.jpg)
Rowing hurts... it blisters your hands, chews at your calves, fills your muscles with lactic until they burn and go numb, deprives you of sleep, puts you at the mercy of seemingly sadistic coaches in the heat, cold and wet... it disappoints and disheartens, defeating you so much sometimes and kicking you when you're down so hard that you don't want to get up even if you could...Why do we do this to ourselves? Do we like being sore and tired all the time?What's in it for us? The rewards are fleeting... so distant and uncertain that is it ever really worth it?
I've noticed that a few of the girls are asking these very questions and not finding any answers. We know that we're faster, fitter and more technically efficient than we all were at camp, but without some guide or measure as to how we are really performing relative to the competition, it's difficult to keep focused on what we're trying to achieve.
The girls need to understand that this season is a journey... taken one step at a time. We need to concentrate on what's happening now and stop worrying about where we will be next week or next month or next regatta or next year. Each session needs to be broken down stroke by stroke, making sure that every movement and every sequence is as perfect as they can make them at that moment. If things go wrong, a missed catch or an out of synch leg-drive, they need to learn from it and move on, making sure that the next one is better. If we carry on like this, everything will start coming together and the girls will start finding answers to some of the questions they've been asking themselves.
Sure, rowing hurts. But it hurts even more when you know you could've done better and didn't. Training's been tough over the past few weeks since camp. The girls are tired and I'm even feeling the early mornings and long sessions a bit. But if we get to SA Champs and lose by a bow-ball, what would we give to have trained that little bit harder or longer - just to be that split-second faster?
1 comment:
When I first started rowing it was a breeze, the deciding factor of who won those u14 races was simply the crew who caught the least crabs. As time progressed things obviously started to get more serious, we had to learn how to push ourselves. We had to train ourselves to be better than the opposition in every way possible to us which in most cases comes down to what is in our heads. Learning these skills is never ending. Through this process i learnt something very important about myself, i am a dreamer and those dreams are what inspire me. I will often sit and picture how i would like situations to be, i dream about that moment walking off the winners jetty with the 1st quad on my shoulder. Who knows if it will happen? But i know that because of that dream the pain doesn't seem so bad. I have learnt to love the pain of training, the more it hurts the better i feel about it because i know that its one step closer to that dream. Knowing that you couldn't have pushed any harder is an accomplishment in itself because regret is the worst way to lose. I came into this season with a saying in my head - "Dreamers never lose, and losers never dream"
Post a Comment