Adam Bowers returns to Oxford SC to continue their race coaching program
by Colin West 13 May 14:05 BST
Adam Bowers is a Dingy Racer, Engineer, Boat builder, Sail Maker, renowned former Olympic Coach, Cadet Coach and one of the best presenters I've seen. To find a race coach that has such a unique blend of experience, racing knowledge, presentation skills and with the ability to deliver his knowledge in an entertaining and manageable form is truly remarkable.
My wife has a horse (bear with me on this one), and she spends half her life and an absolute fortune on more and more coaching and training in order to improve her skills and gain success in the competition world, and it works. I firmly believe that for the majority of Club dinghy racers they genuinely feel that training and coaching is some form of cheating, and that the correct etiquette is to turn up, race, and go home.
We dipped a toe in the water last year and asked Adam to run a clinic for us, combining a Friday night 'all members welcome' lecture and discussion, followed by a Saturday on the water coaching session limited to twenty boats; I had no idea whether it would work.
It did. We invited him back. He came.
This time the Friday night involved a clubhouse barbecue, one or two beers and an extraordinary interactive session with Adam preparing the way for the hard work on Saturday, and it was hard work, but brilliant. To quote Adam, "a race has three parts, the beginning, the end, and the stuff that goes on in the middle." Race coaches often overwhelm with a flood of information; Adam however chose to focus on the two most important parts of the race: The start, and the leeward mark, the two parts of the race where the most time is thrown away by the competitors, yes just thrown away, gifted to the other racers; thank you very much indeed, I'll take that half boat length.
What's interesting is that very often he is simply telling us what we already know, for example, the two key rules of racing are to sail the shortest distance and at the fastest speed, now we all know that, it's obvious, but we need reminding of it occasionally. Then Adam had a wonderful audience participation exercise of the importance of being accelerated and not accelerating over the start line to illustrate just how start time can be thrown away. It was fun. Add to that his explanation of the importance of circles of awareness and his regularly repeated adage that "crowds are great at parties but terrible on the racecourse". Somehow, he had us captivated enthused and amused for well over two hours on the Friday night.
Then came the Saturday... Colin, he said, "set me up a double gut-buster course windward leeward about 400m long maybe 50m apart". "Sure, I said, what on earth is that?" (take a look at the illustration). Before I continue, perhaps I should explain that we had a very mixed fleet of 20 boats from the inevitable ILCAs, a couple of nifty double handers and a good mix of other classes.
For the Saturday morning the mixed fleet was split 50-50 across the two gut-buster courses and were released at 15 second intervals, having to do a 360 round the middle mark in both directions, now if that doesn't brush up mark rounding and circles of awareness then nothing will. It was chaos and near carnage, but no bruised boats. I had the privilege of watching from one of the safety boats and I witnessed some truly spectacular sailing.
Saturday lunchtime and post-race in the afternoon involved a detailed video review of the morning's sailing, a lot of laughter and everyone was smiling, Adam has a knack of always finding the positives of any challenging situations.
Saturday afternoon, let's go racing. This time all 20 boats, a mixed fleet, one gut-buster course and a 3-2-1 race start. Observing from the safety boat is a little bit like being an armchair sportsman, but it was obvious that everyone, and I mean everyone, had improved since the morning, not marginally but significantly. Saturday ended with some very very tired but happy sailors having had a considerable mental and physical pounding from Adam and the wind.
It's all about feedback these days, so I duly asked Adam's 'victims' what they thought of his coaching to decide whether or not we should continue the program...
"I loved it, what inspiring coaching. Bring him back... same format... it works so well."
"Please can we do it again soon - I wished it was two days (Sat and Sun perhaps) when it finished but not sure my ageing body would survive that."
"Adam himself is brilliant - very engaging and articulate and he makes it all such fun. The debrief and video are especially fun...it's "name and shame" time but nicely done and with lots of encouragement from Adam."
"If you want to find out what you're missing that would give you just that little bit extra performance Adam will certainly point it out to you...and in a way that makes it hard for you to forget."
"Explanations and exercises were great. Challenging and the type of stuff that would be great for improvers (suitable for both single and double handers."
"I thought it was a fantastic session - would love to get him back."
"Adams race clinic thrust myself and crew into a whole new world of chaos immediately taking me out of my comfort zone. As the session progressed this became the new norm and it can only help the process of moving up the results sheet."
"The boat handling and decision-making skills learnt will hold us in good stead for forthcoming events"
Where's this all going?
As a Club we're committed to fostering the growth, skill development, and personal progression of all our members, and my plan is to continue the Adam Bowers clinics, and when the time is right for us, I'd like us to embrace something similar to the Golf Club model and give members access to a Club 'Pro-Coach' for one-to-one or one-to-two coaching sessions; coached Club racing is now on my radar screen and of course continuing to grow the racing skills for all our youth and adult sailors.
Colin West is the Commodore of Oxford Sailing Club