any of these email me!!

Everything will be anonymous as usual so no need to worry about your name being attached to anything once I get it up. There’s no limits on length either so don’t feel like you have to leave anything out. For the parents that read this, feel free to email me too and let me know from your perspective what you thought of the camp that your kids attended. Thanks for your help!

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

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I’m doing a rowing camp at Yale and my coach there told us coxes to count at the finish rather than at the catch. It’s hard to find time to make calls to bring intensity to the drive as such, and I feel like the rowers have weaker drives when I talk calmly to them during the recovery about slide control and “easy catches”. Do you have any suggestions concerning counting at the finish, or possibly any recordings?

I’d talk to the coach and say that you’re used to calling them a different way and you’re curious as to why they like for them to be called at the finish vs. the catch. Do not be that person that says “well, that’s now how we do it on my team” – I swear, that type of rower/coxswain is at the top of most coaches shit list and once you’re there it is hard to get off it. Tell them that it’s a little awkward for you because you’re not sure how to make certain calls and do they have any advice that might help you out. Also tell them what you’ve noticed about the weaker drives, etc.

If you can, talk to the rowers you’ve been with before you talk to your coach and ask them what they think. How are they used to having things called, in their experience do they think one works better than the other, have they noticed anything (either good or bad) from calls being made at the finish instead of the catch when you guys have been out, etc. Take all that info and talk about it with your coach. It’ll be good for them to know too because it’ll help them know what to focus on during practice.

Related: Hey there, I have a question about coxing. I’ve been coxing for a couple years now and just realized that I call my calls on different times. I mean, for power 10’s I’ll call the numbers when they are half way through the drive to the finish. But for starts, I will call the numbers at the catch such as (1/2, 1/2, 3/4, full, full) as well as 10 highs at the catch. I don’t know if I’m doing this right, but I’ve always done it this way and my crew goes with it. How do you personally do it?

These camps are meant to teach you something and this is a great learning opportunity that you should definitely take advantage of. Asking questions is part of your job and something you should be doing anyways if something comes up that you don’t understand. Don’t be nervous to talk to the coach about it either. They’ll most likely appreciate the initiative and willingness to understand and learn how to do something that you’re not used to doing.

It’s hard to know what recordings I have where the coxswain calls things at the finish. I don’t think it’s anything I’ve really paid attention to. If there’s video with the recording it’s always easy to see where they’re called but it’s obviously tougher with just the audio. Plus, calling things at the finish is rare, at least in my experience. Like I said in the question I linked to up above, I only do it when I really want the focus to be on something at the front end of the stroke.

My suggestion again is to talk to your coach and get some advice from him/her and then try to apply what you talked about with them in the boat. It’s definitely going to require going out of your comfort zone a bit but you should be in the habit of doing that regularly anyways. Talk to the rowers and say that it’s something you’re going to try so they know why things might be weird for a bit and then get some feedback from them after practice. Keep talking about it with your coach(es) and ask them on the water after you’ve called a power 10 or something what they thought, how was that, etc.