Spring Training and SIRA's

[Adam William Swetlik]

Team,

I just wanted to go over what I saw during spring break and what you should plan on in the weeks leading up to SIRA's. Yes this is another big email but it's all stuff you need to know.

First off I was really pleased with the relative smoothness of spring training in general.  Nobody made any bad decisions and I heard relatively little complaining about the training, which is less than I have heard about the women's team.  I appreciate your listening to directions and keeping up with the intensive training.

The best part about spring break for coaches is this is our opportunity to really see what the team mentality, strengths and weaknesses are.  I'll tell you what I saw and please feel free to tell me if I'm way off anywhere.

Obviously this is a very young team.  We have two 4-year rowers, two 2-year rowers and 16 novices, several of which just started rowing on the water for the first time.  Also two novice coxswains. (I didn't forget Roman but he's kind of far away).  That's the fewest varsity and youngest team we've had since my freshman year.  With this comes several challenges but even more opportunities.

Challenges:  Depth is about our biggest hurdle for the varsity side of things.  As you guys know it will be novice guys 9-12 filling out the varsity 8 for potentially several races.  This is tough because varsity has high expectations and memory of being part of faster crews.  It's really frustrating being in that position, especially when you've been here 4 years.  While I wish this had turned out differently I'm still not upset about finding who was truly dedicated to the team's long term philosophy of hard work and winning races.  Doing that is insanely challenges and requires many large classes of guys who want to be around and work hard. 

My expectation for the varsity in this boat is to impart as much knowledge as you can on the novices in a constructive manner. That does not mean coddling, but there must be understanding that learning takes some time.  The novices in this boat need to hold themselves to a varsity level of expectation.  Not only is that necessary to do well this year, but also this will greatly help you make the top novice boat and better prepare you for the challenges of being a first-year varsity next year.  The only success you can expect this spring will be from working together as a cohesive boat.  Otherwise you may end up with a 2011 spring season of lackluster rowing (Tyler and Sam know what I mean firsthand and can tell you in detail).

On the novice side of things a lack of a faster and larger varsity group does not give you something to look at as a beacon of expectation.  I think very highly of our varsity guys, but when you can't see a full varsity 8 do a race start or get crushed a few times a week on pieces you can't learn what you need to do as quickly.  This means you have to spend more time watching video of fast crews, and make changes we ask of you more quickly in the boat.  You also have to be in race mode every day even when you won't have a faster challenger.  The clock must become your opponent on some occasions.  If you resign to beating a slower crew and don't improve every day you'll get blown away come race time. 

Opportunities: We have a strong class of novices, no doubt. You guys still have potential to be a grand level crew this spring.  However the only thing that builds fast crews is retention.  If you don't love rowing I'd never expect you to stay.  But if you do make the commitment to yourself to stay the whole time.  My class did that and graduated 12 guys together.  We never had the speed to be champions, but we never did worse than petites either.  Had we been as good at recruiting as the last couple years and kept 8 guys every year we'd have been top level.  Again, all of this starts with this class.  If Peter, Henk, Roman and Ian all return, plus 8 novices or more, you'd have a decent foundation to build on.  12 guys, just like my class, puts in in another level of speed. And as I said, this team is yours to make whatever you want of it.  Coaches and alumni don't row every day, you guys do.  You have the say in what happens competitively.

What you need to do: Between both boats I expect to see constructive improvement in racing.  You can use whatever feelings you want to beat your teammates on the water. Get it all out there. At the end of the day we're all here for the same purpose.  Don't forget it.  Last year's team developed animosity within itself that spilled into day to day off the water nonsense. That helped lead to to such a small varsity group this year and left a sour taste in several mouths.  If I see any of that happening I'm out the door that day.

The biggest improvement I need to see happen now is truly spending yourselves.  I saw both good efforts and bad efforts this past week, but no great efforts.  A great effort is when you can't manage to breath when you cross the line.  When you don't remember the race.  When before the first 1000 is over you don't know if you'll make it to the end.  I need to see you spend, daily.  Steady state, AT or anything in between, you should be tired after piece 1. Your legs should burn after the warmup.

As far as training you should be erging at minimum one extra hour of steady state a week.  Also I would add in two days of weight lifting your major rowing muscle groups (legs, back, core) and stretching constantly. This is not tough if you manage time well, and will make all the difference come race time.  It also wouldn't hurt to sleep more and eat healthier. 

For SIRA's we officially only have the ability to race 2 8's as Connor will not be traveling with us.  unless you can dig up another rower soon, 3 guys will have to sit.  Even if you do find one who has the erg score necessary we need another coxswain to race a third boat.  That means space is very limited in the Varsity 8, so if you're a bubble guy you need to step up now to make the boat. 

Finally just a reminder of how short the rest of the season is.  We have 7 weeks, with 4 races and a home race during those weeks.  If you want to make the best of those races, your training needs to be on your mind all the time. 

Feel free to email with any questions or thoughts. I'll have video up this evening in the Facebook group.

Adam Swetlik

Men's Head Coach
Colorado Crew