Winter Skill Set

The winter months are a great time for coxswains to work on two main skills: spotting and diagnosing technical proficiencies/deficiencies, and polishing your calls. If you’re not doing this already (college coxswains probably are; high-school coxswains, maybe not), talk to your coaches and ask them to let you run a practice (or multiple practices) under their supervision. As thrilling as taking the rowers through a body circuit is, doing that for three plus months is not going to make you a better coxswain.

One year, our coaches overheard a friend and me whining about taking our respective crews through circuits (“This is so stupid,” “I’m so bored,” etc.), so the next practice he had us alternate between taking the team through warmups and different drills on the ergs. It was good for us, because after a year of experience we knew how things should be called; we just needed to fine-tune it.

When it comes to working on your technical calls, you should limit this to warmups/drills and group workouts where everyone is rowing at the same pace (rate pyramids are ideal). Basically, any time all the rowers are doing the same thing, go for it; otherwise, be a silent observer. At times like this, you’re not focusing on the individual, so rowers who don’t like being coxed on the erg won’t have much grist for complaint. This is more for you than it is for them.

A skill that merits attention is how you call the transitions between rates, pressure, starts, and settles. Just because you’re not on the water doesn’t mean you can begin monologuing your calls. Everything should still be simple and concise. Take out unnecessary words so that only those essential to conveying your message remain. This is also a good opportunity to practice the difference between “over” and “on” to signal when to do something (yes, there’s a difference).

If the workout has a technical focus, especially if you’re in the tanks, confer with your coaches about what that focus is ahead of time (catches, finishes, sequencing, etc.) so you can create a “word bank” comprised of 10 to 12 calls that you can incorporate into your vocabulary while coxing.

The more you practice your calls off the water, the more natural they’ll sound on the water (and the less effort you’ll have to expend coming up with something to say). If you’re an experienced coxswain, don’t fall back on the same general calls. Get creative and devise some new ones by listening to recordings and talking with the rowers. This is your time to figure out what works and what doesn’t before you get on the water.

When incorporating these technical filler calls, make sure your tone matches the intensity of the piece. The goal in coxing these pieces on land is to mimic how you would do it on the water during practice or on race day. (Practicing race-day warm-ups, starts, and settles is effective on ergs, especially if you give yourself a window of time similar to what you’d have to get to the starting line.) If the rowers are doing low-rate steady-state pieces with a focus on controlled and in-sync leg drives, don’t cox them like they’re bow ball to bow ball with Northeastern and Syracuse in the finals at IRAs and you’re trying to nose your boat out in front with a five for legs.

When not working on your calls, you should be sharpening your technical eye. On land, you have the opportunity to look at the rowers in a way you rarely get–from the side. This should be your go-to thing when you don’t have anything else to do. Personally, I don’t like calling drills while trying to observe rowers, because my focus is split. If I’m not losing track of what stroke we’re on or how much time is left, I wind up looking at the rowers without really seeing anything. When I have time on land to concentrate on one thing, I lean into it.

When observing rowers, you should have a picture in your head of ideal form. I pick the most proficient rower on our team and compare everyone’s form to that model (after confirming it with the coach). The details aren’t important; look at the building blocks—leg drive, transitions through the body sequence (legs, back, arms, reverse), posture.

You can correct the rower directly or jot a reminder in your notebook to address the flaw at another time. I recommend recording the issue and how it was corrected so you can refer to it later. If something looks off but you aren’t sure what the problem is specifically, ask another coxswain or your coach to take a look and explain what they’re seeing, what correction is needed and why, and what a good on-the-water call would be.

When I’m observing rowers on the ergs, I do a lot of walking. Very rarely do I stand in the same place for more than a minute or two. I like to stand in front of individual rowers for three to five strokes and look at them as I would in the boat. From there, I try to figure out what’s good or bad about their form and envision what they might look like with an oar in their hands.

It involves a lot of educated guesswork, but it’s a great way to teach yourself technique and form. And if you learn the tendencies of the rowers and what calls to make to address them while you’re still on land, you’ll be one step ahead of the game once you get out on the water. 
kayleigh durm