We Give You Grok Rowing

by John Thornell, Grok Rowing Founder, Stonington Crew Girls Head Coach

A challenge of coaching, especially in a technical sport like rowing, is effectively communicating with different athletes. Coaches try combinations of instructions and analogies to reach their rowers.

Coaches also get pretty resourceful. They put tape on erg chain guides to help rowers keep even hand heights. Risking life and limb, they lean over fan wheels and hold erg handles to show rowers how to suspend their bodies. Coaches even wrestle with trigonometry and tape measures to set catch angles in boats. You get the idea.

Stonington Crew was no different. We used these techniques despite their drawbacks. Chain-guide tape had to be repositioned for rowers of different sizes. Coaches couldn’t realistically hold erg handles for every rower. Trigonometry is, well, trigonometry. Plus, zip-ties on gunwales were pretty flimsy.

Over time, we chipped away at these shortcomings—one iteration after the other. Eventually, we ended up with viable training aids! 

At regattas, discussions with coaches about catch angle guides that we were using led to inquries about other training aids we made. Long story short, we were encouraged to make them available to other crews who would also benefit. So, here we are. We give you Grok Rowing. We make training aids for rowers that are simple, standardized, and affordable.