What do coxswains say during a race

To steer to starboard right , pull the cord on you left towards you. When you steer, it'll take a few strokes for your actions to take effect, so be patient and plan in advance! You should also try to minimize your steering, and keep the rudder straight as much as possible, because this will help the boat stay balanced. When you steer, try to pick a fixed point on the shore of the river and steer directly towards it. Finally, if you're practicing with other boat s , make sure you communicate with the other coxswain s so you know you're not on a collision course!

It takes a lot of practice to learn what you should - and shouldn't - say to your boat. In the beginning, a new coxswain should concentrate on 1 safety of the boat, 2 steering, and 3 listening to the coach and communicating her information to the rowers.

After you get comfortable with these things, you can start to spend more time on motivating your rowers to try their hardest. To do this, get to know your rowers and find out what motivates them. And in races, tell them where the competition is. Remember that the rowers aren't allowed to look out of the boat - so they're relying on you to tell them how they're doing against their competition. In general, no matter what you're saying, make sure you're speaking clearly and loudly so that everyone can understand what you're saying.

You will be using a "Cox-Box" in the boat, which is a speaker system that allows rowers to hear what the coxswain is saying. I also liked how you gave them targets and said who you were passing, who you were moving through, who the next crew ahead of you was, etc. This is a quick clip of some steady state with Mt. The tone of voice, calls, etc. Bart sent me this recording last year and I ended up sharing it with several other coxswains including a couple at MIT so they could see what I meant when I talked about being more engaging, active, assertive, etc.

Tone, annunciation, etc. Between bladework, body positioning, timing, acceleration, picking the boat up, etc. Note how he says things too — tone and enunciation is key. This is such a universal call because it works for literally any situation — racing, steady state, drills, etc. The biggest thing it conveys is to maintain consistency. This is a decent recording tone and intensity throughout are pretty good but the primary takeaway should be to put some daylight between your calls and not have your race sound like a seven minute long run-on sentence.

Slow down, breathe , and speak clearly. Obviously you should always be on alert and not too comfortable with whatever lead you have but phrasing can make a big difference. Once in awhile is whatever, fine but not every single call.

Do you have any suggestions for what my boat can do about our struggles coming out of a start? What can we do to come out of a start more smoothly? Unless the ratio is actually that out of whack off the start, a ratio shift is the wrong approach.

Related: How do you call a ratio shift to control and stop the rush without lowering the SR? Is it even possible?

Have you tried doing a sub-settle and then settling again to your base pace? Once we tried doing a sub-shift to a 38ish and then strokes later shifting again to base, that seemed to alleviate a lot of the issues. I liken the experience to having a headmaster subing in for a teacher in a class at school, everyone just shut up and did exactly what they were told, was bloddy awesome!

Its not about being mean or nice, ive had cox's who tried to be mean and i ended up getting pissed of and not listening, its about respect. Post by PaulH » March 26th, , pm Something I find important is to be positive, not negative, particularly if your crew are doing it more for fun than medals Any time they're doing something right compliment them on it.

If they're doing something wrong use positive action like "Let's work on those catches for the next Another thing is to empathize with them - "I know this hurts, but we're almost home" etc. Post by djh » July 13th, , am I'm reading Moby Dick and came across this: Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones.

Why don't you break your backbones, my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone--devils are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men--all hearts alive! Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry--don't be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs!

So, so, so, thensoftly, softly! That's it--that's it! Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. It looks a lot like a bomb. Still, she'd rather have a cox box in Rio than the weird-looking megaphones that coxswains used to strap to their faces in the old days.

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