Reflective Essay On Rowing

I know from first-hand experience that athletes can become bored, tired, and all out frustrated when training for long periods of time. In the sport of rowing, it is year-round training, which can become quite overwhelming and long. While the fall and spring are the two seasons of racing, the summer and winter seasons are when the rowers are putting in the meters perfecting their technique and stroke, to ensure that they are at their best come racing season. The winter season is the most grueling season of all to a rower; it is the time of the year when you have to sit on an erg, (an indoor rowing machine), look at a wall with a clock staring back at you, and row for meters on end while you just go back and forth on the machine. This can become the hardest thing to do as a rower. Often times, the rowers will acquire this mindset that they would rather do anything else than erg. As a coach, it is my responsibility to keep the rowers motivated and excited to keep coming to practice at 5:00 a.m. to continue with their winter training.
When thinking of winter training, one key aspect that I would focus on the most would be progress. At the beginning of winter training, I would give all my rowers a folder that would consist of pages that is a blank calendar of sorts. Each day they have space to write in the workout that we did, their average split (how long it takes them to row 500 meters), the overall time, and the average wattage (pure power) that they pulled, and any other