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Since its launch on 24th July 2020, Broken Oars Podcast has grown into the world’s best podcast about rowing, rowers and all things related to the art, practice and magic of moving a boat backwards down a river using an oar. Episode by episode, your genial hosts Dr. Lewin Hynes (the Southern One) and Dr. Aaron Jackson (the Northern One) have been joined for in-depth and revealing conversations with Olympic and world champions, elite coaches, world-leading sports scientists, journalists and commentators, and rowers from all backgrounds and walks of life - creating a treasure trove of insight, information, commentary and perspectives on the greatest sport ever invented. Enjoyed this episode? Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd. Thank You! Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1 Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thelandingstage/ www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/ Read more Broken Oars: www.thelandingstage.net
Episodes
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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Welcome back, dear listeners, to the world's greatest podcast about the art, practice and lifestyle that is pushing a boat backwards down a river.
Today, author Gavin Jamieson joins your genial hosts of the Northern One and the Southern One to talk about his fantastic new book 'Water's Gleaming Gold' - a biography and celebration of the life of Hugh 'Jumbo' Edwards.
This is not just one of rowing's great untold stories - Jumbo was a Boat Race winner, Henley winner, Olympic champion and one of the great rowing thinkers and coaches through one of the golden ages of British Rowing - but a story of a rich and full life rich and fully lived.
We explore the reasons that led Gavin to research and tell Jumbo's story and the world and lives he uncovered on that journey and brought into the light. We talk about British rowing in the 1920's and 1930's, back when it was one of the sports the nation stopped for; look at the challenges Jumbo faced; and talk about how he not only met and overcame them, but rose to become the greatest British oarsman of his generation, and with it, the world's greatest.
It's a fantastic chat with a fantastic guest about a fantastic chapter in rowing history.
All eight? Listen to it, and then go and buy the book. We've managed to wangle you a discount!
Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
-----
Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Thank You!
-----
We return as swallows to the eaves of your ears to build our muddy nests in your auditory canal, right next to your tympanic membrane with another episode of what most rowers call ..
Who are they?
The swallow metaphor works, so we're keeping it, based as it is on the similarities between birds of the family Hirundinidae returning as spring does and us getting a podcast out on a bi-weekly schedule.
In this episode, we launch the Broken Oars Podcast Widget - an interactive device which, if you input your training data, will help you to track your effort and predict your likely power outputs for a given time, distance or session. Designed by the Southern One, who knows science, it's an accurate training tool for those who like their darta - which is pretty much every rower and coach out there.
The Broken Oars Podcast Widget is part of our latest drive to add value to your support of Broken Oars Podcast, coming as it does hot on the heels of the Broken Oars Training Plans.
We love that you listen to our podcast (our podcast is your podcast. You row, we row, we all row together); and we really appreciate that you've responded to our asking for the odd donation to help cover our running costs. We aren't Wikipedia - we're more accurate than that - and we don't make any money from Broken Oars - and your help and support helps us keep it going. We just thought that we'd give you something alongside the podcast in return for your support, and we have a chat about how to use your new widget.
This led us onto a brief discussion of Broken Oars Podcast - a section that might be labelled the 'whither Broken Oars Podcast' bit. The Northern One and the Southern One started this for something to do during lockdown, and it's become a bit of a going concern. We've got to meet some of our heroes and heroines, been inspired, learned an awful lot, pissed off bikey twitter, and love that talking about something we love has brought us in contact with people who love it too.
And then we get on to a discussion of what 'talent' actually is.
This was sparked by a recent debate on Twitter about what talent might be; what meaning the cultural freighting of the word has given it; and how we interpret it in different contexts.
The Northern One and the Southern One thought that we should definitely end our friendship over this chestnut, given one of us is a Humanities Grad and the other a Science Grad. So, we get into it. The Northern One talks about internalised learning, cultural meanings and baggage, opportunity and pathways; and the Southern One talks about genetics and genes and predispositions and variation ...
... and we come to the surprising conclusion that what appeared diametrically opposed positions actually share a lot of overlap, and that the discussion of talent often means different things to different people and groups, but what it actually manifests as is as something that we recognise when we see it in others, and which inspires us in ourselves.
