so we just got back from jess's fourth session on the water and i thought it would be useful for her
to give me some honest feedback about uh exactly you know what i could do better what i did well
as a coach so i was coaching from the bow seat of this double and so we just went out and
yeah so what do you think um i think the positives were usually only giving me something to focus on
one thing at a time and then giving me positive reinforcement on the strokes that i did well doing
that um the things that i probably didn't like were uh when i was like starting to get into a
bit of a pattern and getting things done uh you would just out of the blue say a comment and that
would throw me off quite a lot and then i would do something terrible and then get frustrated and
yeah it's probably that temptation to once you've got something right or you're going well to
give you something else so it's probably best to resist that for at least you know 10 or 20 strokes
oh wait wait for like a natural break or when the athlete needs to have a rest and be like okay
during that little section you did this really well now for the next section let's focus on this
rather than necessarily interrupting them i think it's just important when you're a beginner because
you've got so many things going through your mind at once and for me i'm finding
getting the technique of the stroke down is quite mentally fatiguing and so i'm thinking
quite hard and then i get this intruding voice behind me say something and then all of a sudden
the whole pattern just explodes and it doesn't work very well for me i guess um yeah i think
it it was good getting you to join in rowing a bit but it shows you where you are not doing
very well i guess um obviously not a bit quicker yeah not not being able to um time the catch well
with you because my catch is essentially bad or slow or you know not quite right and for me the
hardest part of the stroke is getting that catch right the you know coming down the slide is fine
it's just you know squaring those blades up not over squaring them and getting them in the water
that part for me is the the hardest to kind of get down and where i'm most mentally fatigued
and then once the blades are in the water the the push and the finish all of that is fine it's
just the getting the blades in the water that i really struggle with and you found that your
bowel side was a lot more problematic than your stroke side so it was pretty much every time we
you know you missed the water or caught a crab or something it was on the bow side not the stroke
side it's like you could almost forget about the stroke side i just seem to be doing it naturally
mentally i definitely was forgetting about the stroke side i am right-handed and so i think that
naturally that side of my body is picking up the movement quite a bit quicker than the bow side and
so one of the useful things you got me to do was to actually focus on that left hand that bow side
and actually watch that bow side as i was getting the blade in the water as i was feathering it
doing the catch and that helped quite a lot as you pointed out i was missing quite a lot less strokes
once i was actually looking at that bow and even though i was looking at the bow the stroke side
still seemed to be doing what it was supposed to be doing so um yeah clearly that's something that
i as i'm learning i just need to keep focusing on that bow side yeah at one point you said when
we were we were rowing both together you've much preferred rowing uh by yourself in a double but
uh the combined weight my weight compared with the boat would mean that you're rowing the equivalent
of an eight so there's a lot more resistance but you said it was a lot more pleasant to
to row with i actually i naturally find found find it easier to row with the extra weight and
i guess it's getting me to feel that connection so that when i have the extra weight on i can
actually tell when i get the catch right and when i perform the stroke right i guess without
the weight or when you joined in rowing i couldn't tell whether i was doing a good job because a lot
of the weight was getting taken up by you i guess essentially so i actually did find it a lot easier
to row with that that weight there which probably isn't something that you want to do long term but
um yeah i find it helpful yeah you found it much easier to concentrate on your stroke when your
boat was moving a bit slower there was a lot more weight in the handles and it it helped me feel
the kind of hanging off the oars once the blades were in so not going too early with the arms it
it it made me have to engage my core more to keep my back like straight or flat not you know hunched
over that the weight reminds you of that because if you don't do it you can feel you're not doing
it so yeah the weight for me is actually helpful in kind of getting that stroke down right i think
there's a couple of strokes too where you're like oh what happened there and you sort of got really
heavy all of a sudden but i think you just got connected well so like yeah you know you're
actually taking a well-connected stroke as opposed to one where your blades weren't quite hooked on
properly to start with yeah definitely definitely the yeah the boat picks up speed and yeah
it does feel heavy especially when you're rowing by yourself when you get it when you get it right
which is not something i expected i expected that the better i got the lighter the boat was going
to feel but it was quite the opposite there was a lot more grab for me to push with my legs and you
know i feel like you're actually doing some work yeah yeah this is the first time we've gone out in
the boat and i actually started to you know feel my heart rate go up start to feel a bit fatigued
but starting to get sore and stiff so i i knew to some extent that i was actually rowing not just
going through the movement patterns but actually putting a little bit of power into the stroke yeah