The old adage that the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask doesn’t always apply when speaking with college coaches. Your questions tell the coach something about you. Good questions are the ones that speak to your specific concerns, communicate your sincere interest in the team, and are best addressed by a coach. The worst questions are the ones that show you don’t really care, like asking for information you can find readily on the program website. 

In many instances, you will want to go to the student-athletes themselves with your questions rather than the coaches. They are more likely to speak the unvarnished truth, while the coach will be motivated to paint the program in the best light. 

It’s also important to know your place. Most college coaches are turned off when a 17-year-old asks, “What’s your coaching philosophy?” You’re not interviewing the coach for a job and you’re certainly not ready to answer a question about your rowing philosophy, so stick to the basics and use your powers of observation to see what the coach believes.

College coaches want prospects to take the initiative and lead their own college search. Prospects should communicate with the coach. Parents do, however, have an important role in the process, particularly when the talk turns to finances.

Often, prospects are interested most in how recruiting works at a particular school. They want to know if they can get a scholarship and/or if a coach can “support” their application with admissions colleagues. These are valid concerns. But would-be college rowers need to show coaches why they deserve a scholarship and their support before asking whether or not they’ll get it.

The post Why the Questions Prospective Student-Athletes Ask Matter appeared first on Rowing News.

After our first fall season, most of us stick with coxing because we realize that the feeling of slicing through the water in a really powerful boat is intoxicating, not because we want to walk around a musty erg room with clipboards for four months.

When you’re indoors, it’s hard to stay engaged. Your role is much less defined, making it easy to feel bored, aimless, and apathetic about coxing. If you’re serious about your role on the team, though, you’ll realize that there are just as many opportunities to get better and faster in the winter as there are on the water.

Work out with the team: This doesn’t mean you have to get on the erg and do pieces with them but you can participate in running a stadium or doing body-weight and core circuits. While the team is doing steady-state pieces, you can get on the bike also and do pieces of comparable intensity, all while continuing to call switches in rate and when pieces start and stop.

The goal isn’t to match what the rowers are doing but to do as much as you’re capable. The fact that your teammates see you doing something (and taking it seriously) will earn their trust, respect, and loyalty. It’s also about learning the true definition of “more.” If you’re seeing stars at the end of a stadium, which is how your rowers feel when they’re gassed at the end of a piece, they’ll know that when you ask for “more” you’ve been there, too, and that you get what it means to go until you can’t go anymore and give until there’s nothing left to give.

Observe individuals on the erg: From a technical standpoint, winter training is an excellent time to follow each rower closely to see how he or she responds to training at increasing levels of exhaustion. By isolating their bodies and observing them individually instead of as part of a larger crew, you can determine how they respond to the intensity or duration of a piece by noting changes in technique and rhythm, etc. Keep your notebook on hand so you can record what you’re seeing and what the coach is saying so you can fashion customized calls later on.

Learn how to call drills effectively: This was a regular part of winter training for coxswains when I was in high school. Frequently, as part of the warm-up, we would do the same technical drills on the ergs that we’d do on the water, and we coxswains were responsible for their execution.

I remember being super-intimidated the first time I had to do it, but a varsity coxswain told me they were all bad at it at first and had no idea what to say. This exercise is what helped them get comfortable coxing everyone on the team (not just their usual rowers) and allowed them to test-run different calls, tones, and ways of executing drills with minimal backlash when something went wrong.

I’ll say the same to you guys, too—we were all lousy at this stuff when we began. None of us knew what to say, and what we did say made us cringe because it sounded stupid. Persisting through and past the urge to crawl inside yourself is a necessary experience, though. If you can do it on land, you can do it on water, which is where and when it counts most.

In addition to improving your call and tone while executing drills, it’s beneficial to learn the purpose of the drills and what your coach is trying to accomplish. Getting on the erg and going through the drills yourself improves your ability to explain what it should feel like. “Hang your weight off the handle” might not make sense, but “you wanna feel the lats engage as the blade enters the water and the leg drive begins” adds helpful clarity and specificity. This is especially important if you’re coxing novices or other less-experienced rowers. In the more senior boats, attention to detail can be a difference-maker throughout the season when it’s less about how powerful you are and more about how well you move the boat.

