Building an Ecosystem of Feedback on a Rowing Team

Building an ecosystem of feedback on a rowing team was influenced by resources from the Global Online Academy website, used with permission and appropriate citation. I am grateful for their investment in my educational experience and for allowing me to use their work as a foundation for the thinking that follows.

I see competency-based learning and ecosystems of feedback as universal concepts, so it felt natural to apply this framework to athletic environments, which is a personal passion of mine.

For more information about how this thinking can apply to schools, I recommend this article from Global Online Academy.

Yesterday I attended a professional development session run by GOA, Global Online Academy, on the subject of feedback. It got me thinking more deeply about something that matters a great deal in both education and coaching. Feedback is only as powerful as the ecosystem around it.

In rowing, feedback is often thought of in a narrow way. A coach says something from the launch. An athlete gets a correction on the erg. A training platform highlights a split or a missed target. A captain addresses the team. A video gets reviewed. A conversation happens after practice. All of that is feedback, but the real opportunity is not just improving individual feedback moments. It is designing a stronger ecosystem of feedback across the whole team, club, or training environment.

That is where I think the conversation gets interesting.

The strongest rowing environments are not built on occasional comments or one-way instruction. They are built on feedback systems that are intentional, multi-directional, timely, specific, and trusted. In other words, the best teams do not just give feedback. They create an ecosystem where feedback becomes part of how people learn, improve, communicate, and grow.

The central point of this article is that feedback is a conversation around the work being done and therefore the growth of a rowing team, though the same idea could apply to almost any organization.

In rowing, if the work is athlete growth, then the product is not just a completed workout or a boat moving faster on a given day. The real product is the long-term development of the athlete and, by extension, the speed of the crew or boat. That means two kinds of work are always happening at once:

The work on performance itself, and the work around the work.

The first includes the technical and training demands of rowing. The second includes the culture, relationships, trust, communication, and structures of feedback that shape whether athletes can actually learn and improve.

A feedback ecosystem is the full network of people, tools, routines, and habits that help athletes understand performance, make adjustments, and keep developing over time. It includes coach feedback, automated feedback, peer feedback, broadcast feedback to the group, self-assessment, and feedback from athletes back to coaches.

This matters because no single source of feedback is enough on its own. Coaches cannot see and say everything. Data can highlight patterns, but it does not always explain what matters most. Peers can help, but they need guidance. Athletes can self-assess, but that skill takes practice. Athlete-to-coach feedback is often underused, yet without it blind spots remain. The goal is not to create more noise. The goal is to create better learning.

One of the biggest mistakes a team can make is assuming feedback will just happen naturally. It might, but not evenly, not consistently, and not always in the form athletes need most. Some athletes get more direct attention than others. Some are good at interpreting data. Others need help understanding what it means. Some teams have leaders who reinforce standards well. Others rely too heavily on the coach being the only voice that matters.

Without a system, feedback becomes random. It depends too much on personality, circumstance, and whatever time happens to be available that day. That is why I think it is worth asking a bigger question. What would it look like to create an actual feedback ecosystem in rowing?

Coach-to-athlete feedback is still the backbone of a rowing program. It should be. Coaches bring experience, judgment, context, and the ability to see patterns over time. They can help athletes understand not only what happened, but why it happened and what to do next.

The best coach feedback is timely, specific, and actionable. It does not just identify a problem. It gives the athlete something they can work on. At the same time, if the whole system depends on the coach saying the right thing at the right moment, it becomes fragile. Coaches have limited time and limited bandwidth. A great coach does not just deliver feedback. A great coach helps build a feedback environment.

Automated feedback is becoming more important in rowing. Erg data, force curve data, video metrics, pacing targets, heart rate response, dashboards, and training platforms can all provide useful information. One of the major advantages of technology is that it increases the frequency of feedback. It can make feedback immediate and help athletes see trends that would otherwise stay hidden.

Online training systems, platforms like Rower Up, and apps like Remote Rowing Coach or the Coach Bergenroth app can all play a role here.

