Videos
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: Rowing days at Harvard
This is a pretty cool story and a neat bit of insight into one of Harvard’s most successful crews.
Training & Nutrition Video of the Week
Video of the Week: There’s only two things you can do…
This video isn’t related to rowing at all but I think it’s a great one to kick off the winter training season. The part that you should really internalize and take to heart is the last line: there’s only two things you can do when people say you’re not good enough; you can prove them right or you can prove them wrong.
For those of you who aren’t too into football or are unfamiliar with the sport, here’s some background. The guy in the video is Julian Edelman, a wide receiver and punt returner for the New England Patriots. In college he played quarterback at Kent State and wasn’t expected to make much of an impact in the NFL due to his size and lack of experience at WR. People wrote him off from the get go but over the last five years he’s become one of the best guys on the Pats offense.
Use him as inspiration/motivation over the next few months. If there’s something you think you can’t do or someone has said doesn’t seem likely (whether that’s breaking 6:40 on your 2k because you’re not fit enough, earning a seat in the 1v because you’re “too small”, or medaling at nationals because you’re not experienced enough) remember that you can either prove them right or you can prove them wrong. Whatever you end up doing though, the choice is yours.
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: Snowflake Regatta carnage
What the actual hell…
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.
Video of the Week: 2004 Men’s 8+ Starting Sequence
Video of the Week: What makes the fastest crew?
This is so true: “The only way to compete effectively is to make the boat go fast and the only way to make the boat go fast is to collaborate perfectly with the very same people they’re competing with. It almost requires a schizophrenic frame of mind.”
Related: Books on rowing, pt. 1
This guy, Mark de Rond, wrote the book “The Last Amateurs” which is about the 2007 Cambridge crew and the time he spent living with them while they trained and prepared for The Boat Race.
College Coxing Novice Racing Video of the Week
Video of the Week: “Ignatius, stop rowing”, pt. 3
Really? Really?
That novice boat should have been disqualified and given a serious talking to by the regatta officials with their coaches present. (Supposedly they only received a 20 second penalty.) This goes way past your standard novice screw-up. The blades of the two boats were overlapping which means they were probably less than 10 feet apart. This was almost a head-on collision between a varsity four at full race pace/pressure and an eight that appeared to be rowing at least by bow 4. It doesn’t matter that they’re novices, “oh they weren’t going that fast”, “they probably just didn’t know where to go”, etc. … NO. Not buying ANY of those excuses.
Coxswains, I implore you to use your common sense and pay attention to the traffic patterns so you know where the travel lanes are and where the actual race course is. I don’t care if you’re a novice or varsity – pay attention. Varsity coxswains (and coaches, because … it’s your job …), you should be asking the novices multiple times if they understand the course, the traffic pattern(s), etc. so that there is no question that they’re prepared when they go out on the water and aren’t going to be at risk of putting themselves or another crew in danger. Novices, you need to suck. it. up. and get over being intimidated by asking questions and ask someone if you don’t know where you need to go. There are plenty of people on land that you can ask, in addition to regatta officials and other crews on the water. You should also have your head on a swivel at all times so that situations like this don’t happen.
There’s really no question with regards to how the coxswain from Marietta College handled this. Given the nature of the situation, I think he did well. I mean, what else can you do other than make a split second decision to either try to get the other crew’s attention and/or drastically alter your course? He was loud, made a good effort to get the coxswain’s attention, got his crew right back into it afterwards, and didn’t appear to have to make any steering adjustments. Saying “way off course, coxswain” is pretty much the tamest thing he could have said in that moment so props to him for not losing it on the other crew. Trust me, as much as you’d probably want to in that situation … don’t. Find the regatta officials afterwards and talk to them or go find the crew’s tent/trailer if you know what team they’re from and let their coach know what happened. It’s not about throwing them under the bus or trying to get them in trouble so don’t use that a reason to not say something later. The only way situations like this are going to be prevented in the future is if people speak up and give the coaches/officials a chance to address with the coxswains where they need to be on the water, either again or simple more effectively this time.