Determine your objectives and set some goals: This is something every coxswain should do at the start of winter training. Begin by reflecting on the previous season, taking stock of where you excelled, where you improved, and where significant changes are needed, and then determine what steps you’re going to take to address those areas over the winter.

Obviously, you can’t work on skills like steering or boat feel but everything else (managing a practice, developing your technical eye, running through calls, communication, etc.) is fair game. Involve your coach in the goal-setting process. It’s up to you to advocate for yourself when it comes to being coached. Informing your coach of your goals and seeking advice about how to achieve them is the first step.

Don’t be afraid to take a step back in the winter, but don’t become so disengaged that you go to the boathouse only to keep up appearances. If you’re going to go (or have to be there), commit to leaving each day able to say you learned or did something that’s going to make you better in the spring.

The post The Art of Indoor Coxing appeared first on Rowing News.

You are working for months to improve your performance, and the last ergometer test was encouraging since you achieved a personal best. You feel confident that with continuous effort more improvement will keep coming.

But then a bike accident, a move to a new home, or too much work forces you to put your training on hold. When you resume training, you realize that your performance is far from what it once was. In fact, you seem be back where you began. Not only is your former training intensity out of reach but also your workouts are shorter so you can recuperate properly.

Welcome to the phenomenon of reversibility, when hard-earned fitness gains vanish once you quit training. Typically, the losses occur in less time than it took to achieve the gains. Through targeted training, your body adapts to increasing loads, which become easier to manage so you can perform at a higher level. Through strength training, for example, you prepare your muscles to generate more force, while endurance training enables you to sustain a load longer and with more ease.

Such adaptations take time to develop, which is why you train carefully over a long period. When you discontinue training, however, the adaptations reverse themselves, along with your enhanced ability. That’s why you should continue training after racing season, preferably targeted training with specific goals in mind.

Every serious rowing manual prescribes year-round-training and advises that you use competition-free periods such as winter to prepare for your next races, even if they’re months away. This is the time for more general training at a lower intensity and for a longer time. It’s a chance to try other modes of physical exertion, such as running, bicycling, and cross-country skiing, and to tune up your body by lifting weights and performing balance and flexibility exercises. For mental and physical refreshment, you can play games such as pickleball, volleyball, and soccer, which are valuable especially for young athletes and masters rowers.

All this off-season activity will help you continue to perform better, avoid injury, and stay in the sport longer.   

The post Back Where You Began appeared first on Rowing News.

For most coaches, the challenge when teaching rowers is where to begin. Troubleshooting a rower’s stroke helps detect what’s actually going on and what can be improved. Though the stroke cycle is continuous, focusing on its elements generally makes the whole better. A handy hack for coaching better is looking at the stroke with “the P’s” in mind.

Posture. “Posture proceeds performance,” former Boston University men’s rowing coach Rodney Pratt preached. Rowers should sit on their seats square and level, weight distributed evenly left to right, neither too far forward nor too far back. Their hips should be elevated (lift the belly button) so their pelvic bones—the sit bones—are the primary point of contact. 

Rowers should be able to sit in this position comfortably for an extended period. If not, ask them to put their hands on the gunwales, lift off the seat gently, and sit back down. This will help center their weight on the seat.

Next, check that the bottom of their feet connect to the foot stretchers. Engaging with the foot stretchers balances the boat and creates the potential for power.

Rowers should keep the oar collar(s) firm against the oarlock(s) through the entire stroke cycle. This light lateral pressure keeps the lever engaged against the fulcrum of the pin, thus balancing the boat and making the drive more effective.

Preparation. Everything in the stroke cycle depends on what’s done before. The recovery begins with rowers separating the handle from the body and forming a rectangle—outstretched arms making up two sides, shoulders and handle the other two. Look for the pivot from the hips, the pelvic tilt, being low in the torso and early on the slide. Too often, body weight doesn’t shift forward because rowers are reaching from their shoulders and rounding the upper back. After pivoting, the body is positioned and remains patient as the knees rise. The recovery is sequential but overlapping. It should position rowers so they’re poised to reverse direction. Pause drills reinforce proper preparation.

