Research

A note to our members: The Consortium is committed to bringing our members accessible research and white papers on topics that are relevant to them. Topics may include sport psychology, bio-mechanics, coaching philosophy, technology application, physiology, or other related topics. Check back periodically as we build this section out.

Video and video analysis can be powerful tools in the coaching of rowing.  As with any tool, however, you want to know how to use it before you start.  Video rarely works if you use it in a random and uncontrolled way.  The best way to use video is as a routine and systematic part of your training sessions.  That doesn’t mean you have to use it every day; it just means that when you do use it, both you and the athletes know what to expect and how to incorporate the information moving forward.  To be most effective, you can prepare yourself in four ways. 

  1. Get all of your equipment in order and have a plan.  Make sure your camera, battery, cords, hardware, and software are all in working order before you start.  Walk yourself through the steps of taking the video on the water to putting it up on the screen for your athletes, and make sure you are prepared.  Leave time for yourself to upload and preview the video prior to showing it to the athlete, and explicitly insert the time into your training plan to analyze the video with the athletes or send them the feedback
  2. Be clear about why you are taking video.  What problems are you trying to solve?  What are the goals of your video session?  Answering these questions will help you shoot the appropriate video and plan your post-workout analysis sessions.
  3. Help your athletes “see” what you want them to see and know how to make the changes.  Nothing is more overwhelming to an athlete than trying to process everything she sees on a video-taped practice session.  Unless an athlete is used to this feedback, she can be distracted by everything from her teammates on the screen to the audio to the myriad issues she sees with her own rowing.   This is where the planning ahead comes in handy.  Hopefully you have taken video of exactly what you want an athlete to see, you have previewed it, and you have specific feedback for the athlete which you provide in person or via audio components of a analyzed video.   Most importantly, have a plan for how and when you want her to practice making the suggested adjustments.
  4. Have a plan for storing video and re-visiting it.  One of the best uses of video is to show improvement, but you can’t show improvement unless you have named, stored, and categorized your video in readily retrievable ways.  Build an organized library – maybe label by athlete or by date - that will serve as a reminder to your athletes (and yourself) how much they have improved.

The following three articles have more detailed information about how to prepare to use video, the basics of utilizing video analysis, and the effectiveness of visual feedback in rowing.

The purpose of the paper (link below) by Tonya Booker, Special Projects Manager, Positive Coaching Alliance, Department of Athletics at Stanford University, discusses the Positive Coach Mental Model as it applies primarily to youth athletics, but there are certainly applications to the collegiate and elite level athlete as well. Click on the link below for more...

"In terms of athletes' ratings of how much fun they had and how much they liked playing for their coach, our results showed that a mastery climate was about 10 times more influential than was the team's won-loss record." (Read more at the link below.)