Summary
Be utterly honest with your people.
Get a speedcoach, understand what it's telling you, use it always.
Find a good coach.
Keep a half-hour ergo table
Get in as many fights as you can.
Go drinking together.
Find or create a good cox.
There's also some obvious stuff that everybody knows that I agree with, like:
Go rowing as much as you can
Try sculling or rowing in pairs
And there are some open questions that I don't know the answers to:
Is cross-training any good? And if so, are ergos the best form?
Do circuit training / weight lifting / core stability exercises help?
How important is psychology? Not at all, very, or something in between?
Why I'm writing this
I used to be captain of a small company boat club. Over the years our first boat, which I was always in, went from the lower half of the second division of the Town bumps, where we were competing against sixth and seventh VIIIs, to seventh place in the first division. There are many other tiny boat clubs in Cambridge. None of them were anywhere near us, and even a couple of the big clubs' first VIIIs were behind us.
Overall from 1998 to 2008, the time I rowed for, we had 21 wins, 21 row-overs, and 2 defeats.
We didn't do that by bringing in new people who were really good, or by expanding hugely as a club.
I wasn't captain for all that time, but I was captain while, and before, the times we were best. I was also responsible for the two times we actually managed to get beaten, both times by Free Press I. (Damn you Alan!!).
At seventh, I felt that we'd found our physical limits. We couldn't have done very much better racing against bigger, fitter people. I was getting older, so I retired. In my last year, we suffered an unusually large number of injuries and things going wrong, and we were bumped down to eighth place.
These weren't fairy tale results, but I was and still am very proud of what we achieved from an unpromising start.
We were never a club with flashy equipment, or the sort of club that people wanted to join because it was a famous name. But towards the end that was changing. Talented people started to ask about joining us, because they could see that we were overachieving, and wondered what our secret was.
Partly I'm saying all this because it's my blog, and I get to blow my own trumpet if I like. But the other day, someone who was thinking about running for the captaincy of his club asked me for advice. And I started talking, and realized that I'd actually done a lot of non-standard things that aren't obvious. And that I should write them down.
There are several reasons for writing them down. They might be useful to other people. The process of writing them down might make my memories clearer. I might spot things I hadn't seen before. I might learn something that might be useful in other areas.
But in order for anyone, including me, to be interested in my reminiscences, I have to justify why I think I'm qualified to be writing advice to boatie captains. And there's no way to do that without having a bit of a boast. So I just have done. Sorry.
I'll make up for it by admitting that the first time I tried rowing in the Bumps, in 1997, I rowed for our second boat. We had no idea what we were doing, and got beaten every day. On the last day, I was handed my wooden spoon by the local Venture Scouts, rowing as 99s 10th boat. After they inflicted our final humiliation, their coach came over and told me that I should buy them all a drink. When they were old enough.
I was twenty-eight years old, in the prime of life and strength. I remember the thought suddenly occurring to me that there might be more to this rowing than being strong and trying hard.
People still ask me if they were wearing their woggles.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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In answer to your questions, I reckon the following:
ReplyDeleteYes, some cross training is useful, mainly because it is difficult to get as much water time (especially for town bumps for example) as one would like. However the amount and variety is dependent to a large extent on what level you are at. Personally, for most college/town crews, I would say ergs of a decent length with people having a chance to think about technique without some idiot in the 3 seat messing up the balance is the best way for going about things (unless you are the idiot in the 3 seat, in which case coached ergs are the way to go).
Circuits I have done once as a form of training, and as they were done in pairs, head to head on each circuit, were very useful for psychology if nothing else. Core strength is essential, and needs training if it is bad. Along with flexibility, if it is lacking, it somewhat kills technique. If a coach says you need to be in this or that position at the catch, and you are either to inflexible to get there, or lack the core strength to hold that position and then apply force through the legs, then the coach is largely wasting his breath. Weights I think are massively overused. At the top end they are useful, but for most people I have rowed with or coached, if they were going to do 2 hours of weights per week, they would have been better off doing 2 hours on the erg (shifting more excess weight, working on technique and getting fitter rather than aiming mostly for getting stronger). I have done weights on occaisions, but most of my better erg scores were done having not really done much (it is possible to argue that my lack of strength stopped me from getting further in rowing, but then I was aiming a bit higher at the time).