Get some!
Stern four. Look at bow pair. That's talent!
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
Enjoyed this episode?
-----
We return with another episode that looks like it might have been hand-tooled for the start of the new season - precisely because it has been.
Great changes are afoot in the Broken Oars world. Not content with being the world's best rowing podcast (Crossy aside), the Southern One (Lewin) and the Northern One (Aaron) would like to spread their wings. We'd like to carry on with the Broken Oars Podcast as you know and love it: wit, charm, irreverent asides, profound points, amazing guests - quite simply the best, funniest, most informative and pertinent podcast about the art, craft and life that is shoving a boat backwards down a river (they said, modestly).
But if you've listened to us before, you'll know that for all of their badinage, your genial hosts are men of wide-ranging interests. You've already heard the Northern One claim the guitar hero for Newcastle, for example; and you've heard the Southern talk about genetics and millimoles with the elan and insight of a qualified scientist - because he is.
As we move into our third year of podcasting, we're really keen to add on new elements: deeper dives into deeper subjects, adding to our fantastic guests with more fantastic guests to add the expertise in their field, and so on.
And so, we return to Broken Oars University for a conversational chat about getting old; not wanting to do something you love badly; the psychology behind that (which is the psychology of why rowers row, really); how we now feel about racing, having always loved it; whether we'll still do it; male TRT; PED's and the nonsense that are the Enhanced Games.
We look at what the Enhanced Games thinks it means vs. what it actually means; talk about what TRT as a cultural phenomenon means for rowing at all levels; male menopause; and what winning becomes if it's only something that happens to those who get the medals.
Class is in!
Get some!
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Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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The world's greatest rowing podcast returns - and it couldn't be more timely.
As some of us head back to school (quite literally) and all of us head back to the water at the start of the new rowing season we are joined by Dr. Michael Cannon to talk about the impact on rowers, rowing and rowing clubs of balancing resources against ambitions.
(Right at the start of the season?
When every club in the land is setting its season goals and agenda?
Thank you, Broken Oars and Dr. Cannon! You're the best.
Yes.
Yes, we are).
Beginning rowing while at The University of Durham, Dr. Cannon went on to row, coach, and captain, helping out at college and university level before going on to teach and coach at schools level before moving on to row at and for Staines, Eton Excelsior, Maidenhead and Vesta.
One of nature's natural organisers and administrators, Michael's journey through the sport has taken in the side of the sport without which we wouldn't have a sport: the running and administering and organising of clubs, squads, boats, fleets, heads and regattas.
And while this all might sound about as fun as watching paint dry, not only wouldn't we have a sport without the Dr. Cannons of this world, but it (and a quick look at the books on offer at Companies House) raised the question:
What happens when clubs start raising their ambition levels above the levels of their resources?
(Or to put it more bluntly, what is UK rowing's current obsession with making Henley Royal Regatta costing clubs?)
We talk about the costs of running and maintaining clubs, membership levels and running a fleet. We discuss the perception of what a 'club' is supposed to provide and offer to its members, talk about how some clubs have gamed that and the current system to provide 'successful' programmes, look at what 'success' might mean, and what that means for the UK-wide representation within the sport. And we look at the impact of 'professionalism' on a volunteer-run and led sport, before addressing the realities of member turnover in metropolitan areas, and how cost-of-living / housing / work changes over time has impacted the sport as a whole.
Yeah.
We are the original and best.
But that's because our guests are.
Get some!
Bow Four! Provide a sunk-cost analysis by the end of this piece, or swim home.
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to Broken Oars Podcast!
It's often been said, usually by us, that Broken Oars Podcast is the home of world-class rowing and rowers on the web ...
... and we prove it yet again in this episode as we are joined by the one, the only, the incredible ...
Elizabeth Gilmore.
For those of you have been living under a rock, Eli is the world-class rowing athlete who has been tearing up the record book since starting in the sport barely two years ago.
Eli joins us for a chat about her sporting background, how she got into indoor rowing, and her transition to the water.
