World rowing coaches conference.

Last weekends world rowing coaches conference had many great speakers over the two days. One of my favourite speakers was one of the Danish light weight coaches. He talked about many topics that I found interesting, some of which I will now out line below.

Common goals

A very important of life is goal setting. Without goals in life we would just wander around aimlessly. In the lead up to the Olympic games the light weight coxed four got together with their coach and all wrote on individual pieces of paper what they wanted to get out of the Olympics.

Was their goal winning the gold, getting a medal or just qualifying for the final? Once they had analysed all the pieces of paper they realized that everyone had different goals including the coach. They then opened up a discussion on the subject and came to agreeing upon a common goal.

I believe that having a common goal is vital. There is no point saying your goal is to medal at the Olympics if you've never made an a final at world championship level. Its much better to have a realistic goal to head towards.

The coaches enabling the rowers

As coaches our jobs are to work with the rowers to achieve a common goal. Some times I find that coaches are trying to use their athletes to achieve their own personal goals without finding out if the athletes are fully on board and willing to reach for the same targets.

There is nothing wrong with having different goals but the goals must be known by everyone so there is no confusion when, for example, some one does not win a race and their coach or team mates ask why they didn't try harder. As it might have been their goal to come in the top three.

Smart training

The danish athletes seem to train less than athletes(in total hours) in some of the other systems such as GB or GER. I believe this is because they have found a way of pushing their athletes in such a way that they do more intensive workouts which results in more time needed between workouts for recovery and less time needed for steady state.

 A thing to also take into account is that the danish hold onto their top level rowers for many years at a time as they don't have that many of then to begin with. As time goes on and technique is perfected all that is needed to work upon is the aerobic, anaerobic, strength, and flexibility side of things.

Instead of calculating the difficulty of weeks using total hours or kilometers rowed. They use a points system in which the higher the intensity of a workout the more points it is given, using this method they can calculate the amount of stress that's being placed on their athletes and make sure they are not being over trained or get injured and that they are getting enough recovery, which in turn leads to improvement.

Passing on of experience

As Denmark doesn't have that large a rowing population to draw its crews from it tries to keep them in the system as long as possible, to do that they encourage their athletes to study and get jobs. According to their coach, almost everyone on the danish team has a job or is in third level education. As the athletes have other focuses and therefore stay on longer, they can pass on their knowledge and experience to the younger athletes coming into the system.

Although, at times, this can be testing for the older more experienced athletes who have to put up with more immature and less proficient rowers, in the end it provides a good mix of experience and ensures that the experiences of the older athletes are passed on, which in turn make the team stronger as experience always plays a part in rowing.