Pushing with a firmly braced body initiates the change of direction. While pressure on the foot stretchers and handles should be equal, emphasize pushing. The tendency to pull rarely needs reinforcing, but the need to push always does. Just like the recovery, the drive should be sequential but overlapping. This is achieved by the trunk’s prying open against the continued push of the legs. The pertinent mantra: “Push…push pry…push to prevail.”  

Rowing with greater resistance—meaning a heavier boat—helps teach prying against the leg push. In a single, hold the oars closer to the collars, and in sweep, row inside-arm-only to achieve this effect. Rowing a team boat with some sitting out works, too.

Pulling seemingly comes next, but too often pulling replaces pushing rather than adding to it. While the arms draw the handle toward the body, this depends on continued pressure being applied through the shoes (every action has an equal and opposite reaction). If the finish is weak, the problem almost always is insufficient pressure on the feet rather than too little on the front of the handle. Maintain posture and keep pressing. 

Power properly applied cures most problems. Rowing powerfully with the feet on top of the shoes rights many wrongs.  “More power!” is often the best coaching advice one can give.

The post Minding a Rower’s ‘P’s’ appeared first on Rowing News.

We all know the mind is important for peak performance. When athletes and coaches are asked what proportion of athletic endeavor and success is mental, their answers range from 50 percent to 90 percent.

Hardly surprising. Anyone who has ever competed in a sport knows that the contest is won or lost in the six inches between your ears. What’s revealing, however, is the follow-up question: “What percentage of your training do you dedicate to the mind?” The question usually confounds people because, while they deem mental performance important, most realize that the time they spend training the mind is almost zero.

Clinical psychologists Keith Kaufman, Tim Pineau, and Carol Glass call this  “the mental-training paradox.” In their book, Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement, they quote Bruce Beall, a rowing coach and Olympian: “Coaches like to tell athletes that sport is 95 percent mental but do not seem to know how to train the mind.”

Many coaches and athletes believe that training the body will train the mind by default. If you keep training the body, the mind eventually will catch on, right? Wrong.

Chad McGehee, director of meditation training at University of Wisconsin Athletics, works with the women’s rowing team and likens the relationship between mental and physical training to racing in an eight,

“You have eight spots in the boat, and five of those people are training their butts off, working hard. Then those other three people just show up on race day without really training,” McGehee explained. “They’ll figure out some stuff and after a while they’ll get a little bit better, but they’ll have a ton of bad habits that are going to get in the way. This is like training the body without training the mind.”

One reason training the mind is challenging is that we humans are not fond of deferred gratification. When we put in effort, we want to see results immediately. “Measuring the impact of mental training can be hard,” McGehee said. “It’s challenging to see  those fractional advantages that add up over time. Motivation can decrease if athletes don’t see benefits in their performance early.”

The erg screen shows how hard you pulled and your seat-racing rank vis-a-vis others, but there’s no objective measure of your mental performance. When it comes to assessing progress in that realm, you’re on your own. McGehee encourages athletes to view their minds and bodies as laboratories for determining how to make performance gains over time. His advice for young athletes: “If we don’t train the mind, then we’re just hoping that it all works out, and hope is not a strategy.” 

A Rower’s Journey

Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start. That’s why we look to those who have done it before.

When Michelle Sechser was a 15-year-old novice rower at Capital Crew, she knew where to go for help—Santa Claus. “I was really stoked on rowing and I thought, ‘I’ll ask for a rowing book. This will be great!’”

The Tokyo Olympian and eight-time U.S. national-team member asked Santa for a book about mental performance, and after she read it, her perspective on training changed forever. “That was my first realization that training my mind is as important as training my body and my rowing stroke.”

Over the years, Sechser, in weathering the ups and downs of competition, has had to draw on all she’s learned. “This year, I had to revisit all of the seasons when I managed my headspace well—and also when I was self-destructive—in order to put the most successful season together.”

Over the course of her career, Sechser has come to believe strongly that mental and physical training are inseparable. Every seasoned racer knows that there are pivotal points during races that are extremely hard physically and that demand you respond. Coming into the third 500, you sit up, breathe, and keep the catch sharp because this is when fatigue sets in. 

Likewise, there are points in a race that are extremely hard mentally, and Sechser has learned how to deal with those, too. Four seats down with 750 meters to go, for instance, is a moment when doubt can creep in. “I want to be able to rely on my mind being strong and reliable the same way I rely on my core strength and posture.” Sechser said. “They’re parallel.”

