Individual vs. team success

For a long time, I rowed by myself, working on improving my technique. I asked for advice and I took lessons every chance I got. I went to rowing camp. I practiced. I practiced. And practiced some more. I finally felt that it was time to test myself and signed up for races. When I started doing well even against more experienced rowers, I felt I would no longer hold others back, and thus it would be OK to go ahead and team up with someone in a double boat.

My double partner is very competitive and very successful, and meeting him leaves no doubts about it... I am intensely competitive myself, but my contest is mainly against myself and so I tend to focus my energies differently. When we started rowing together, we had a hard time getting a smooth row so I suggested we take a coaching session in the double. The coach watched us for a while and gave us some specific individual advice; however, he added that while we were both accomplished rowers, the most important objective when aiming to successfully row in a team is: "This is not the time to concentrate on doing what usually works for your own personal best, all your efforts should go into understanding how you can help maximize the team's output."

The advice, as simple as it may seem, opened our eyes to the secret of optimizing team work: as part of a team, one has to adjust own capabilities and style to accommodate for the best fit with the other(s). We learned that could even mean de-emphasizing some of the very things that worked best for our individual competitive success. I am shorter than my partner, so I will have to stretch beyond the limit I perfected during years of practice to maintain the flawless balance of my single boat no matter what the speed. My partner, on the other hand, will have to actually cut short his reach effectively lowering his competitive output, so that our oars could remain parallel at all times. After the initial adjustment period, we started enjoying rowing together, and then we started doing very well competing as a team.

Team work comes with perks: we move easier by splitting the effort and can rely on each other to split the duties (one keeps the race pace, the other can concentrate on charting the course), and we encourage each other. And, yes, we do occasionally fight, but then we both always learn something from it… and we schedule yet another team row.