Hardly covering ourselves with interviewing technique glory, Lewin and I basically fanboy gush over an incredible person and athlete who had smashed several world records immediately before our conversation. We explore the vital importance of good and supportive coaching in Eli's journey, the pressures young athletes face regarding body image, weight and performance, and look at where Eli's rowing journey might take her next (we suggested Henley Royal and Henley Women's, but that's just us ...).
We've always been blessed with amazing guests on Broken Oars Podcast, but that's largely because we talk to rowers ... who are, basically, amazing people.
And Eli is one of us.
Just considerably faster than most of us.
Get some!
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
We're back once again, the renegade masters ...
Southern One: You've done that one.
Here we are, the world's greatest rowing podcast, returning once again ...
Southern One: You've done that one too.
Northern One: You do realise that I write all the blurbs?
Southern One: I do. And a fine job you make of it too.
Northern One: And you do realise that we're over one hundred episodes deep now.
Southern One: I do. And that's why we're the world's greatest rowing podcast. Including Martin Cross.
Northern One: And you do know that people tune into us because they expect a certain level of insight, wit, humour ... dare I say diablerie.
Southern One: You can say it, but I bet you can't spell it.
Northern One: I can say it and spell it. Which is why I do the blurbs. Big words and schtick. And amazing guests. The very best guests in the world. Bar none.
Southern One: Like this one.
Northern One: Yeah. Another world-class guest. On Broken Oars. How do we get them?
Southern One: Because we're a place of insight, intelligence, keen lines of questioning, wit, humour and a certain lightness of touch ...
Northern One: Or they don't listen to us first, don't look us up and by the time the red light's on it's too late for them to get out of it?
Southern One: Well, there is that.
Northern One: And you do know that repetition is the hallmark of good prose; key to a marketing strategy; and also good comedy ...
Southern One: I find you hilarious ...
Northern One: Why, thank you ...
And so we're back, once again, the world's greatest rowing podcast, and we're back for 2024 with a world-class guest. There've been so many of them that you kind of take it for granted now, don't you? Well, you shouldn't. We might have outdone ourselves this time.
Because we're talking to Professor Andy Jones.
For those who don't know, well, you should.
Andrew M Jones is Professor of Applied Physiology in the Department of Sport and Health Sciences. Andy is internationally recognized for his research in the following areas: 1) control of, and limitations to, skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism; 2) causes of exercise intolerance in health and disease; 3) respiratory physiology, particularly the kinetics of pulmonary gas exchange and ventilation during and following exercise; and 4) sports performance physiology and nutrition, particularly in relation to endurance athletics.
And if that sounds like we've pulled it of Exeter's website, well, we have - but you should know this stuff because if you're into sport, and you're into training properly, and you're still alive and you've been and done any of those things in the last two decades ... the way you train, the way you race and what you do?
That's down to Andy's work.
Southern One: Just tell them that we've got the beetroot guy ...
Northern One: I'm getting to that ...
In other words, we've got the beetroot guy. Andy's work on how dietary nitrate reduces resting blood pressure (eating beetroot), and therefore impacting positively on cardiovascular health and performance is not just robust, but world-leading. He's the man, basically, who actually found a superfood that worked.
And boy does it work - but tied to what is world-leading (the REF results say so, as do the performance metrics and outcomes in the real world) research is also Andy's long history working in muscle energetics, fatigue and respiratory physiology with some of the world's leading athletes and high performance programmes.
And we've got him.
So join us for the only conversation you'll ever need about training and nutrition and recovery with the only person you'll ever need to hear talking about it!
Get some!
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Enjoyed this episode?
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to:
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb
and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
Welcome back one and all to Broken Oars Podcast - the Rowing World's best and most informative podcast (bar Crossy's Corner - we'll hear no bad words about that man. He's a legend).
As you know, while the Southern One finishes up a professional qualification the Northern One has been taking his brain out for a spin to talk about poets and poetry.
(Yes, it does sound remarkably like listening to paint drying, doesn't it ... ?)
But fear not, this is the Northern One - a man incapable of uttering a snooze-inducing sentence, finding a subject he can't make a quip or point about, or being boring generally. And it is in that capacity that he's created the perfect series for people to dip into while the nights are long, the air balmy, and the weather perfect for sitting out in the garden and doing some culture.
Yeah.
