Intermediate class

I'm coaching an intermediate class for the club right now. I have five students from my beginner's classes. It's nice to work with them again and see how far they have advanced. I have a couple students who are still struggling with some basic technique. It's hard to know how to approach correcting their technique. Yesterday I tried having just the two of them row for a little bit so I could focus on them and they wouldn't have to keep up with the rest of the boat. It didn't go so well because I didn't have a megaphone so I was trying to stay close to the shell, but then I kept running into the oars. I was getting really frustrated and I had to keep turning the launch around to get away from the shell and then I would get too close again and have to turn around. So basically I didn't get to coach them because of all the trouble with the launch. Maybe I can try to do some focused coaching of them next time when I have a working megaphone and can talk to them easier.

I have been trying to focus on one thing each practice and I think it is working pretty well. One practice we focused on handle height. One we worked on timing. This last one we were working on feather and squaring and rolling up early. I like to do a drill where they feather at the release and then immediately square their blades. That way they are on the square for almost the whole recovery but they still get to feather and roll up and it reinforces an early roll up. Some of them don't actually roll up right away, they roll up closer to the place where I want them to roll up normally. When we were working on handle height I did a drill where they row on the square for five or seven strokes and then row with the feather for five or seven strokes, switching back and forth a few times. The idea is to carry the hands at the same level through both sets. There are so many little pieces it's hard to know which ones to pick.

One thing that continues to be a challenge is getting the people sitting out to properly set the boat. I try to keep on them and remind them to raise or lower their hands if need be. Maybe I should do the drill where they alternate raising and lowering their handles in sync with their side. That might give them a little more awareness of the set and key them into how to correct it. I'd like to do more rowing all eight in the next few practices. Yesterday was our fourth class and it was the first time this group has rowed all eight. Granted the water has been really bad with all the motor boats, and one day we had bad wind.

The motorboats have really made it challenging. We are constantly plagued by wakes and having to stop frequently. I try to have them row through the smaller wakes. Yesterday, though, we were waked from both sides at the same time. Two pretty big motor boats, one on each side of us, started up at the same time and the wakes just crashed right over the gunwales.