The presenters at the Fifth Annual Coaches Conference at Hobart-William Smith College introduced some new concepts for coaches to think about. According to Rudy Weiler, a thirty year veteran of Canadian coaching, aerobic work isn’t everything, it’s the only thing — well almost. Weiler discourages ergometer competitions in the middle of winter, “Postpone that first competition as long as possible.” Furthermore, one or two “level 6” workouts (100% effort) are all that are necessary in a season, “Save racing for races”. Ed McNeeley, strength-coach consultant to the Canadian National Rowing Team since 1992, asserted that there is no data to support the idea that taking a muscle to failure provides an advantage. Moreover, the brain needs 5000 correct repetitions (uninterrupted by an incorrect movement) to learn a weight lifting skill. That’s four years given a normal training regimen. One avoids lower back injury, not by keeping the abdominal muscles strong, although that helps, but by keeping the hip flexors stretched and the gluts strong.

Some of the suggestions at the conference were comfortable reminders rather than new concepts: Have confidence in your system. Learn tension regulation. Develop self-confidence. Develop self-esteem. Treat athletes as individuals, and motivate them. Nurture and develop sportsmanship.  “Use positive self-talk ... you tell your brain a lie often enough it becomes the truth”; “If you can think it, you can do it ... see yourself as a winner and convince yourself that you can make it.” Several presenters spoke specifically about imagery. Ted Nash said, “Create an image of a goal using videotapes over and over. Show the ideal stroke — a never ending series of visuals so clear that they [the athletes] can’t lose sight of it.”

What can the sports counselor add to the wisdom of these coaches? Consider the advice to show athletes images of expert rowing. The sport counselor can help coaches insure that the athletes remember those images. Not just remember them in their minds, but where it counts - in their nerves and muscles, and in the boat. The sport counselor can teach coaches about visual/kinesthetic (k/v) synesthesia, the process by which the brain transforms visual images into feelings. In the case of learning the correct stroke, the athlete transforms the image of the correct rowing stroke into the feelings in the muscles that accompany the movement for the correct stroke. With practice, the theory goes, a pattern of neuromuscular firing that ultimately coordinates the correct movement of the body will develop.

To put this theory into practice, coaches can tell their athletes that as they watch a video tape of an expert rower, “... mentally 'float into' the image. Feel in your muscles how you imagine it would feel to do the movement of the expert.” It might help if after the athletes watch the video, the coach takes a moment to ask the athletes to relax with a few deep breaths, close their eyes, repeat the exercise, this time making a mental image of the expert rower. Sometimes, athletes first experience a new image as a thought or a concept and they don't "see" the image that they are making. They expect their mental image of the expert rower to be bright and clear and realistic like the images that they have in their dreams. When this happens. Athletes will say that they can’t do the exercise; it isn't working, etc. Coaches should be patient and reassure athletes that their visualization skills will improve with practice, especially if they concentrate on the instructions. Gradually, by repeating the visualization exercise in successive video-viewing sessions, they may eventually become aware of the image, and the feelings that the images generate in their body. The mental exercise may take extra time, but it will pay off. Athletes will learn skills more quickly. Eventually, they will have to spend less time in front of the video and less time practicing on-water drills to improve skills.

Coaches can also use the “get-it” process which I described, The Get-it Process, on this web site. After looking at the expert on the video, athletes relax and the coach gives the following instructions:

1. Make a mental image of the expert rower.
2. Make an image of yourself rowing.
3. Put the two images side by side.
4. Compare the images looking for one difference.
5. After one difference is found, float inside the image of the expert paying particular attention to how it feels to correct that difference.

This process can be repeated many times - each time the athlete finds something new to correct. If the athletes tell the coach which corrections they are trying to make, the coach can help them make the correction. Eventually, the athletes feel that their whole stoke is matching the expert.