But this is where we need to be careful. Data can increase the frequency of feedback, but it does not replace judgment. An athlete may hit the numbers and still row the session poorly. They may miss a target for a reason the data alone cannot explain. A force curve may reveal a pattern, but the athlete still needs help understanding how to change it. Technology works best when it supports teaching, not when it tries to replace it. Technology should help athletes learn, not just monitor them.

This is one of the most underused areas in rowing, especially in technical development. Athletes can be taught to coach each other better. That does not mean replacing the coach. It means building a team culture where athletes learn how to observe, communicate, and reinforce key technical ideas. A pair partner noticing timing, a teammate pointing out slide control, or athletes reviewing video together can all be valuable forms of feedback.

What I like about peer feedback is that it works in two directions at once. It helps the athlete receiving the feedback, but it also deepens the understanding of the athlete giving it. When athletes learn to see movement more clearly in others, they usually become more aware of their own technique as well. Like anything else, this needs structure. Without structure, peer feedback can become vague or unhelpful. But when it is taught and normalized, it can become a real strength of a program.

Not all feedback is individual. Some of it is cultural. Broadcast feedback might come from coaches, captains, or team leaders. It may happen before practice, after practice, during meetings, in lineup discussions, or through written communication. It might focus on standards, preparation, boat feel, technical themes, race habits, or team identity.

This kind of feedback matters because it shapes the environment. Sometimes the message needs to go to everyone. In rowing, where performance depends so much on synchronization, consistency, and shared standards, common language matters. Broadcast feedback helps create alignment. It reinforces culture and reminds the group what matters.

One of the most important forms of feedback is the kind athletes learn to generate for themselves. If an athlete cannot reflect, interpret, and assess their own rowing, they remain too dependent on external correction. That may work for a while, but it limits long-term growth. The goal should not be to create athletes who always need feedback from someone else. The goal should be to help athletes become better at producing feedback internally.

When I am coaching there is only a certain period of time that I can devote to individualizing my feedback for a particular athlete. So it is essential to the process of improvement that each athlete be aware of where they need to improve, and what steps they can take to make progress. I ask my athletes to be their own “best-coach”. Additionally, teaching coxswains certain drills that are needed to fix their crew’s techniques is key. If crews are waiting around as other crews arrive before the main part of training session, for example, then they can be working with their athletes independently and now practice time becomes more efficient and there is less “dead-time” as crews wait for other things to happen.

This is where self-assessment tools can become very powerful.

That could include:

Post-session reflection
Video review
Progress checkpoints
Readiness scores
Technical rating scales
Race debriefs
Clarity Row diagnostics
Feedback at the completion of training sessions, what went well? What could be improved?

Journal prompts – or simple questions like:

What did I do well today?
Where did I lose connection?
What changed when I got tired?
What would I focus on first next time?

Athletes are not always accurate at first, and that is okay. Self-assessment is a skill. Like any skill, it can be coached.

The point is not to expect perfect self-awareness immediately. The point is to create routines that help athletes notice more, think more clearly, and build ownership over time.

This is one of the strongest bridges between education and rowing. Learning improves when people do not just receive information, but also process it, interpret it, and respond to it.

This may be one of the most important and least used parts of the whole ecosystem. In many sports settings, athletes are expected to receive feedback, but not to give it. I think that is a missed opportunity. Athlete-to-coach feedback is not about shallow evaluation. It is about creating structured ways for athletes to help coaches understand what is and is not working in the learning environment.

Do athletes understand the feedback they are being given? Do they know why certain decisions are being made? Do they feel communication is clear? Do they understand how their progress is being evaluated? Do they feel both challenged and supported? These are important questions. Athlete-to-coach feedback can reveal blind spots, improve communication, and build trust.

These are important questions.

In education, we would never say that student feedback to the teacher is irrelevant. In fact, if the goal is growth, it makes perfect sense to ask whether the learner understands the feedback, trusts it, and can use it. Coaching should be no different.

Athlete-to-coach feedback can help reveal blind spots. A coach may feel they are being clear and fair, but unless athletes have a way to respond honestly, communication gaps can go unnoticed for a long time.

This kind of feedback also builds trust when done well. It signals that the coaching staff is serious about improvement too.

That matters.

A feedback ecosystem should not only ask athletes to grow. It should ask coaches to keep growing too.