Cultchah!
Having whistle-stopped through Thomas Hardy and A.E Housman, detoured into how a Brian called Geordie (should that sentence be the other way 'round ... ? Ed) is to blame for guitar heroes and all of their widdle, and then leapt back to look at Charles Dickens ... a theme is emerging ...
That's right:
How did we get here from there.
Or to put it more simply, why Britain today is largely the same as Britain then?
(Isn't this fun? We're learning all about caesuras and enjambments and what happened when and where and to who and asking cool questions! Who said no, when's the rowing stuff coming ... ?).
In this episode we engage with one of the most problematic writers in the canon: Rudyard Kipling.
An Anglo-Indian, with a deep apprehension of the realities and mythologies of Empire, Kipling was more famous in his day than Steve Redgrave (largely because Steve Redgrave hadn't been born then) but is rarely read now.
We learn why; explore why it's a short step from denying or revising books to burning them; and look at why should and what we can learn from engaging with a racist, and imperialist ... and the most important English writer since Shakespeare. We explore how Empire was not a benevolent force for good, or a civilising mission but instead always and forever an economic enterprise; and illustrate how its expansion ran alongside technological expansion - something Kipling was keenly aware of.
Examining Kipling's status as an Anglo-Indian, and thus a second-class person, we look at the way he explored and exposed the myths of Empire to show its realities: the overt racism of The White Man's Burden, the sham of Britain standing alone given its reliance on its connections to the world in Big Steamers; and the people who work alongside or create the technology that sustains the whole endeavour in McAndrew's Hymn and The King. We reclaim Mandalay from Boorish and see how Kipling's wide-ranging work in poetry, short stories, children's stories and novels should be engaged with if we are to overcome our cultural amnesia and beliefs about the missing 300 years of our history that we don't talk about or teach.
And that's before we get to Tommy - as pertinent now as it was then.
And it's out in time for the weekend? And there's a rowing episode coming out too?
Get some!
Bow? You're a jelly-bellied flag-flapper. Take a tap.
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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We are joined on Broken Oars Podcast by Xeno Muller.
Olympic Single Sculls Champion at Atlanta in 1996 in one of the all-time great Olympic finals and finishes, Xeno was also an Olympic Silver Medallist in 2000 and a multiple medallist at rowing's world championships in the single sculls discipline.
Xeno has gone on to be one of the world's most successful high-performance coaches, working on a one-to-one basis with individual rowers to help them fulfil their goals and ambitions through his www.elite-rowing-coach.com platform.
In this fascinating and inspiring conversation, Xeno touches on the ways that modern coaching can coach the passion and joy out of rowers, qualities which he sees, rightly, as being intrinsic to life and going fast.
Talking about keeping the passion and joy by staying curious and being open to learning, Xeno identifies the value of simplicity, of everything in rowing and life flowing from getting the fundamentals right; the vital importance of breathing; how what your bows are doing tell you what you are doing; and why Mahon, Spracklen et al had it right in the first place.
And why you should use the mirror in your erg room - every single stroke.
This is one of the most important and inspiring conversations we've ever had with one of the true originals, deep-thinkers and passionately engaged people we've ever met - in or out of rowing.
Bow Four? This is one to take notes from.
Get some!
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Your favourite comedy duo, and quite possibly the best commentators rowing has ever had on and about the sport of rowing return!
In this episode, following the Southern One's three weeks of constant bugs and the Northern One's ongoing Long Covid we talk about getting back into exercise after illness and injury - and no, it isn't what we used to do: grade two muscle tear? Should be fine tomorrow then? Two weeks in bed with D and V? Shouldn't affect my 2k too much tomorrow.
Being an athlete is a weird thing. For a start, it's an identity - which means when we can't do the thing that defines us, it upsets us and leads us to do crazy things (like not appropriately recover from illnesses and injuries properly). Part of what makes us an athlete - the learned ability to push into pain and in doing so extend our limitations - is the very thing that makes us a danger to ourselves when we've been, as they say in the North, a bit crook.
We talk about graduated returns to training and racing; point out the many times we've failed to follow our own advice; and then skip merrily on to the reality that since Covid participation numbers in sport and exercise, and in rowing, are down. We talk about time, snobbery (not what you think), and ... whisper it ... that doing other sports might just be an option.
