Fixing a mistake
I've been working on spring lineups for the last three weeks, putting athletes together and checking out how each has been performing at practice. These lineups aren't set in stone and I expect them all to change drastically as the season progresses but I'm using them as the proverbial carrot to help spur the guys on during our last real push through winter.
I have one athlete who has been resting on his backside, relying on his elevated status in the fall - best times on the erg, fastest guy on the runs, etc - and hasn't really been pushing himself during the winter practices. It's something that I've brought up time and again with him showing him his results and how his times for nearly four months ago are uncomfortably similar to the times he is currently pulling. Unfortunately it hasn't made a single impression on him. Until yesterday. Yesterday during our workout I counted the number of reps he was doing on specific weights and compared his numbers to the number of reps put out by two guys who had started winter well behind him.
I had predicted that they would beat him but I hadn't figured that the margins would be so glaring. In one test alone he did 23 reps over two minutes while one of his counterparts did 42 straight and 68 total in the same two minutes.
Because of the disparity between the numbers I began flipping through my attendance sheets and then went back through the notebook I've been keeping tallying reps, the daily workouts, etc and I found a massive amount of information that told me why the athlete was struggling and told me that I shouldn't have been all that surprised.
The long intro aside, I cannot believe that I barely recorded practices from previous years. I took notes but looking at them, they are vague, lacking times or information that would be useful for future seasons. Some are sloppy and some don't have anything other than the date and who was in what boat. Comparing those older notebooks to this year, it's hard to believe that I've just now come to the realization of how incredibly valuable all this information has been and how thankful I am that this year I decided to re-dedicate myself to keeping good records.
The plan was for me to simply record winter practices but now I think that I'm going to buy a second book and begin to record more detailed notes about spring practices as well. Going back to last year I have actually kept good records regarding on the water practices with lineups, weather and conditions, pieces that worked and didn't plus reasons why I don't think they worked, etc. But again they aren't fully detailed.
All this goes to show me that once again it is one thing to stress the smaller details and it's another to do them all together. I scrutinize my guys on how they hold their handles, where their hands are during the stroke and recovery, foot stretchers and even check how they've bandaged their hands and what sort of socks they're using. And yet despite this I've let my own growth slide.
This year's notebook is full of thoughts and laments on missed practices, practices that didn't go well, practices that simply didn't happen and so on. But despite all of that, I've never been happier with a notebook and what it's come to mean.
I have one athlete who has been resting on his backside, relying on his elevated status in the fall - best times on the erg, fastest guy on the runs, etc - and hasn't really been pushing himself during the winter practices. It's something that I've brought up time and again with him showing him his results and how his times for nearly four months ago are uncomfortably similar to the times he is currently pulling. Unfortunately it hasn't made a single impression on him. Until yesterday. Yesterday during our workout I counted the number of reps he was doing on specific weights and compared his numbers to the number of reps put out by two guys who had started winter well behind him.
I had predicted that they would beat him but I hadn't figured that the margins would be so glaring. In one test alone he did 23 reps over two minutes while one of his counterparts did 42 straight and 68 total in the same two minutes.
Because of the disparity between the numbers I began flipping through my attendance sheets and then went back through the notebook I've been keeping tallying reps, the daily workouts, etc and I found a massive amount of information that told me why the athlete was struggling and told me that I shouldn't have been all that surprised.
The long intro aside, I cannot believe that I barely recorded practices from previous years. I took notes but looking at them, they are vague, lacking times or information that would be useful for future seasons. Some are sloppy and some don't have anything other than the date and who was in what boat. Comparing those older notebooks to this year, it's hard to believe that I've just now come to the realization of how incredibly valuable all this information has been and how thankful I am that this year I decided to re-dedicate myself to keeping good records.
The plan was for me to simply record winter practices but now I think that I'm going to buy a second book and begin to record more detailed notes about spring practices as well. Going back to last year I have actually kept good records regarding on the water practices with lineups, weather and conditions, pieces that worked and didn't plus reasons why I don't think they worked, etc. But again they aren't fully detailed.
All this goes to show me that once again it is one thing to stress the smaller details and it's another to do them all together. I scrutinize my guys on how they hold their handles, where their hands are during the stroke and recovery, foot stretchers and even check how they've bandaged their hands and what sort of socks they're using. And yet despite this I've let my own growth slide.
This year's notebook is full of thoughts and laments on missed practices, practices that didn't go well, practices that simply didn't happen and so on. But despite all of that, I've never been happier with a notebook and what it's come to mean.
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