Rowing Quotes - Page 7

• Those of us who stayed were younger, more tractable. Less sure of ourselves socially and intellectually, we gave ourselves to the sport with little idea of what we could give or receive.

  Stefan Kieszling

  Sports, Ideas, Giving

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• The last great unknown, in terms of physiological training, is the optimum length of a piece. Is three minutes enough? Is ten minutes too much? No one knows. Perhaps someday the question will be answered-we'll find out that thirteen minutes is the perfect length for a training piece when preparing for a 2000 meter race. Until then, coaches will continue exploring the whole scale, up and down, from thirty seconds to sixty minutes and more, in hopes of capturing the optimum time.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Race, Sixty Minutes, Perfect

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• White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Running, Block, White

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• Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Practice, Vacuums, Littles

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• Coach's Rule: never admit a lack of experience or knowledge. Carry on at all times as though you've guided a hundred champion crews. Honesty is not the best policy when leading a bunch of college rowers. They are looking for strong, disciplined leadership and not a kinder, gentler coach. Once you've established a certain attitude and demeanor, it's nearly impossible to change to a difference mode in mid-season.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Strong, Honesty, Attitude

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• Picasso spent hundereds of hours carefully planning his masterpieces. The sketchbooks were filled with ideas, bits and pieces, test runs, none of it meant to be seen by anyone. In a similar way, rowing practices are our sketchbooks, where we prepared our raceday masterpiece.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Running, Practice, Ideas

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• [He] would drive his sculling boat through mile after mile, in a silent brutal programe of conditioning - he would work all alone, at first light, punishing himself without mercy. His was the private dignity of the lone athlete, with a grim purpose, fighting a solitary war with himself, toward a goal only he can see.

  Daniel Topolski

  War, Athlete, Fighting

  Daniel Topolski, Patrick Robinson (2013). “True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny”, p.32, Random House

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• The ergometer simulates the physical demands of rowing, packaging the pains with none of the amenities that make it worthwhile.

  Stefan Kieszling

  Pain, Demand, Packaging

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• Swimming and athletics are the big gigs at the Olympic games. Cycling and rowing are pretty big for Britain, but globally, the two big things are athletics and swimming.

  Clare Balding

  Swimming, Cycling, Games

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• In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Morning, Father, Lakes

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• you're rowing by wordlight

  Paul Celan

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• You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

  Mary Oliver

  Soul, Doubt, Boat

  Mary Oliver (1998). “West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What's six minutes of pain compared to the pain they're going to feel for the next six months or six decades. You never forget your wins and losses in this sport. YOU NEVER FORGET.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Success, Sports, Pain

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• Rowing, particularly sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time.

  David Halberstam

  Sports, Football, Pain

  David Halberstam (2012). “The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal”, p.73, Open Road Media

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• Even after rowing in all these pieces, it's often hard to determine who will be selected because the decisive factor in seat racing is speed not margin. Boat X beats boat Y by two lengths over 1000 meters in a time of 2:54. After exchanging "Dave" from X to Y for "Scott," Boat X beats boat Y by one length in a time of 2:51. From the rower's perspective, the result is that Dave beats Scott by a length. But in Mike's eyes, Scott beats Dave because on the second piece, X was three seconds faster-even though it only beat Y by a length.

  Chris Ahrens

  Eye, Two, Perspective

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• I confess . . . that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very vast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue.

  T. S. Eliot

  Morning, Ambition, Names

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• Race for the pschological advantage. Sit up tall, pull in high, stay within the margins of power, and they will inevitably look over at some point to see what kind of God is blasting your boat forward.

  Christopher Allsopp

  Race, Looks, Kind

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• Racing shirts should be sold on big, thick rolls like paper towels.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Racing, Paper Towels, Shirts

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• Osho used me and Shunyo (my girlfriend at the time) as an example of how he envisioned men and women should relate. He shared a story he had often told in discourse of a man and woman who lived at opposite ends of a lake. They were deeply in love but only met by chance when sometimes out rowing on the water. He said it was beautiful how Shunyo and I met like this couple. When we had the feeling to be together, we would meet and enjoy. And when we were apart, we were also happy and content in our aloneness.

  Swami Anand Milarepa

  Beautiful, Girlfriend, Couple

  Source: www.sannyas.wiki

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• "Summer Sisters" is probably my least autobiographical book. The whole idea started with rowing down the pond. And I heard an explosion. I don't like sudden loud noises. They scare me. And then all these people came running down the hill and jumped in the water in their finery and a bride and groom was with them, and that's where it all started.

  Judy Blume

  Summer, Running, Book

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I know how to dance with the wind, I can use its power by sailing this way, then that way, and again this way, till finally I get to you. With rowing, you're working primarily with your arms and shoulders. But with sailing, you're making bigger use of the wind and the waves.

  Jeff Bridges

  Wind, Sailing, Use

  "Jeff Bridges and his Buddhist teacher ruminate on life". Interview with Bernie Glassman, www.today.com. January 8, 2013.

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• I have a big barn that I converted to my music studio, so I go there early in the morning and the first thing I do is rowing. And that's when I listen to a lot of music.

  Tod Machover

  Morning, Barns, Firsts

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Make your blade a water-seeking missle

  Christopher Allsopp

  Water, Blades, Seeking

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• What's Princeton doing today?

  Christopher Allsopp

  Today, Princeton

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• Most days I feel like the sole survivor of a shipwreck, rowing my paddleboat across a sea of people on waves made of an infinite array of hands and crests that reveal anonymous faces. On a good day, the clouds part to alight on-lo and behold-an island! I step ashore, only find that it too is made of people, mangled bodies somehow still alive. They grab at my feet, pulling me under like quicksand. The last thing I see before suffocating is the sky, a billion eyes staring down, blinking in undulating electric ripples. The cold rain I feel on my cheeks is the tears of the people.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Rain, Good Day, Eye

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