Sechser refers to these pivotal points as “sliding-door moments”—times in a race when a momentary response has a huge effect on the outcome. Perhaps you’re down a length early. You can respond by acknowledging that fact and doing something to change it. 

“Sit up, blades in, strong push, breathe, sit up, blades in, strong push, breathe.” Sechser said, demonstrating how she responds at such times. 

Occasionally, negative thinking has led Sechser down a psychic rabbit hole, she admits. “How did you get down like this? You’ve lost focus! Why aren’t you focused? I need to get my splits back.”

Result: You jack up the rate a couple beats, get tense in the shoulders, and wind up rowing terribly, still a length down. Perhaps you slip into a funk, which compounds the frustration. 

At the whim of your thoughts, you’re no longer calling the shots. The origin of both scenarios is how you responded during the sliding-door moment—the moment when mental training is important. 

Visualizing the Victory

How does Sechser suggest athletes train their minds? Visualization.

“Two-fifty by two-fifty, here’s my focus. I’m picturing myself rowing. I’m picturing myself executing at the highest level, the way I want to be,” Sechser said. “I see myself making the move, walking through the field. I see myself getting my bow in front because I’m holding good posture. I’m driving my legs hard. I’m staying strong. I’m pushing deep to the absolute bottom of the well. And then for me, most importantly, visualizing the victory. I want to feel the emotion I would experience, and what that would mean to me.”

Visualization can create confidence before the race and also halt negative thoughts that can disrupt your performance during it. “I visualize a stop sign to break negative thought patterns and then replace them with positive thoughts or something to bring my mind back to the moment,” Sechser said.

In talking to herself, Sechser rarely uses the first-person I. Instead, she addresses herself as you and we, as if coaching someone else or a group. “Yeah, you’re strong. Good, good strokes. Good rhythm. Keep this up. Repeat. All right. Dig in. We’re feeling the burn. We’re going to push hard. You can do this. You’re confident. Sit tall and just keep this flowing.”

Research suggests that third-person or distanced self-talk fosters more effective self-control because it allows people to regard the self the way they regard others, thus providing the psychological distance needed to facilitate self-regulation. This type of self-talk serves to ground you squarely in the moment. Every time Sechser launches, she tries to connect with what she’s experiencing. She takes a “mindfulness minute” to center herself by focusing on what she can see, hear, touch. This keeps her from getting sucked into negativity and protects against fear. If you ground yourself squarely in the present, fear has no power. 

Staying in the Process

Matt Brown, a former Yale rower, Olympic trials champion, and record holder for fastest Atlantic crossing in a four-man rowboat, has experienced many adventures in mental endurance. His secret for getting through: Fall in love with the process. 

“At one point during the Atlantic race, I was rowing with every ounce of energy I had,” Brown recalled  “Then one of my teammates comes out of the cabin and tells me that we have gone a thousand meters in the opposite direction. We were being pushed backward, farther away from the world record.” 

The way Brown and his teammates dealt with such instances: Focus on the small wins in the journey, not the ultimate goal.

“If you go on a journey like that and the only thing you’re thinking is whether there’s a trophy for you at the finish line, you’re probably going to be disappointed,” Brown said. “It’s all about the process. It’s not about the big moment of competitive triumph but the little mundane things you do every day,” Brown said.  “Do you love doing those things?”

Ask and You Shall Receive?

Devising a mental-training strategy can seem daunting, especially when there’s little support from above.

“Colleges spend all this money for the best equipment, for travel to races and European recruits,” Sechser said. “But the ratio of mental training to physical training is 50/50. What a missed opportunity for getting the most out of your athletes.”

Wisconsin’s McGehee says one of the biggest difficulties for athletes interested in developing mental skills is that they don’t know how. 

“The access to a sports psychologist or mental-performance coach is important, but beyond access, is the how?” McGehee said.  “There’s a million YouTube videos and books and all sorts of resources for strength and conditioning and good scientific research on impactful ways to train the body, yet we’re not at that same place with training the mind.” 