Psychology is very important in my opinion. you can get by without good psychology, but it does wonders if you get it right. I think for example, that one of the reasons for the successes of the club in the last years you rowed (ie when I was rowing) was that you had managed to get the psychology of it all, and the mental approach, bang on for what you were aiming at. You had a bunch of guys who wanted to do the training, did it in order to get their place on the erg table and who by virtue of going to the pub together all the time were really good mates, who would really give everything into every race. Additionally, to make the final bit of difference, the people like myself and Chris, Andy, Jason etc who came down to lend a hand especially maybe on technique stuff were the right people. What I mean by this was that we did know some stuff (some more than others!), we were listened to (except that one guy who kept arguing with Chris all the time...), but in return, we knew what we were coming into (ie it wasn't ever going to be drinking bans and 15 sessions a week training), and weren't the sort of arrogant know-all types, who tend to quickly become despised by crews. In the end, there are lots of things that work, but most in my opinion are underpinned by wanting to win (a lot) and being good friends with your crew mates. I once rowed in a 4 that was told to shut up by Chris, as he couldn't get a word in, and were referred to as a floating argument. However, we did win stuff, mostly because while we argued a lot on the water (which I think did improve us, as there was enough knowledge for the arguments to be fruitful) it was all forgotten once we were back on the bank.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just some thoughts. As for being a boatclub captain, I agree, you have to be honest, open and fair. If you aren't then you have lost straight away. One other thing I think that is useful, is that you have to lead by example. If you set training, then you must do it. If you want people to turn up on time, you have to do it yourself. If not then no one else will either. Finally, you need to listen before speaking, be sympathetic, and so on, as this builds trust, but remember that being captain is not a democracy, decisions do need to be made, and it is you who make them, irrespective of whether you or someone else had the idea.
Psychology is very important in my opinion. you can get by without good psychology, but it does wonders if you get it right. I think for example, that one of the reasons for the successes of the club in the last years you rowed (ie when I was rowing) was that you had managed to get the psychology of it all, and the mental approach, bang on for what you were aiming at. You had a bunch of guys who wanted to do the training, did it in order to get their place on the erg table and who by virtue of going to the pub together all the time were really good mates, who would really give everything into every race. Additionally, to make the final bit of difference, the people like myself and Chris, Andy, Jason etc who came down to lend a hand especially maybe on technique stuff were the right people. What I mean by this was that we did know some stuff (some more than others!), we were listened to (except that one guy who kept arguing with Chris all the time...), but in return, we knew what we were coming into (ie it wasn't ever going to be drinking bans and 15 sessions a week training), and weren't the sort of arrogant know-all types, who tend to quickly become despised by crews. In the end, there are lots of things that work, but most in my opinion are underpinned by wanting to win (a lot) and being good friends with your crew mates. I once rowed in a 4 that was told to shut up by Chris, as he couldn't get a word in, and were referred to as a floating argument. However, we did win stuff, mostly because while we argued a lot on the water (which I think did improve us, as there was enough knowledge for the arguments to be fruitful) it was all forgotten once we were back on the bank.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just some thoughts. As for being a boatclub captain, I agree, you have to be honest, open and fair. If you aren't then you have lost straight away. One other thing I think that is useful, is that you have to lead by example. If you set training, then you must do it. If you want people to turn up on time, you have to do it yourself. If not then no one else will either. Finally, you need to listen before speaking, be sympathetic, and so on, as this builds trust, but remember that being captain is not a democracy, decisions do need to be made, and it is you who make them, irrespective of whether you or someone else had the idea.