Misconceptions and Self Deceptions Part I - Small Boats

Tell me if you've heard this one:

"I'm not that great in singles and pairs, but I'm much better in big boats."

Or this one:

"I'm not very fast in the single, so I think I'll find a partner for the double and we'll really make some noise at the (insert championship regatta name here)"  

By all means, if you enjoy rowing in the bigger team boats, you should take advantage of opportunities to do that.  The greatness of team boats is apparent to all who have experienced them.  Their virtues are numerous - cooperation, accountability to something larger than oneself, shared experience of victory (or just exhilaration) and so on.  Doubles are sublime.  Victorious eights are thrilling in a way that no other boat class can quite match.  Quads and fours are fantastic.  That being said, if you cannot row singles and pairs, you are not contributing optimally to the bigger boats you're in.  The assumptions inherent in the two statements above amount to little more than common means of self-deception and guarantors of continued performance that is less than what you and your crew could be capable of.


The place where rowers and scullers get themselves into trouble is by engaging in the wishful thinking that it is possible to select or create a fast team boat full of people who row small boats poorly.

Scratch any world-class double and you'll find that it contains two world-class single scullers or something very close to that.  You're just not going to find championship doubles composed of two athletes with big ergs who can't row singles well.  Same for quads: in any quad race, bet on the boat that has the four best single scullers in it. Take apart any really fast eight and you'll find that the four component pairs are also pretty slick rowing the 2-.  If you think that you and your doubles partner can be competitive with a double composed of two scullers who can defeat each of you by 10 seconds over 2k in singles, I'll cover all bets against that outcome.  None of this is to say that if you are reasonably certain that you are not fast enough to win singles trials, you shouldn't take your shot in the 2X or 4X.  It IS to say that you shouldn't be avoiding singles trials because you think you're "better" in the 2X (news flash - if you aren't fast enough to make the A/B semifinals in the single, you're not going to be in a double that wins trials), and it is also to say that the best path to optimizing your value to team boats at any level involves increasing your mastery of the single and/or the pair rather than continuing to row the vast majority of your kilometers in the bigger boats that mask your shortcomings.  No one is better in the big boats. They're just better hidden. 

Queens of Turd Mountain

n.b. the phrase is not mine.  I first heard it from Wes Ng at his 2016 Joy of Sculling presentation, and whether or not it's original with him, I thank him for introducing it to my lexicon and for giving me something to think about over the past few weeks and to write about this morning. 

Too many coaches take it as a given that intra-squad competition is always and inevitably a good thing.  Like many oversimplifications, this is true unless it isn't.  More accurately, it's true if certain usually-unmentioned conditions are met.  And it is certainly a counterproductive falsehood when you allow it to make you the Queen of Turd Mountain.

The concept doesn't require a great deal of illustration, and once grasped, should not be easily forgotten.  Put simply, intrasquad competition works best when and only when the people who are not winning are truly emptying the tanks and making those who are winning give their best effort.  A quote-unquote "victory" over an opponent who is content to make the competition look good to someone watching from the bank while racing well within current capabilities is pretty close to meaningless.  Imagine a high school track team with five guys who can all run the mile in around 4:50.  In training, there's one of the five who usually wins short intervals, another guy who usually wins longer intervals, and a third guy who almost always sets the pace for long runs.  The other two guys always finish in the middle, with an occasional but infrequent surprise.  And they go through the motions of beating one another up a bit in all workouts, but they all keep running in the 4:50's and the guy who almost always wins keeps almost always winning - except when they go out of town and face the five guys from other schools who can run 4:42.  If the goal is to run faster than anyone else in the state or even just to keep improving, those five guys need to stop being the Queens of Turd Mountain and shake up their pecking order.  They are not doing each other any favors by training in a way that they content themselves with feeling comfortable being fast relative to one another.  They need to get back to earning their status daily and going faster than they've ever gone before.  

A few years ago, we had a sculler in the Craftsbury SBTC program who habitually seemed to find a way to break loose from the field during pieces and just walk away.  When she had to empty the tanks to win a piece by half a deck, she did.  More importantly, when she got a length up halfway through a piece, she kept her foot on the gas and expanded her lead.  The situation didn't seem to matter - she always and inevitably put everything on the table, and it was a ton of fun to watch.  I remember one representative workout when she was crushing it as usual.  I looked over at Larry Gluckman,  knowing that we were both thinking more or less the same thing.  "She wants to make a statement," was Larry's terse summation.  She was the very antithesis of the Queen of Turd Mountain: the athlete who says "Okay, if you guys aren't coming, I'm going ahead without you, because the point of this exercise isn't just finishing in the lead - it's to make the boat go as fast as I possibly can, right now, and every time I get the opportunity."  And if you're fortunate enough or skillful enough as a motivator and creator of team culture to have more than one or two people in your program who are looking to make a statement, being the Queens of Turd Mountain won't be an issue and intrasquad competition will serve its intended purpose - the creation of fast boats rather than more grist for the manure pile.