Videos
Video of the Week: NAAO Documentary on the 1979 Men’s 8+
I’m such a sucker for rowing documentaries so I was really excited when I came across this one. It was made by the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen (one of USRowing’s predecessors) and goes behind the scenes with Harry Parker as the national team’s men’s eight trains for the 1979 World Championships in Bled (when Yugoslavia still existed). He talks about the workouts they do (3 minutes at 37spm – ow), the equipment they use (wood vs. fiberglass shells, kevlar vs. wood oars, etc.), his system for record-keeping and logging his practices/workouts/observations on the rowers (coxswains, this would be beneficial for you), why he doesn’t do technical drills very often, etc.
The last nine minutes shows footage from the 1983 sculling camp that Harry ran in Boston, with several of the attendees being the subjects of “The Amateurs”, which was written two years later.
Video of the Week: Blades + Boaters
Video of the Week: Flux
College Racing Rowing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: 48spm
If you thought Princeton’s sprint vs. Brown last weekend was sick, wait til you see FIT’s sprint vs. Michigan in the last 10 strokes of the MV8+ finals at Dad Vails this past Saturday.
If you haven’t seen the Princeton-Brown video, check it out here. Fast forward to the 1:09:27 mark for the start of the race and the 1:14:00 mark for the sprint (and the commentary, which is hilarious).
Coxing Racing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Visualizing the perfect race, pt. 2
When I watched this video before the London Olympics I remember being surprised because the calm before the storm that she mentioned, the tension, the start and settle … those are some of my favorite parts of the race.
Related: Visualizing the perfect race, pt. 1
Spending time separating myself from whatever’s going on around me and visualizing the race throughout the week was always a really important part of my own personal race prep and it’s definitely something I recommend to other coxswains as well. The better you are at seeing your race plan in your head, knowing what you want to say, and what you want to happen, the better you’ll be able to execute it and the more confident you’ll be as you do it.
Video of the Week: How to make minor shell repairs
While this kind of stuff is best left to boatmen and coaches I still think it’s worth knowing how to do (even though you should never actually attempt this on your own). Coxswains especially, this should give you a good idea as to how time-intensive these repairs are, so the next time you have a close call with a log on the water or a rigger on land, keep this video in mind.
Coxing Teammates & Coaches Video of the Week
Video of the Week: How to choose your coxswain
Totally support this.
Training & Nutrition Video of the Week
Video of the Week: Inside the mind of champion athletes
This video is from TEDxPerth and “provides an overview of the kinds of techniques that elite athletes use to prepare psychologically for their sport, gives details of the scientific research into these techniques and how they work, and how the techniques might be used by competitive athletes and coaches to maximize performance.”
It’s only 12 minutes long so check it out and see which of these techniques you can apply to yourself and your training (or if you’re a coxswain, that you can apply to yourself and the crew).
Reverse pick drill progression + what “bob drills” look like
The reason I posted this was mainly to show you what the reverse pick drill looks like if you’re unfamiliar with it, what bob drills look like, and to give an example of what one of our warmup drills are.
We did this by stern 6, bow 6 (who the video features), and finished up with all eight, which is typical of all of the drills we do. This was from Thursday morning of our spring break trip (check out that sunrise in the background and the gorgeous flat water…) and we had a different lineup than we’d had the rest of the week because two guys were rowing on opposite sides and two guys who row in the V4+ were subbed in to give two other guys a break.
Related: How to call a pick drill (and reverse pick drill)
One of those guys had to sit out because a cut on one of his fingers got infected, causing that finger to swell up to roughly double the size of his other fingers. Pro tip kids, keep your wounds clean. So, if you’re wondering why the rowing looks … sloppy … that’s a large reason why.