mental skills rowing

3 Steps to Coaching Mental Skills for Rowing

By Madison Keaty, MS


Note from Will: This article is a guest post from Madison Keaty, assistant coach at Gonzaga University women’s rowing. Madison rowed for Gonzaga University before attending Ithaca College to study sport psychology. We met at the Joy of Sculling Conference in February and had a great time talking about how to get more resources on coaching mental skills for rowing into the hands of rowers and coaches. In this article, Madison provides some excellent and accessible advice for incorporating mental skills training for rowing into a daily practice plan.


Is mental toughness necessary to row?

Continue reading → 3 Steps to Coaching Mental Skills for Rowing

Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 3

In Part 1, we covered goal-setting, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive reframing, and positive self-talk. In Part 2, we talked visualization, pre-practice, pre-performance, and mental reset routines. Now, we’ll discuss the final two mental skills and wrap the series up with how to put them all together in a training plan for better training sessions and improved performance.

Continue reading → Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 3

Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 2

In Part 1, we talked about the basic skills of goal-setting, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive reframing, and positive self-talk. This article will continue with some more basic mental skills that you can incorporate right away into your training. Remember, mental training is just like physical training in that you can’t just flip a switch and be in shape. It will take time and dedication to improve, and from reduced anxiety to increased performance to improved focus and happiness in sport, the benefits are worth the work.

Continue reading → Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 2

Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 1

Anyone who has rowed or been around rowers can tell you that this is a mentally difficult sport, and maybe you have to be a little crazy to do it. The constant pressure of technical improvement combined with the drive to improve on the ergometer tests and in training can be a lot to deal with, and athletes not equipped to deal with this stress often find themselves burned out after a few seasons. This article series will teach you some basic mental skills that you can incorporate into your own training as a rower or coxswain.

In the long term,

MST can help reduce anxiety and build good mental habits to lay a foundation for race day and tests. Just like in school, you can’t just cram for a few hours and expect to do well on the test—you have to work at it all quarter.

In the shorter term,

MST can help improve performance by reducing distractions, improving focus, and decreasing anxiety. The basis of short-term MST is maintaining a mindset of positivity and not getting bogged down in uncontrollable factors. Control what you can control, let everything else go.

Continue reading → Mental Skills for Rowing: Part 1

erg fear rowing

Overcoming Erg Fear

With the last few head races of fall complete, this article is for the many rowers who turn with mixed feelings to the erg for winter training. RowingRelated wrote a great article here exploring some of the reasons that many rowers are afraid of the erg, the consequences of erg fear, and how coaches and rowers continue to facilitate erg fear in rowing. A crucial observation in the article is this:

“When compared to other endurance sports like cycling, running, swimming, etc., I have not encountered an equal level of disdain for such fundamental mental and physical endurance training. A track runner might complain if he or she had to be on the treadmill all winter long, but the idea would not strike fear into his or her heart…” [RowingRelated]

Continue reading → Overcoming Erg Fear