Review: USRowing’s Coaching Videos

Pat wrote to ask this question:

“Mike, Do you know of a book that holds all of the skills and drills necessary for coaching?”

Pat desires to get better at rowing drills (which is great) but he may be asking a little too much—I don’t know of any resource that holds ALL the drills. Each resource is biased by whoever produces it and he or she will usually include only their favorite ones.

So although I don’t know of a definitive resource there are certainly several good resources available.

At the most recent USRowing Convention in Atlantic City I purchased the entire set of DVDs offered by USRowing. (In the flavor of disclaimer I had nothing to do with the production of these videos although I do work with USRowing, and I don’t receive any affiliate fees from them). This is one resource that I recommended to Pat and thought you might like to know about them also.

There are several titles in the series, here are a few of my favorites:

• Coached Drills
• Sculling Fundamentals
• Introduction to Rigging
• Coached Drills II
• Trailering I
• Safety DVD 2007
• Sweep Technique, The Art of Moving the Boat
• Coached Drills III, Starts & Sprints

(The titles are self explanatory.)

The Good Stuff

There are three great things about these disks.

1. They hold some stellar information, and most use several current coaches to discuss and show how their drills work.
2. The director, Willie Black, puts his heart and soul into these.
3. Most cost only . . . drum roll please . . . $20.00 each.

I found the info in these disks to be simply presented, with discussion and presentation of the drills in action. The Coached Drills disk was especially helpful and I saw a few drills that were new to me. A good teaching component of the drill disks is to show athletes the drill on the disk first, before they attempt it, to help them learn it correctly.

What Could Be Better

Most of these disks are CDs not DVDs, so they hold less information than you would normally get with a regular DVD.  That means you won’t see a lot of flash and fancy effects yet the message is still there. I would have also liked more detail in some drills, possibly more in-depth discussion.

Overall

I’ve found these DVDs a great resource and highly recommend them to beginner to intermediate coaches/coxswain/rowers. My money was well spent.

So What Action Should You Take?

Do an assessment of your rowing or coaching, in terms of an area that you would like to improve. Then check the list of USRowing DVDs and see if there is one that might help.

Additionally, if you have a resource of drills please leave a comment and share it with us.