Another challenge is the stigma surrounding mental health. People still view attention to mental issues as “something you need to do only when something is wrong, when there’s a pathology,” said McGehee. “There’s lots of stigma in high-performance environments with regard to mental performance.”

At some point, voices such as those of Sechser, Brown, and McGehee will be heard and a shift will occur, bringing new understanding of what it means to train and compete and illuminating just how important the mind really is.

The post Training for Mental Fitness appeared first on Rowing News.

Now that the fall season is coming to an end and you’re beginning to look ahead to spring, it’s time to do some reflecting—not just on this season but on last spring as well. Coxing your team’s top varsity boat is an aspiration for many coxswains, and when you’re in contention and don’t make it, it’s natural to wonder why.

Sometimes, there is no reason. You can do everything right and still not get it, and that’s just life. It’s important to recognize when that’s the case and when objectively you could have done something better or different that would have put you in a more competitive position.

Sometimes, that means just putting the time in on the water to improve your skills; other times, it means confronting some harsh realities, such as the ones listed here. Control the controllables, as they say. You don’t have control over the whims of your coaches but you do have control over you. As you read through these, consider if any are applicable and use the time between seasons to craft a plan of action so that when spring rolls around, you can hit the ground running.

You’re not being proactive.

Showing up every day isn’t reason enough to make the 1V. It’s one small piece of the puzzle. You need to be proactive every single day (even, and maybe especially, in the winter) about learning the required skills, striving to perfect them, and communicating regularly with your coaches. If you’re not doing those things, you’re not doing anywhere near enough.

Your task: Talk to your coaches about where you succeeded or failed in this area last season. What does “being proactive” mean to them (and you)? What are one or two things you can be more proactive about as a coxswain on and off the water and as a team leader?

You seem uninterested.

You don’t have to be the peppiest person in the boathouse but you do need to convey some level of energy, enthusiasm, and engagement. If you go about practice with an apathetic demeanor, you’re hardly signaling to your coaches that being in the 1V is something toward which you’re motivated to work. Apathy is not a leadership quality, either, so if that’s your general attitude, the coaches are unlikely to consider you.

Your task: As the Snickers ad says, “You’re not you when you’re hungry. Maybe you just need a Snickers.” Maybe all it takes for you to be more lively at practice is to have a snack beforehand. In some cases, knowing what it takes to show up as your best self might necessitate more self-examination (which may lead to the “Do I even want to do this sport?” and “Am I really that into it?” conversations—both normal and fine.)

You don’t make a case for yourself.

You need to know your strengths and weaknesses objectively and be able to sell yourself if and when your coach asks why you should be considered for the top boat. Regard it as a job interview. Your coach, like a prospective employer, wants to know what you can do for her and the team, not how this is going to benefit you. Confidence and humility are key; acting smug and cocky can and will make it easy to dismiss you.

Your task: Be your own best advocate. This is a skill that has to be learned just like any other. Whether you’re in the initial learning stages or you’re refining your approach, Harvard Business Review has dozens of articles about this and is a great resource.

You haven’t researched the job.

Find out what the coaches and rowers want in their top coxswain in terms of skill, ability, and personality and talk with current and former coxswains to get a sense of the expectations and what it takes to be in that position.

Your task: Treat this like any other research project. Engage others in the conversation, take notes on what you learn, see where the commonalities are, note your strengths and weaknesses relative to those skills and traits, and prioritize the ones on which you need to work.

You’re not good enough or are under-qualified.

It’s fine—good, even—to aim high, but you need to be realistic and not get upset or discouraged when someone says you’re not ready. If you’re just coming off your novice year or you’re a junior who still hasn’t come to terms with what a straight line looks like, you’re not ready to be in the 1V. It’s not a dig or a microaggression, demeaning or bullying, to be told that. It’s an objective fact based on your current skill level and should motivate you to figure out where you can and should improve so you can make a stronger, more grounded-in-reality case for yourself next year.

I also recommend not making the same mistake I did when I misinterpreted positive feedback from my coach and teammates as their saying, “You’re a lock for the 1V.” I was confused more than anything else about not being in the lineup because it seemed to contradict what I’d been hearing, which led my coach to give me the famous “listen to what’s being said, not what you think you heard” speech. I was doing well in light of my current level of experience, but there was still tons of room for improvement, not only for my own growth as an athlete but also to meet the lofty standards our team set for varsity coxswains.

