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The Rowperfect team has been working hard to get you some exclusive content and commentary about the forthcoming Olympic Regatta in Beijing .

We are adding new bloggers to our roster and so would like to introduce Richard Chambers - rowing for GB in the Mens Lightweight Coxless Four, Richard has been on our 'radar' for a while since his successful talk at the ARA Coaching conference last January.  More detail on Richard plus an interview he gave the World Rowing website last month. 

Richard's work will also be published on The Guardian Unlimited website - an official media partner of the British Olympic Association.

Duncan Holland will continue to give his expert commentary on the regatta, crews and how the race planning develops through the rounds of racing.  A New Zealander by adoption, Duncan has coached in Switzerland and the Netherlands on their Olympic and World Championship programmes and will offer a coaches' perspective on the regatta.

We are also hoping to get occasional athlete commentary from Jen Goldsack (USA), Jochen Kühner (GER) and Rod Chisholm (AUS).  Each representing different nations but some with connections to the UK!

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Duncan Holland writes;

Maggie Thatcher famously claimed that ‘There is no such thing as society ’.  I don’t wish to be handbagged by the shade of the Iron Lady but my experiences this week on, and around, the Cam lead me to a different conclusion.  This week I have been privileged to live in a different world to the one she inhabited.

Those who have read some of my recent posts will know I am a fan of the Bumps.  Last night was the last night of the bumps this year and I had a great time as I had all week.  What I experienced was a society functioning.  The Cambridge (UK) rowing community numbers around 1000 people excluding students.  This week we have had around 850 of them on the river racing, with many filling multiple roles as athletes, coxes, coaches, organisers, marshals, and so on with most of the rest also working to make it a success.   This is standard stuff for rowers remarkable though it is.  

Where the rowing society really shows though is in the reaction to others results.  Other peoples’ triumphs are greeted with genuine pleasure.  As a winner rowed home down the course wearing willow , all the other crews applauded and cheered, there was shared pleasure in seeing others triumph.  

We were fortunate enough to bump up all four nights and thus qualify for Blades .  This rounded out one of the best rowing months of my life.  I have had great fun, made and deepened friendships, learnt things and taught things, drunk a sufficiency of good beer, and been reminded that in the rowing part of the world a lot of things are done well, and done happily, for the pleasure and gain of others.

Rowing society exists and works.  Long may it be so!

Duncan

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Duncan Holland writes;

I promised yesterday to tell you how we got on today in the Cambridge Town Bumps . The answer is; very well.  We managed to get our third bump of the week and stand on the edge of a clean sweep and the right to Blades.

It was an instructive afternoon for me.  Again I found myself having to do what I normally tell others to do.  I have a fixed pre-race routine and it got disrupted yesterday when some guests we were expecting got lost and were late arriving.  This threatened to make me late.  It wasn’t a real threat as we had a Plan B, but I found myself exhibiting classic pre-race nerve symptoms.  I had to use some of the skills I try to teach to athletes and remind myself that there was an alternative, that we had a built in time reserve.  A good reminder that even the most experienced of us need to remember the basics, and that a plan with built in safeguards is worthwhile.

The crew performed well.  We managed to execute the plan we had made, managed to structure our race better, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  Now we have a chance to achieve what would be, for us, a significant step.  Blades would be a good effort; we have to make sure that we don’t slip up at the last hurdle.  Just as a crew that has won a semi-final at a Championship will try to focus on what to do in the final, not on the possibility of winning, we must try to live by the mantra ‘process not outcome’.  If we go out to race thinking of what might be we risk losing.  We must again think of what to do, listen to the cox’n, the coach, and think of what makes the boat fast, not what we want to achieve.

The event is local, the absolute level not great, but the skills we need tonight are the same ones the big boys will need at the Olympics.  And we are having fun, I hope they do too!

Duncan

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Duncan Holland writes;

I wrote yesterday about how I was struck by the similarity between the post-race analyses of our Bumps crew and that of a high-performance outfit.  Last night I realised that there is a further analogy that is of interest, to me anyway!

The Bumps involves racing four times over the space of four days.  Each day the crew starts in a potentially new position based on yesterday’s results, theirs and their competitors.   This has some similarity to a championship regatta such as the Worlds where crews are faced by four rounds.  Where the analogy is interesting is on the mental side, the mental preparation and reaction.  

Before the first day there are hopes of triumph, and fears of the unknown.  Can we win Blades or a medal, are we competitive?  After the first race there are some data, hopes may be alive of a triumph, there may have to be some reassessment, some re-alignment of goals to make them realistic.  After days two and three the process continues, good performances bring added pressure and expectation, a poor one the need to re-assess.  If things go well for three rounds then before the final race there is a crescendo of hope and expectation.

As a case in point; our crew (Champion of the Thames M5)  came into the Bumps with high hopes and some trepidation.  On day one we went out after our best ever training session and rowed poorly to a relatively easy bump .  Afterwards we talked, realised we hadn’t executed the plan and promised each other to do better the next day.  Yesterday we rowed much better, followed the script better, and got a good Bump, well earned by our standards.

Now comes the interesting challenge; today we can sniff a winning week, Blades are a possibility.  We know we have to row as we did yesterday, we need to stay focused in the present, to stay in our own boat, to be patient.  In fact, to execute all the sports psychology clichés that are familiar to us all.  

This is where the analogy bites for me.  I have spent a long time telling people to do these things, now I have to do them myself.  I’ll let you know how we, and I, get on.