Get Some!
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Enjoyed this episode?
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
Order a copy of 'The Mystery of the Cambridge Bow' - an original Broken Oars Sherlock Holmes adventure written to celebrate the Oxford / Cambridge Boat Race:
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We return!
We return in time for WEHORR (what's left of it); the Boat Race; and a summer regatta season just around the corner with the perfect episode ...
Why?
Because we return with Lucy Denyer - whose Telegraph article on returning to rowing at York recently went viral. Extolling, as it does, the reasons why we row, the joy of moving a boat through flat water and still air (and occasionally in the UK through lumpy water and air that's basically an upright sea with slits in it), and the importance of exercise, community and just getting out there and getting on with it ... ?
Well, we just had to sit down and have a chat.
So join as Lucy takes us through her early rowing experiences on Tyne, the Tyne, the mucky Tyne the Queen of all the rivers with NUBC; and her subsequent shift into life, and an American sojourn that led to a career in journalism that culiminated in an editorial role at The Telegraph (one of the few broadsheets to cover rowing, tbf). Staying active all the while, while dealing with the things all rowers deal with when life starts getting in the way of rowing (work, marriage, children, moving around for career), Lucy talks about her decision to come back; going freelance; rowing and identity; getting on the water again at York (we've all binned a single, right? Right?!?!); and rowing on a river that Lewin I once charged down for Agecroft, complaining that for somewhere that floods everytime it rains it's a very narrow river for an eight to steer down, and the fun she's had since.
And then AI generates some totally random pictures of our interview that gives Lewin and I abs again ...
And it's out in time for the drive to WEHORR, the weekend's events, and the drive to the boathouse tomorrow?
We're too good to you!
Get some!
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Friday Aug 09, 2024
Friday Aug 09, 2024
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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Welcome back to Broken Oars Podcast, the world's best rowing podcast.
In this episode, to celebrate the start of the new season, the Southern One and the Northern One take a deep dive into coaching and coaches.
With that new season stretching ahead of us like a book full of chapters waiting to be written, with plans to be made, schedules to be agreed, and training and racing getting back to full swing, we get deep and philosophical on what a coach actually is; where a coach's responsibilities begin and end and the role of a coach within the club.
We look at the legals, the morals, the ethicals, as well as the technical and organisational requirements of coaching, and explore what makes a good coach.
Drawing on our experiences with various coaches and various clubs, we look at how good coaches organise, delegate and educate, aligning a club / coach's ambitions to a club / coach's resources, and ask the question: what should a rower / crew / squad / club expect from their coach, and what should a coach expect from their rower / crew / squad / club?
We look at the degree to which a coach is responsible for training plans, workloads and race schedules; how coaches select crews, and what crews should expect from their coach in terms of input and selection; and the thorny question of taking on responsibility for your own development and outcomes.
Exploring ideas around coaches having favourites and why they do, as well as looking at what happens when their favourites stop performing at the required level, we talk through the issue of whether a coach is responsible for setting the tone of a club's culture, and if a coach has responsibilities towards their rower / crew / squad / club ... what are the rower / crew / squad / club's responsibilities towards themselves and their coach?
Yeah.
There's a reason why we're the world's greatest rowing podcast.
No.
We don't know what it is either.
Get some!
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday May 26, 2023
Friday May 26, 2023
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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I (Northern One), have thought of so many ways to introduce this:
The finest rower of his generation is joined by Drew Ginn, Andrew McNeil, Anthony Bergelin and Lewin Hynes to ...
You know - that tongue-in-cheek quippy thing that you've come to expect from your Northern Correspondent while your Southern Correspondent (Lewin) does all of the science-y bits and the intelligent questions.
Or, something like:
The world's finest rowing podcast (Crossy's Corner excluded. We'll not hear a word said against Martin. He's a living legend) returns and gives three unknowns from a land down under a chance to talk about shovelling a boat backwards down a river ...
You know - the self-deprecating / self-aggrandising stuff that we do so well on Broken Oars Podcast (while also being, you know, the best rowing podcast in the world ... ).