Your task: Again, assess your skill level objectively. How does that compare to what your team expects of a varsity coxswain? This is a good opportunity to do coxswain evaluations, too, so you can get feedback from the athletes to incorporate into your plan of action.

You’re not learning from your mistakes or you get complacent easily.

When you make a mistake, accept what happened, learn from it, and apply it in the future. If you’re making the same mistakes consistently or you get cocky and stop paying attention, your judgment, decision-making, and self-awareness (all critical qualities for a coxswain) are going to be called into question. The saying “Once is a mistake; twice is a decision” tends to be true.

Your task: Mistakes are part of the learning process, so when you make one, debrief with your coach or the other coxswains to talk through what happened and how to approach that thing differently. Understand the steps necessary to achieve your desired outcome, reset, and try again. Or, in more simple cases, just don’t do that thing again. Not making a mistake for a second time also means distinguishing between a blip and something more rooted, such as a fundamental misunderstanding of the task at hand.

You’re entitled.

Technical things aside, this is a top reason you’re not in the premier boat. You don’t deserve the 1V because you’ve been on the team the longest. You don’t deserve the 1V because some of the rowers like you better than the other coxswain. You don’t deserve the 1V because you did this inconsequential thing that anyone with two neurons firing and an ounce of common sense would know to do. If you spent half as much time on improving your skills as you do complaining about why you’re not being given the 1V on a silver platter, you’d be in the 1V already.

Your task: Humble yourself, put the work in, and be intentional and deliberate about the steps you’re taking to develop yourself as a coxswain.

The post Facing Facts appeared first on Rowing News.

As the fall season draws closer to an end, the attention of coaches may begin to turn to how to get the most out of winter training. But this isn’t just relevant for our athletes. Coaches, too, stand to grow in these winter months. Professional development is a critical pursuit for all coaches but one that gets pushed aside often to tend to more immediately pressing matters—calling recruits, meeting with athletes, or maybe even taking a moment for yourself to go for a run or read a book.

The winter can slip by quickly without any real attention being paid to learning and growing into a better coach. In my opinion, the best way to take some time to focus on professional development, mixed with networking and if you’re lucky a little travel and time for yourself, is attending a conference. And winter is the perfect time.

Like everything in life, you get out of your education what you put in. And this is certainly true for conferences. Stay away from the coaches who think they have nothing more to learn. Surround yourself with peers who are hungry for, or at least open to, learning. Enter each session with an open mind and a curious heart. You never know what nugget or occasionally game-changing bit of information you can learn from an unexpected source.

I will never forget being in a session at the USRowing conference years ago when an eager junior coach asked Mike Teti how he coached elbow position on his Olympic and University of California crews. Mike thought for a moment and replied, seriously: “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word elbow while coaching. Ever.”  Sometimes you’ll be surprised by what you learn. And some things should be taken with a grain of salt.

While there’s plenty of information to be acquired during regular sessions at these events, I’ve always found the conversations I had with other coaches over a coffee or beer to be the most valuable. This is where I learned what other coaches were trying out or struggling with. There is so much to be gained by just listening to what other coaches, especially more seasoned ones, have to say about their experiences.

But don’t be afraid to speak up as well. This is a chance to further your coaching relationships and expand your network in authentic ways. And sometimes it’s important, and fun, to just kick back with peers and talk about something, anything, other than rowing. Not every conversation will be a fount of inspiration, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be important or enjoyable.

The USRowing Annual Convention, now RowCon, has for years been a staple of many coaches’ calendars. Though we lost the Joy of Sculling Conference after Covid, the event has been reborn as The Conference for Rowing Coaches, organized by co-directors Peter Steenstra and Mark Davis. Newcomers have also arisen recently, including the Rowers Choice Coaches Conference and Manufacturers Expo as well as the Science of Rowing Virtual Conference. Each of these events has a different focus, and attendees will be served best by looking at the mission statement of the event and the topics covered by speakers to get an idea of what is the best fit for them.

I feel so strongly about the role of conferences in coach development that I have founded my own—The Women’s Coaching Conference. This event, taking place for the first time in Boston from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, serves all female rowing coaches and provides attendees with actionable education and community-building. The event fills a specific—and currently unaddressed—need to focus on the professionalization of the career and create a space for women to learn, connect, and inspire emerging and established coaches so we can make this job sustainable and enjoyable.

