I just completed 12 weeks of rowing with the OU Corporate team ‘Row U’ which culminated in a 2 minute, 500 meter race. While I did learn a lot about rowing my first crew season, I learned even more about teamwork.<\/p>\n
The twelve weeks were spent teaching the basics of rowing. For me as a landlubber, that meant starting with terminology like what is ‘port’ and ‘starboard’, ‘bow’ and ‘stern’, and seating order in the boat.<\/p>\n
Rowing is more than just arms rowing a boat.\u00a0 \u00a0Our coach, Carolyn, helped us each learn and work on our personal rowing technique.\u00a0 \u00a0She started with the basics of ‘legs, body, arms, arms, body, legs’.<\/p>\n
Most of the season in a corporate league was spent getting everyone rowing as a team.\u00a0 That meant starting with just four people rowing while the other four held their paddles flat on the water to stabilize the boat.\u00a0 Once four were rowing well together, then the Cox would call for two more to join.\u00a0 \u00a0Learning to join in without rocking the boat is a skill unto itself.\u00a0 True in a boat or in work teams.\u00a0 \u00a0How many times have managers added help to a team but it just rocked the boat or slowed things down?\u00a0 Back in the boat, when the cox or coach is comfortable with the six rowing, then they add in the final pair.\u00a0 When all eight are rowing it is called ‘on the eights’.\u00a0 \u00a0This is critical because there is no longer anyone stabilizing the boat and it is also important for everyone to be contributing.<\/p>\n
Putting it all together as a team<\/strong><\/em> is what makes a boat go fast, which is important in a boat or in life.\u00a0 \u00a0Eight individuals rowing their hearts out can expend a lot of energy and churn up a lot of water while not moving the boat efficiently.\u00a0 When the team works together, following the ‘Stroke’ and listening to the Cox, then the boat starts working for you.\u00a0 It starts moving faster, building momentum while the crew returns to position for the next stroke.\u00a0 I’ve worked on IT teams where smart, talented people poured a lot of hours and energy into projects, but until they worked together, they were just churning water.<\/p>\n About half way through the season, the coach had our team all rowing ‘on the eight’ and learning to work on timing.\u00a0 The tendency was for our team to be rushing faster than the Stroke.\u00a0 The Stroke is the person in the 8 seat in a boat, whom everyone should be watching for timing.\u00a0 \u00a0If people are starting to row early, then the boat can get out of time or at worst get unstable. Browse our partner-sponsored Glasses<\/a>, with a variety of options to suit every taste and budget, available to buy online<\/p>\n When our team started rowing in time with each other, there were early glimpses of what it could feel like to pull as a team.\u00a0 The boat was stable.\u00a0 The boat was gliding through the water, accelerating.\u00a0 It just felt right.<\/p>\n During our team’s time trials, it started to rain, the wind came up and there was quite a chop on the water.\u00a0 We rowed our best into that headwind.\u00a0 It felt like a tempest.\u00a0 Teams will always face challenges and what matters is how they respond.\u00a0 Do they fall apart or pull together?\u00a0 \u00a0Our team faced it head on and rowed well with some trouble spots to work on.<\/p>\n When race day came at the OKC Regatta, we reviewed the race plan with the coach, listened to our cox and rowed great in the first heat.\u00a0 We had our fasted time of the season, beating other boats by four seconds.\u00a0 We did not row frantically or out of sync.<\/p>\n When it came to the finals, we still rowed a good race at the start and middle section, but we fell apart as a group during the last 90 meters.\u00a0 The race ended in a dead heat with three boats neck and neck for the final separated by only one second.\u00a0 Our team placed third, taking bronze, but still proud of how well we came together as a team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While I did learn a lot about rowing my first crew season, I learned even more about teamwork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized","tag-teamwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}