Duncan

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Duncan Holland writes:

Cambridge Town Bumps have started, last night was round one.  There were the usual high profile (relatively) happenings, (Rob Roy lost the Women’s Headship to 99’s ) and there was the usual wealth of excitement.

Those of you who have read my pieces before will know that I am a fan of Bumps.  How else can you get 94 eights onto a tiny stream for meaningful competition in the space of a few hours?  And for that matter what other town has this many people rowing from such a small population?
My crew bumped up, most of the improvement we have made over the last 2 months stuck, and we caught the St. Radegund crew ahead of us.

I was fascinated listening to us afterwards; the general mood was ‘Could do better’. The thinking, the mix of pleasure at the outcome, the overlay of ‘How to do it better’ was just like a high-performance crew. And therein lies one of the joys of social sport. We know we are slow but get a great buzz out of trying to be better.  

High-performance sport is worthwhile, don’t get me wrong, but what we do is worthwhile too, and costs the taxpayer a lot less!

Duncan

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We are putting together an order for the lovely Space Saver oar and scull racks .

Any club who is interested in seeing the rack, contact Ian at Len Neville , he has demo stock for trial.

Space Saver Oar and Scull Rack holds 16 oars or sculls in a space of 1.2 meters deep by 40 cm wide. 

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I am racing and coaching for my Cambridge (UK) club, Champion of the Thames , at the moment.  It is great fun; I am making lots of new friends and enjoying myself thoroughly.  Champs is the ninth club to which I have belonged over many years of rowing in quite few different countries.  

Champs is, at least for me, a new experience.  This year in the Town Bumps we have 17 eights starting, nine men and 8 women.  All from a base, 10 years ago, of only two eights racing in this event.  For the club to have grown so spectacularly it must be doing a lot of things right.  This is even more emphatically so when one considers that we don’t have a club house.  The club is loosely based in some borrowed space in a College boathouse (Clare College ), and has equipment stored in two others, and leases boats from at least two more.  

The clubs I grew up in were hierarchical, there was a clear pecking order, and the club officials told you which crew you were going to race in. A top down, centrally run, state if you like.  Training times were structured and, essentially, the whole club trained at the same time. If the club went to a regatta, the whole club went.  Those who made the club run were visible because we were all at the boatshed at the same times each week.

Champs is run to a different social model. Our model is much more crew based and basically consists of a loose federation of crews, each of which has coalesced around a leader, an organiser.  So the crew I am in is known much more as Champs Levien (David Levien is our leader) than Champs 5 which indicates our position in a mostly ignored hierarchy. Our club rivals are Champs Munby to us, not Champs 6.  Each crew decides independently if it wants to race at a particular event.  We are, if you like, a federal state.  Is this perhaps a reflection of the new zeitgeist?  Of the new way we organise our lives?  It is certainly a model that would struggle without modern electronic communication.  It is also a system that makes it easy to not notice the contribution from those who do the organising, the fundraising, the boat repairs.  

This different management model works well while there are enough keen, eager and generous people to run the background organisation on which it is based.  Champion of the Thames is well blessed in this department.  Hats off to those who labour unseen and make it work!

Duncan

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Of late I have been coaching various crews in Cambridge UK, the Robinson College 1st Women’s boat and some crews from Champion of the Thames, and have been coaching women for the first time for a number of years.  All the crews have been preparing themselves for The Bumps . 
Apart from being great fun this experience has re-confirmed a belief I formed many years ago.  Men and women are different!  So what?

I often get asked questions along the lines of ‘What differences should there be in the training programme for men and women?’  I don’t think there should be a significant difference.  I believe men and women can, and should, row the same way, train the same way; do the same amount of work.

Where I see the difference is in the attitudes displayed.  These are merely generalisations, but like all good generalisations, have a grain of truth in them.  If a men’s boat isn’t going well the first reaction from most of the crew is ‘The others are messing it up for me’.  Women react with the polar opposite ‘Sorry, I am messing it up for you’.  

The interesting question for me is how I should react, and yes I know my views are filtered through my attitudes and experiences, and are therefore not truly objective, coaching is a subjective business.  

What are your experiences and suggestions?

Duncan

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Thanks to Christian Zangenberg for the link to the current in-flight magazine from airline Lufthansa.

They profile German Olympic hopefuls, including a 19 year old beauty…. posed in a rowing tank with a Dreher tank blade lying across her legs!

Lufthansa article with Dreher oar

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Selection in the club

In Cambridge we are winding up to the Town Bumps. This site gives an explanation  and you can find some video here .
In the club I race for, Champion of the Thames , we are finalising selections for the crews. We have nine men's boats entered so there is necessarily lots of juggling.  A nice little dilemma has arisen which encapsulates quite a lot of the difficulties in such a club.

 
The background is that the club has 5 or so 8's that exist all year, train more or less regularly, and race at most of the local events.  While there is a pecking order there is no formal selection and the crews are more like groups of friends than teams in a hierarchy.  The club has been doing well recently, the top crew is in the first division of bumps and boats 2 and 3 are also going well.

Now, we are one of the lower boats, did well 2 years ago, less well last year in Div 3 and are looking forward to this year because we think we are going better and have a chance to get some bumps. We have a new recruit in the crew, big, strong, young and competent, he was introduced to us by the club and we have gladly taken him in.  Now it is obvious how good he is the higher boats want him and the club is suggesting he move up.  What to do?
A nice little moral problem.  Do we go with club loyalty or crew loyalty?  Does the new man stay with us, help us go well, or go up help the other crew and leave us slower?  

Isn't it great how even trivial sports events have the ability to make us face up to difficult questions!

Duncan

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