But I can't.
Because, ladies and gentlemen (and children of all ages), we bring to you:
THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN ROUNDTABLE!
It's our first ever roundtable, and we're not sure we'll ever be able to top it. Why? Not just because it's taken over a year to organise, but because your genial Southern One (Lewin) and your genially-grumpy Northern one (Aaron) are joined by Anthony Bergelin, Andrew McNeil and Drew Ginn.
Yes, this is an absolute brains trust of rowing and performance, and you, like us, get to join in with one of the best conversations about rowing you're every likely to hear, but unlike most in the field, Berge, Drew and Macca come at these elements from the refreshing perspective of engaging with and enjoying what you're doing first, and connecting who you're doing it with ... because if you tick those boxes, the first two will surely follow.
So, strap in, buckle up, and tune in to hear about the early years, why culture is not something you write on a piece of paper but live through your values; why lightweights are bitter and twisted; why the club system is so, so important; about how connection is all, not just to the water, but to those around you: how you build trust by empowering people to have a voice; why why is the most important question you can ask (and if people say 'because I say so' you're in the wrong place); why feel beats data in rowing when data in rowing doesn't also feel; why more mileage doesn't equal better rowers but buying a frisbee just might; how great coaches give of themselves, while lesser ones might take or look to over-control; that being fast going in straight lines is great, but rowing on rivers where there's a beer and bbq waiting for you at the end might just be the thing you're looking for; how jumping in a boat with the juniors or the masters lads and lasses doesn't take away from you as a senior (believe us, if one of the greatest to ever do it is not just willing but vocal about diving in with a mate's daughter and enjoying it, you should be too ... ); music, patterns, rowers vs. athletes, the athletic mindset, running thought experiments on yourself, and training back in the curiosity and love of life you had trained out of you by the 'this is how you do it ...' approach.
Seriously, get a notebook, get a pen, get a cup of coffee and take notes.
Berge, Macca and Drew are about to change your lives.
The Broken Oars listenership is a generous and giving one, so if you could follow back to vsk.org.au, and support their and Drew's work, we'd appreciate it. Cancer will hit 1 in every 2 of us at some point in our lives, so if it doesn't hit us, it's likely to affect someone close to us ... so let's get in this fight and push back.
And hit the guys up on Twitter with your comments, thoughts and feedback - or just to let them know how much they absolutely SMASHED this:
A year in the making?
Totally worth it!
Stern four? Quiet. Bow four. Easy oars. You're in the presence of greatness.
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
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Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Monday May 15, 2023
Monday May 15, 2023
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
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Summer is upon us, the regatta season is in full swing and with both come the merry sound of everyone in the sport of rowing going 'Crap! It's x regatta next week. We need to start thinking about a start pattern ... '
And so the Northern One returns with the observation why didn't we start working on it last September, at the start of the season, given it's, you know, a technical skill to develop ...?
In this episode, we talk about why technical work should be as hard and engaged with as fully as physical work (because it's free speed, dummies ... and yes, I am quoting what Kev M once said to me, why do you ask?); and why we should all treat drills as being as important as mileage: rather than being things we charge through to get to the rowing,
BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL THE ROWING.
Broken Oars throws out how just getting moving during an outing can be used as a litmus test of where we are and what we need to work on, as well as the standards we're prepared to accept, and then gets into the magic of getting boat moving. We talk about Head Race starts and Regatta race starts, and the differences and similarities between them before getting down to it:
How to pick up a boat from a standing start, accelerate it to its top sustainable speed for the distance and hold it there.
What we're looking for in terms of feel, what we're doing in terms of technique, why we do the 3/4, 1/2, 1/2, 3/4, 3/4 dance, why it's precise brutality we're after; why we use wind and drive as calls, why the backs in call comes in later in sequences and what terms like 'swing', 'transition' or 'push into rhythm' mean and should feel like.
And why you should never, ever call 'settle.'
We're rowers.
We never settle.
Except for coffee.
We like coffee.
We'll settle for that.
Feel free to buy us one: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsD?new=1
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Enjoyed this episode?