Regardless of where your coaching education takes you this winter, if you approach every opportunity with an open mind and a genuine willingness to try new things, you can become a better coach.

The post The Conference Season appeared first on Rowing News.

Coordination is the integration of the central nervous system’s processes of speed, strength, endurance, and flexibility. To improve your rowing, you must learn to perform the stroke in consistent patterns. Adapting to higher stroke rates and being able to make subtle adjustments in your stroke to stabilize the hull or clean up bladework can be improved with specific drills.

There are several methods for developing coordination. One way is to perform a skill with the opposite limb or in an unusual position. If we apply this to sweep rowing, this means having athletes regularly switch sides to become competent on port and starboard or practicing drills that alternate hands on the sweep oar, such as outside hand only, inside hand only, or outside hand on the drive/inside hand on the recovery. For scullers, there is a challenging drill I refer to as the Swinford Switch. Scull with the port blade squared and the starboard blade feathered for 10 strokes, and then in one stroke, switch to the port blade feathered and the starboard blade squared for 10 strokes. This is a first-rate drill for right-left integration.

Altering the speed or tempo of performing a movement is another way to improve synchronization of body parts. Exercises that increase the stroke rate progressively or with variations in rate accomplish this. Example: 40-stroke pieces in which you row at full pressure for 20 strokes at a base rate then raise the rate two strokes per minute every two strokes for 20 strokes. If your base rate is 30 strokes per minute, in the second 20 strokes, your rate will increase to 32-34-36-38-40. Another drill for high-speed coordinated reactions is rowing half slide at maximum tempo, increasing the pace every five strokes. Once bladework deteriorates, the drill ends. 

Technical challenges combined with complicated performance conditions better a rower’s ability to cope and react efficiently. Practices designated for rowing in various boat classes, such as changing from an eight to a pair, a sweep boat to a sculling boat, a single to a double challenge the body’s sensitivity. Being exposed to different boats, wavy water, windy conditions, and currents adds another layer of difficulty to building skill. 

Games of all sorts or practicing unrelated sports will also help develop a repertoire of movements and body knowledge that will be incorporated into your stroke in subtle ways, so cross-country skiing, tennis, or rock climbing can all take their place in your training plan.

Marlene Royle is the author of Tip of the Blade: Notes on Rowing. She specializes in training for masters rowers. Her coaching service, Roylerow Performance Training Programs, provides the program and the support you need to improve your competitive edge. For information, email Marlene at roylerow@aol.com or visit www.roylerow.com.

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When it comes to rigging changes, remember that rowing fast depends on two things: force on the blade and the time that force acts on the blade.  Blade force is the only force that can propel the overall system—rower and boat—and together with the length of time it’s applied changes velocity. Rowers strive to generate high blade force over a sustained period of time.

Blade force is a function of the interaction of blade and water. Blade force can be generated only if the blade moves relative to the water, and its magnitude is directly correlated to the velocity of that movement. So if rowers want to increase blade force, they need to move the blade faster through the water, which in turn reduces the time that the blade interacts with the water.

This means rowers must have the equipment to create good blade speed in the water while generating the necessary force on the handle. To accomplish this, we make the inboard short enough so that handle velocity translates to blade velocity while keeping it long enough for rowers to produce the necessary handle force to counteract blade force.

Another factor in determining the best inboard length is the geometry created by the inboard rotating around the pin. It must fit the anatomy of the rower so he or she can muster large handle forces over a long path. This is achieved by choosing an appropriate span for a given inboard, which is why inboard and span are always closely related. For example, the inboard is typically 30 centimeters longer than the spread in sweep, and in sculling the length of the two inboards together is regularly 16 centimeters larger than the span. So if you change one of these measures, you must change the other, too.

Selecting the best rigging measurements is a complex undertaking, and there is no simple formula that can be applied universally. All the following factors have to be recognized: blade shape and size; boat class; size and power of the rowers; technical skill of the rowers; wind and water conditions; length of the race, and more. No wonder coaches hesitate to change rigging measurements after they’ve found a set of numbers that seems to work.

