Psychologist on the water

Focus So, the summer has sadly come to a close and the winter is on its way. From a rowing perspective, for me this means winter training, LOTS of ergo/land training and freezing early mornings on the river. Now, the summer for me consisted of a few regattas, the highlight being Stourport in August. We came very very close to winning, in both a mens coxless quad and a mixed 8, however no novices were lost for me but my jove they were exciting races. The one I want to focus on a bit here is the quad, as something rather interesting happened. We were against a fairly evenly matched crew, who had a small head start on us, about 4 seconds i think (we were on average a bit younger). We started ok, catching up on them fairly swiftly. From my own perspective I was so hyped up (high psychological arousal;  Moran, 2012) that technique went out of the window initially, then I settled (using simple focusing strategies, on specific key words linked to to solid technique i.e. keep it long, sit