Our friend Bruce Grainger is speaking at the GB Junior Coaching Conference on September 24/25th in Slough, Berkshire, and kindly asked Rowperfect for recommendations of products and resources to feed to the hungry minds of Junior Coaches.

First off, useful products

• A cheap rating watch the OarRATER
• The Coxmate cox box with GPS Speed measurement and its software.  [All the Coxmate products are cheaper than NK and fit the NK wiring looms!]
• .  Advice for coaching-the-coach.  Nobody teaches / educates / supports the coach, it’s a lonely job!  Rowperfect is shortly to start an advice service where coaches can email us (Raf Wyatt and Duncan Holland) and ask questions to help them get better at coaching for a small fee.
• Rowperfect 3 – This is the best tool that isn’t a boat for teaching people how to move correctly through the rowing stroke.

Coaching resources on the Rowperfect website:

• The Articles page has Australian Ivan Hooper’s advice to coaches on injury prevention on rowing machines; The Rowperfect Challenge is also excellent and “A Guide to Coaches on using RP” written by Casper Rekers and “Rowperfect Coaching Drills”.
• Rowperfect shop has some e-books (some free others paid for) with great advice.  There’s Walter Martindale’s Ergometer Testing for RowersCoaching Communications by John Parker about how to communicate and its companion, Sporting Parent Communications.  Reading Rowing Club coach, Jim Flood has written Balance and Coaching achieving the best results possible which is a favourite of mine; Duncan Holland’s Seat Racing Slides and Martin McElroy on Athlete Testing Protocolsare good for top-end crews.  Rosie Mayglothling’s slides on British Rowing Technique are great.  And if they have lightweights there’s a slightly US-oriented tome about How to Get Fast, Fastwritten by a former US college athlete on how he got fitter and stronger to achieve a 6:20 erg score.
• Plus there are books (physical not electronic) including a lot of ones about how to Cox, such as The Down and Dirty Guide to Coxing and the Good Coxswain Guide booklets.
• Also see the DVDs section for video resources.  Including specific advice on rowing, sculling and coaching.
• Sign them up to the Rowperfect weekly newsletter where each Wednesday we send out a selection of articles.  We try to include one on coaching every week.  We did a 4 part series a month ago called “How to Video your crew” and in the past I wrote a “How to run a learn to scull course” as well.  Currently there’s a series coming up on blisters and how to manage them (which includes sections on grip i.e. preventing blisters as well as treatment and washing hands / oar handles to prevent infections).
• And lastly, Carlos Dinares has a website FULL of information on how to coach rowing and sculling successfully blog posts which are good for instructions on Rowperfect’s new RP3 compared to the Dynamic C2 and how to coach.
• Try this one: Coached on Lake Samish with Carlos Dinares
• And this one: 5 tips on how to teach rowing