For example, the numbers 88/288/160 centimeters for inboard/total scull length/span are very common for single rowers, and you find them all over the world. Weren’t these the numbers that Mahé Drysdale used to win an Olympic gold medal? 

Indeed, those were the measurements used by one of the best scullers ever. What coaches often forget is that this rower has been an outstanding specimen in size and fitness, and we don’t usually find such rowers in our clubs. Should we not think twice about using the same numbers for a lightweight junior?

Rigging measurements should be customized to the individual, just as bicyclists change gearing depending on speed, grade, wind, etc. Compared to bicycling, do we change enough gears in rowing, and how many centimeters do we have to move measures so that they have a significant impact? 

Let’s focus for now only on changes to inboard and span and discuss specifically the rigging changes in sculling. All the information presented applies to sweep rowing as well, though certain things (e.g., overlap of inboards) are different. 

If you lengthen the inboard by one centimeter and leave everything else the same—that is, you keep the length of the outboard and span the same—you shrink the catch angle of the oar  by a minimal half a degree, but you lengthen the lever by 1.1 percent, so you reduce the handle force accordingly. The increased overlap of the handles requires a little more technical skill, and the lighter handle force is just noticeable. Such a change is appropriate at a regatta with some headwind as long as the water is not so rough that the increased handle overlap becomes a problem. Changes more minor than one centimeter would have a scarcely noticeable impact on stroke length and handle force. Larger changes of the inboard would necessitate appropriate changes in the span.

Changing only the span is advisable solely for technical reasons: helping a rower manage the overlap, for example, or shifting a sculler’s arc more toward the catch (enlarging the span will necessitate moving the foot stretcher to the stern, which in turn will increase the catch angle while decreasing the finish angle) or the finish (reducing the span). Adjusting the span by only two centimeters will produce noticeable changes, but such a change affects only the so-called “dynamic gearing” while the “static gearing” remains the same. Changing only the span takes considerable time for rowers to get used to.

Changing the inboard and span in tandem while maintaining outboard length influences the load a sculler experiences dramatically. Changing the rigging from 88/288/160 centimeters to 86/286/156 centimeters increases handle force by 2.3 percent for the exact blade force and increases the oar arc by about two degrees, which makes the dynamic gearing heavier. To illustrate the difference, shortening the overall length of the sculls to 282 centimeters would be required to maintain the load of the original rigging.

Bottom line: There are many options for influencing the load a rower experiences. What measures should be taken depends on the individual situation. Is a short-term measure necessary, such as when the wind changes at a regatta? Or can we work with rowers over an extended period of time to improve their effectiveness? The goal of the rigging change should be identified clearly, while realizing that fiddling around by mere millimeters will not really help.

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Pause for a count of 1-one thousand, 2-one thousand. Row. 

This slight interruption of the stroke cycle gives you the opportunity to stop briefly and check your position. Pause drills can be incorporated at the finish position, arms away, arms away/body over, quarter-slide, half-slide, three-quarter slide. 

Double pause drills incorporate two pauses during one recovery, such as pausing at arms/body away and at one-half slide. Pause drills are a staple of technical training. For example, a pause at arms/body away grooves in various skills, such as a smooth follow-through of the stroke with a fluid release and complete body preparation; setting posture correctly out of bow; maintaining a still body angle once compression begins; keeping weight over the handles with flat wrists; checking the left-hand-leads-the right in sculling; relaxing the slide once the pause breaks; balancing the boat with blades off the water; syncing a crew’s timing out of bow, matching when all knees rise. 

Pause drills can also be part of a strength-endurance session with a focus on single-stroke power through the water, a regular part of your warm-up, or adapted for the indoor rower. Begin a pause drill set by pausing after every stroke for 10 strokes. Next, try pausing every other stroke for 10 strokes. Finally, five and pause—up to five strokes of continuous rowing followed by a one-stroke pause.

Blend the skill you perfected at the pause into your continuous rowing.

Marlene Royle is the author of Tip of the Blade: Notes on Rowing. She specializes in training for masters rowers. Her coaching service, Roylerow Performance Training Programs, provides the support you need to improve your competitive edge. For information, email Marlene at roylerow@aol.com or visit www.roylerow.com.

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