Buy us a coffee, download a training plan, and support us so we can carry on making Broken Oars Podcast, the best rowing podcast in the world: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Website: www.thelandingstage.net
Friday Apr 07, 2023
Friday Apr 07, 2023
To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to:
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb
and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.
This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories!
Oars Podcast, and your genial hosts Lewin (Southern, oppressive) and Aaron (Northern, oppressed) return ...
... and you'll notice that we're practically fizzing with glee as we do.
Why?
Because we're joined by Peter Holmes.
We are no strangers to hyperbole on Broken Oars Podcast. Our episode blurbs are masterpieces in the art of all of its forms: hyperbole, repetitive hyperbole, deflationary hyperbole, inflationary hyperbole and (our favourite) the sort of hyperbole Han got out of the Millennium Falcon only done with oars.
(Give me ten on the legs and horizon this bunch of sadsacks, now ... ! is a call neither of us have ever used (much)).
But in this instance, we are somewhat underselling it when we say that Pete is one of rowing's great coaches, thinkers and communicators.
Beginning his rowing journey at Latymer, and continuing during his time at Cambridge, Pete's engagement with rowing developed in tandem and conversation with his younger brother, Andy - an individual who remains one of the undersung heroes of British Rowing despite being a double-Olympic champion, fierce and committed competitor and an outstanding oarsman who, among others, inspired the young Matthew Pinsent to take up the sport.
Applying the insights about boatmoving that Andy was learning, applying and developing while working with Spracklen and Redgrave as he moved on to teach and coach at Eton, St. Paul's, the University of Manchester and Agecroft, Pete developed a coaching ethos centered on empowering athletes to own and take control of their development and progression by understanding and embracing what actually moves a boat.
In this freewheeling, insightful and essential episode we discuss what actually moves a boat - pressure against the pin against the blade - and explore what the logical outcome of this means for the rowing stroke: it is the application of maximum pressure through the arc of the stroke from beginning to end that moves the boat the most efficiently.
Breaking down how we can translate that to the actual practise of rowing leads to a fascinating conversation on avoiding coaching mood music; the importance of avoiding fads and fashions; why the first step in any squad journey must be standardising equipment so that it can then be individualised to the rower later in the programme; the importance of knowing why you do the drills you do; why the search for magic bullets is part of human nature but ultimately unproductive ...
... and why the most important question a rower can ask is 'why' (because it leads to the understanding of 'how').
Some of this might be counter-intuitive to modern orthodoxies; it might challenge some preconceptions, but this a masterclass on a par with Drew Ginn's much-heralded episode on Broken Oars. Pete puts a lifetime of knowledge on the art and practice of moving a boat well in this podcast, coaching, what makes a rower, what makes a crew, training, and more beside ...
And he's currently not coaching?
Someone snap that man up for their programme!
Get some!
All Eight? Drive the legs like you're kicking a burning dog off you...
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Try listening to us with a coffee - and if you're feeling generous, stand us one.
Buy us a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsD?new=1
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thelandingstage/
www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/
Friday Mar 24, 2023
Friday Mar 24, 2023
Welcome back our friends to the show that never ends, we're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside ...
We're back, the original and best rowing podcast and this episode ...
We celebrate the magic of BUCS, the importance of knowing your responsibilities on and off the water and staying safe; why youth is not wasted on the young but why you only realise the aphorism is right once you aren't actually young anymore; why Alan Rickman's diaries are unreadable; why you should keep a diary and what you should put in it; when and where it is appropriate to use the N-word ...
... and then we get to why rowing an eight is harder than rowing a single (sorry, single scullers, we know you like to say you're the zenith of the art and craft, but ... you aren't); and then the big question:
When a rower should give up their dream, whether that is a Henley run, making the squad, or just getting out in a boat ... ?
(Did we here someone say ... NEVER!)
Did you miss us?
We missed you.
Accept no substitutes, we are the original and best ...
(... and support the podcast by buying us a coffee. We both drink it: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsD )
Bowside holding, strokeside blades ... we duel at dawn!
Get some!
Try listening to us with a coffee - and if you're feeling generous, stand us one.
Buy us a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsD?new=1
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenoarspodc1
Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thelandingstage/
www.instagram.com/brokenoarsindoors/