The point is not to rank these forms of feedback against each other. The point is to understand that each one serves a different purpose. Coach feedback brings expertise and context. Automated feedback brings scale and speed. Peer feedback builds awareness and shared responsibility. Broadcast feedback shapes culture and alignment. Self-assessment builds ownership. Athlete-to-coach feedback improves trust and communication. The healthiest programs do not rely too heavily on one source. They build a better mix.

That mix will vary by team, club, and coach. A junior program may need more structure. A high-performance environment may use more technology. A masters club may benefit from stronger self-assessment routines. A smaller club may lean more heavily on peer learning and captain leadership. There is no one template. But the principle is broad: stronger development happens when feedback moves in more than one direction and through more than one channel.

One of the exercises I did with the GOA professional development session was to self-assess how much of the feedback in my learning environment in the classroom was each type of feedback mentioned in this article. Below is a drawing of how my self-reflection turned out.

A healthy feedback ecosystem is not complicated for the sake of being complicated. It is purposeful.

A strong feedback system is timely enough to matter, specific enough to use, and trusted enough to be heard. It is consistent enough to shape behavior over time, while also being broad enough that athletes are not dependent on one voice alone. Most importantly, it is built to support growth rather than simply correct mistakes.

That distinction matters. The goal is not simply to point out flaws. The goal is to help athletes learn and provide effective learning pathways to reach higher skill levels and unlock better levels of performance.  If all of this can be aligned to learning progression, the invisible can become visible, shared language can be developed and athletes can see what improving performance looks like and entails.

This is where competency-based learning excels. It was so helpful to my practice as an educator/coach to take some time to think through all of the aspects of my knowledge and skillsets and break that down into skill progressions. That sometimes takes the form of observing a high level athlete and asking the essential question –

“How is the athlete behaving or performing and what learning environments would be conducive to achieving this level of mastery?”

When time is taken to break down mastery, it becomes clearer how to construct learning or training programs aimed at reaching performance goals or standards. 

Building a feedback ecosystem does not require a major overhaul. Most coaches and athletes already work with limited time and bandwidth, so the real goal is not to add more. It is to use the time that already exists with more intention. A coach might choose one technical theme for the week, such as connection at the catch or slide control on the recovery, and keep coming back to it in different ways. Early in the week, that theme can be introduced with one clear coaching cue. During steady state or technical work, athletes can be paired up and asked to watch for that same point in each other for a few minutes. At the end of a practice, athletes might answer one or two short reflection questions about how well they applied it. If the team uses video or training data, the coach can connect one piece of feedback to that same area of focus. Later in the week, captains or team leaders can reinforce it again in a short conversation or team message. None of this takes much time on its own, but together it makes feedback more consistent, more visible, and more useful.

The real success of feedback is not just that an athlete rows better today. It is that they become more capable of driving their own growth tomorrow. In that sense, one of the deeper goals of feedback is athlete agency. Feedback should not just produce compliance or short-term correction. It should help athletes grow in three important areas: belief, thinking, and independence.

Belief means developing a grounded sense that growth is possible and that the process matters. Thinking means learning how to interpret performance, reflect with clarity, and make better decisions. Independence means becoming more capable of self-assessment, self-correction, and ownership. When feedback is working well, the athlete is not just improving performance. They are becoming a stronger learner.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that great rowing environments are not defined only by hard work, talent, or even good coaching in the traditional sense. They are defined by the quality of the learning environment. Feedback is a huge part of athlete development. If it only flows one way, the system is limited. If it is too vague, athletes cannot really use it. If it comes too infrequently, important learning opportunities get missed. If it is not trusted, it will not land in a meaningful way. And if coaches never receive feedback themselves, blind spots remain. But when feedback becomes part of the ecosystem, athletes become more aware, coaches become more effective, communication gets stronger, culture gets clearer, and learning becomes more visible. In rowing, feedback should not be a random event. It should be part of the design.

Other Related Articles For More Reading

Mental Skills For Rowing, How Competency-Based Learning Advanced My Own Thinking

Moving Away From 2K Erg Test Times Toward Competency-Based Feedback

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