Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Crew Selection - Seat Racing

Crew Selection
Author: Kris Korzeniowski (USA)
FISA Be A Coach Level 3
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Introduction

The FISA CDP courses in Levels I and II attempted to provide a coaching educational package of useful information presented in a simple and practical way. One of the concepts emphasized has been that information obtained from using expensive and complicated equipment, although perhaps helpful at times, is not necessary to produce and select world class rowers.

Further, many coaches unfortunately lack not only information from scientific testing but also information about the performance capabilities of their athletes either individually or in specific combinations. Although the coach may have knowledge about the athletes' past performances, the coach may not have information about their present capabilities. This fact may be due either to the absence of sufficient or any competitions, or to a short period during which the coach must select the athletes.

This may apply to either a club coach or national coach selecting a few months or even a few weeks before a championship. This situation is especially challenging for the coach during the process of selecting a crew. To alleviate these difficulties, a simple and objective selection system was devised and has been used quite successfully in the United States.

This selection system is termed seat racing.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Willing to Win

Willing to Win

Author: Willi Railo (NOR)
From FISA Coach Handbook Level 3
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1.0 Introduction

People usually look on the psychological side of sport as being something abstract and therefore difficult to understand. That is the main reason why they find it hard to do something practical and effective to improve their attitudes to sport. The psychological side of sport is often left to chance. You could draw a parallel between psychological and the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything! Understanding comes before improvement. We first try to understand what the problem is and give it a name, and then we go on to consider how the problem might be remedied.