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Duncan Holland writes;

I watched the first day of the rowing this morning, what a day for the Kiwis!  Seven of the New Zealand crews were on the water today and they brought home five first places and two seconds.  

Qualifying eight boats for this regatta was a great performance, and it looks as if the New Zealanders are out to carry on what they have been doing for the last few years and be one of the top rowing teams in the world.  How do they do it?

I am an outsider these days and have little knowledge of what goes on in the Kiwi camp but I have noticed a fascinating thing; the Kiwi rowers are cheerful!  I have coached in five countries and have either been in the national team or coached athletes in the team in all of them.  In the other four my memories of the team are largely of people bitching and grumbling about other crews or about the management.  

Observing the New Zealanders over the last four years the most obvious difference from the others is that they are basically happy.  They enjoy themselves and seem largely content with their coaches and management.

Most teams these days talk about being athlete centred, the Kiwi rowers seem to have found out how to do it.  I believe this is the secret to their success.

I hope and believe the Kiwis are on their way to a record success these games.  If so then maybe they can lead a movement to put fun back into sport!

Duncan

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Duncan Holland writes:

I wrote a couple of days ago about how rowing clubs should look after talented youngsters who weren’t part of a National Talent scheme.  Today as I browsed the rowing sites and was looking at the Row2k US Olympic trivia I found something that caused me to think.

Of the 45 athletes in the US Olympic Rowing Team 22 didn’t row before they attended college.  This is a similar pattern to the Dutch Team where domestic rowing is dominated by university clubs and many top athletes don’t start before they leave school.  In both countries there is a vibrant and highly competitive university rowing culture. The USA and the Netherlands are both successful rowing nations and have been consistent producers of fast boats over the last few decades.  They seem to have little problem turning talented young beginners of 19 or 20 into world class rowers.

The question is:  Are countries such as Great Britain that spend much time and energy on young athletes wasting energy, or are the Netherlands and the USA missing the bus by failing to identify enough talent early enough?

What is the ideal age to learn to row?

Duncan

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Duncan Holland writes;

I watched a BBC programme last night, ‘Colin Jackson, the
making of me ’.  (As an aside the BBC is
one part of Britain
I am going to miss.)  The programme
addressed the old nature versus nurture debate in the context of Jackson . 
It didn’t do what the trailers promised, answer the question, but it
raised some good debating points.

The real answer of course is that to be a world class
athlete both sides are needed, great genes and great support.  This is where I start getting
interested.  Jackson was fortunate in
having supportive parents and a superb coach just down the road who was
prepared to invest time and energy into a kid with not much apparent talent,
and who saw sooner than others that Jackson had something special.

Rowing in most countries is haphazard in its search for talent;
GBR is an exception here with the World Class Start programme.  There is though, the informal network of
clubs.  Most clubs have a few big young
rowers who are considered to be talented. 
What I am interested in is the conversion this talent to
performance.  In the old days before the
advent of National Training Centres and HPC ’s and RPC ’s and professional
coaches these talented youngsters were bred up in the clubs and educated in the
way of the sport by rowing with, and mixing with, the older, faster rowers in
the club.  Now with most of the top
rowers spending their time as professionals hidden away at the National Centre
the young athletes miss role models and leadership in the clubs.

This sets the rest of us a challenge; we need to help those
talented rowers who aren’t identified early to blossom.  I believe the best way to do this is to keep
them in a group.  It isn’t necessary to
isolate talent.  Rowing in a crew boat,
even if most of the crew have less talent, is a good way for a potential star
to develop.  Don’t forget that a top
rower needs social skills as well as physical ones.  A good apprenticeship in club crews, and at
local regattas, can prepare an athlete to make the jump to top sport.

And finally, Jackson
told us he was proud of his genetic make up, his rare and special mix of muscle
fibre types.  I would suggest he should
be proud of what he did with his inheritance. 
Lots of people inherit a great body, few become World Champion!

Duncan

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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;

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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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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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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What is a coach?

I have just bought a lovely old book from Way’s bookshop in Henley on Thames.  It is Roy Meldrum’s ‘Coach and Eight’, first published in 1932.  Meldrum was a leading coach of the time who was a leader of the orthodox school of rowing who were epitomised by the Lady Margaret BC and in opposition to the Fairbairn types from Jesus College BC.

Meldrum starts the book with the following passage;

‘A coach is someone of either sex, usually a man at present, who borrows a bicycle and rides beside a crew.  When there is a gale or a poor choice among bicycles, he sometimes rides behind the crew; and sometimes sees for the first time things he had not suspected.  He can see as much and in greater comfort if he has a bicycle of his own; as much, but perhaps with less comfort if he is honoured with a horse.’

There is a lot of wisdom in this short passage. Leaving aside the horse, about which I am not qualified to comment, let us think for a moment about what a coach is.  Like many I started my coaching career when I could no longer row.  Was it not G B Shaw who said ‘He who can does, he who cannot, teaches’?  Relatively few of the top coaches around were top performers themselves.  Is this because the success top performers had has satisfied their thirst?  Is it that the sad people who coach are those who failed to achieve and now eke out a miserable existence warming their egos at the fires of the next generation?  I like to think that coaching and performing are so different that few people have the breadth of personality and diversity of skill to succeed at both.

An associated question that is exercising many around the world at this time of year is ‘How to identify a good coach?’  The season has already seen its share of coaches moved on, dropped or not re-employed and the searches for their successors, discreet and otherwise, are starting.  Every year sees a similar merry go round.  The same coaches are shuffled between the same jobs, and off we go again for another season.  It has echoes of the greater idiocies perpetrated by the owners of football clubs.

May I suggest to those searching for a coach that they first look at themselves and their own failings before setting out to find a coach whom they can blame when things go wrong next season?

To return to the headline; ‘What is a coach?’   Did you hear the one about the rugby club who called guy who ran their practices Bus, because he certainly wasn’t a coach?!

Duncan Holland 

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Those who know me know I have spent the last 3 years in Cambridge UK.  Cambridge and Oxford are the only places I know of that have Bumps racing .  I think it is fantastic!.  The river Cam where the Bumps are held in Cambridge is tiny, the rowing stretch is 5km long, windy and between 1 and 2 lanes wide.  The Bumps are a form of racing that allows up to 2,000, yes 2,000, people to race in the course of an afternoon.  All shapes, sizes and abilities can get out there and have a go.

Over the last 3 years I have mostly been busy with various high-performance projects but this year I helped a student crew for the College Bumps.  Robinson College’s 1st women weren’t a top of the division star boat but I had great fun.  The women competed brilliantly, right to the best of their ability, and bumped up 3 nights and rowed over the other.  The bumps format allowed them to have 4 closely fought races with their peers in 4 days, produced exciting racing for them and the spectators, and generally encapsulated much of what I think sport should be.  I had great fun!

The fun I had with the Robinson crew made my decision easy;  The crew I raced for myself in the Town Bumps 2 years ago was starting to firm up the personnel for this year’s races and wanted to know If I was keen?  The answer is a definite yes.  Foolish I know.  Fifty somethings with dodgy backs and sundry other body parts shouldn’t be pretending to be 20 again.  Anyway I’m keen and Champion of the Thames (a Cambridge club named for a pub) has an enthusiastic recruit.  I’ll keep you posted about our progress.

[note from Editor, the London University colleges also have bumps racing although on the tidal Thames it's slightly different with people standing waist deep holding onto the chains at low tide to enable a 'fair' start!] 

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