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Purchase 3 control units (any mix between SpeedCoach Gold, XL, CoxBox or CoxVox) and get 1 Gear Bag for free!

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Using the SpeedCoach with Novice Rowers

Guest Columnist Bethia Woolf, Novice Coach, Ohio State University

I find the speed coach very useful to use with novice rowers. Let's face it, rowing can be a bit boring for athletes who come from other sports like basketball and volleyball. Steady state rowing once they get past the initial learning stage is extremely repetitive. Using a speed coach gives athletes another level of stats, which can be useful in those longer steady state practices. It provides the coxswains with another tool for feedback. Additionally it allows them to see whether their calls are effective and whether the rowers are responding to what they or the coach is saying. Knowing that a particular technical call made you go a split or two faster benefits everyone. The SpeedCoach also helps to keep the rowers honest in terms of their intensity, in the same way that the numbers on the erg screen do. It therefore helps to build consistency and gives them a more objective level of feedback, than just “how it feels”. That objective feedback 'the numbers don't lie' can change the dynamic between the rowers and the coach or coxswain. Telling a crew that the speed has dropped is different when the data is available.

The main benefit I find though is preparing for the racing season. The SpeedCoach definitely helps us to learn about pacing and to break the race down into its 500m quarters. At some point every rower needs to understand that it isn't about winning the race at the first 500m mark, but about the most efficient way to be ahead at the finish line. The SpeedCoach can help you to develop and stick to your race plan as well as analyzing how effective it is or how well you executed it.

The most important use of the SpeedCoach as a learning tool for me is teaching starts and sprints. Crews working on a racing start can really get overly focused on the stroke rating and you often hear the rowers (and coaches) asking at the end of a practice start 'what rate did you hit?'. This obviously misses the point. What we are looking for in a start is to get off the line as fast as possible and then to smoothly transition to our race speed and cadence out in front of the pack. This is where a SpeedCoach is invaluable, compared to a rate meter. With the SpeedCoach you can focus on boat speed and not just stroke rating, so the question can be 'how fast did you go on that one?' (or with an XL, you don't even need to ask!) This allows you to demonstrate that stroke rating does not necessarily equate to speed and that an inefficient, overly high stroke rating may just be wheel spinning. It really helps you to explain cadence to novices and that strokes per minute is not speed. This also applies to sprinting - the SpeedCoach allows you to focus on increasing boat speed rather than just taking the stroke rating up. In the same way, the SpeedCoach allows you to analyze the effectiveness of moves or pushes. With the SpeedCoach you can see whether the move was actually effective in terms of increased speed.

The SpeedCoach is an invaluable tool in the quest for boat speed over stroke rating alone.

Back From Beijing

We would like to recognize the tremendous achievements of all the rowing competitors at the Beijing Olympics in being selected to represent their country, and to congratulate the athletes from every country who rowed to a spot on that medal podium and are bringing home coveted “hardware”. We are pleased to note that this Olympics, every medal winner had at some point used an NK SpeedCoach model in their preparation, and many raced with a SpeedCoach.

While we truly value every NK customer in every country, as electronics sponsor of the US National team this is one time we’re going to show a little pride and congratulate the US athletes on their three medals and seven boats in the finals. The women’s eight gold medal performance was spectacular, a perfectly executed race. Longtime SpeedCoach user Michelle Guerette’s silver medal, beating favorite Karsten in the process, was also a proud moment for the US team. The men’s eight was a tough and fast race with the Canadians and British showing their dominant speed. A bronze medal in such a field is an accomplishment to be proud of.

Just as we predicted in the August Newsletter, we saw different strategies on how to use the impeller. We saw one prominent competitor row with the fully geared XL in the heats and then return to her good old StrokeCoach for the semis and final. Other crews, like the gold medalist Poland in the men’s quad, followed their strategy of relying on their SpeedCoach for pacing through the last stroke of the regatta, just like they did last year in Munich.

We’d also like to report one “NK experience” written to us by a customer in Beijing. Brian Price, cox of the gold winning Canadian men’s eight, had some issues with his microphone just before the heat. “I had a microphone problem at the Olympics so I sent an email to my USA NK rep and within hours I had a response on how to fix it. They even delivered a new microphone to me on the dock before the next workout as a backup. That's service!” (Brian had a crackling microphone, which usually can be fixed by lifting the fins slightly off the insulator at the connector. We’re glad we could take this problem off his mind before the big showdown.)

Brian also let us know that the Canadian national team made heavy use of the SpeedCoach XL in their preparations leading up to the Olympics. Even though head coach Mike Spracklen would not describe himself as an electronics enthusiast, Brian reports that in the past years they have been using the XL consistently in all boats. “The SpeedCoach XL4 quickly became an essential piece of equipment as it brought our coach into the boat. He never had to ask me the speed or rate anymore, he had it at his fingertips in real-time transmission.”

The fall is a great time to experience the power of the SpeedCoach XL3 and 4 in your coached program. Read more about the XL3 here, and remember, NK’s 30-day satisfaction guarantee makes trying it out risk-free.

Customer Feedback

We have gotten a lot of great feedback after the August issue. Some was very funny, a lot of compliments, which is always nice, as well as suggestions and some critique, which is important in our efforts to be provide the best possible tools for your training and racing!

Please keep it coming and if possible include pictures. You will get a reward for everything published!

Cadence vs. Luxury watch

Candido Leonelli from Brazil writes us that he prefers his Cadence over luxury watches. Although he had to replace his red wristband as it was damaging his long sleeve shirts. As director of a bank his customers often ask him about the “sporty watch” which gives him the opportunity to “show that the Cadence does a lot more than their Rolex, Wacheron Constantin, Jaeger, Patek Philippe etc.” – and of course, he tells them that he is rower!

In addition, he happily sends us his weekend picture of ROSHING (Rowing + fiSHING) in the South Atlantic:

2008 Regatta Schedule: Upcoming Events

September 2 – 11: Paralympic Games – Rowing regatta (emergency service only)
Beijing, China

October 4 – 5: Head of the Oklahoma
Oklahoma City, OK

October 16 – 19: Head of the Charles
Boston, MA

October 25 – 26: Head of the Schuylkill
Philadelphia, PA

November 1 – 2: Head of the Hooch
Chattanooga, TN

NK wants to hear from you!

We want to know what you would like to see featured in upcoming issues of the NK Newsletter! Got a question that you think would be interesting and informative to fellow rowers? Have you had an interesting experience using a NK product? Has an NK product made a difference in your rowing or workout routine? If so, we would love to hear from you.

NK will send you a FREE Cadence T1 Wrist Rate Watch if you submit a story and it gets published in a future issue of our newsletter or gets quoted in our next catalog. We will send you a FREE NK T-Shirt if your question or idea for an upcoming feature is published! Please send entries to: newsletter@nkhome.com Be sure to include your name & contact info. Submitting a story for consideration assumes that you give NK the right to reproduce your story in part or in its entirety.