Coxswain Development: Indoor Involvement
For some of us, the time has arrived to turn our attention toward indoor training. While it’s easy to feel adrift out of the coxswain’s seat, the winter presents a fantastic opportunity to help further your team’s goals and your personal development.
The key rule of indoor practices is to be involved; don’t just stand at the back of the room. Your rowers are working hard, taking risks, and performing, and it’s time for you to do the same. The winter affords you the time to really get to know your rowers, develop your technical knowledge of the stroke, and help move your team forward.
Know how to make the most of your steady-state practices. First, watch your rowers until you have a full picture of what they’re doing. If you see your coach giving a lot of feedback to a particular athlete, check in with the coach so that you can reinforce that message. Several coaches and a group of coxswains all giving involved feedback is great, but it can also get overwhelming if a rower is getting too many corrections at once.
“We encourage the coxswains to pick one major thing about a rower that they think will make the biggest impact in that piece or on that day,” said Skye Eliot, varsity girls coach at Community Rowing, Inc. “We’ll ask them to give the rower a little bit of feedback on one thing, perhaps video it first, and then during a rest period or after the workout, they can show the video and explain the technical change.”
This real-time technical feedback can be valuable to your rowers and help you discover what technical calls and cues are effective for individual athletes.
When giving feedback, make sure to integrate the same language and focuses you and your coaches have been using on the water.
“Listen to the language we’re using, the explanations of the strokes, the drills, and the cues we add to the drills,” said Eliot.
If you’ve been paying attention, it’ll be easy for you to use the same technical language to help your rowers transition from the water to the erg. It’s also a great opportunity to clarify any coaching that you didn’t understand on the water so that you and your coach are on the same page technically. The stroke is an endless puzzle; even the very best rowers on your team will be working on refining certain elements, so you’ll never run out of feedback to give or things to look at.
When coxing pieces, know your rowers. It’s important to know goal splits and race plans so that you can encourage your rowers to stay on target. Talk with them beforehand about their plans and goals—don’t be that coxswain who is screaming at a rower to drive the split down when that rower is right on target. As with a race on the water, there’s a rhythm to an erg piece.
“In the beginning of the piece, you let the rower do their thing and focus on the execution of the piece. As the piece goes on, we do encourage the coxswains to get more aggressive and excited in their motivation,” said Eliot.
You may face the challenge of a rower who simply doesn’t react well to coxswain feedback. If you have a prickly rower, check in with her before a practice or a piece and ask her what she’s focused on and what kind of feedback is helpful.
With less receptive rowers, “you can create an agreement ahead of time that it’s OK to give feedback,” said Eliot. “Rowers who are competitive are almost always going to want to talk about what you see.”
Be confident, offer feedback, and be attentive and receptive to your rowers’ needs. For a coxswain, the winter can be a time to be selfless. It’s not about showcasing your own abilities, but about helping your teammates row better and perform well.
Show up for your teammates, and you’ll be rewarded when you get back on the water.
The post Coxswain Development: Indoor Involvement appeared first on Rowing News.