By sculling camp coach and former director, Troy Howell

High performance in any sport is primarily a neurological phenomenon. Even in endurance sports like ours, excellence is as much a function of the adaptation of the athlete's nervous system to the task at hand as it is of superior physiological capacity that can be measured in a lab or with a stopwatch. Yet because we cannot readily measure neurological refinement, we too often dismiss the idea that it can be coached. We lump it in with other supposed "intangibles" like heart, and grit, or we even make up words like "winningness" and "boat sense" and imply that these are things that only the most naturally gifted athletes possess rather than things that can be learned and developed deliberately over time.

Anyone who has been to one of our sculling camps has heard our opening day dock talk about learning to scull for an adult or teenager being analogous to learning to walk as a toddler. Both present complex and unfamiliar environments to our nervous systems, and as long as we explore them with a sense of excitement, challenge, and fearlessness, we adapt remarkably swiftly. The potential wrench in the system is our no-longer-a -toddler habit of self-reproach: no toddler falls down and says "dammit - this standing up and walking thing is too hard! I don't think it's for me - I'll just stick with crawling."

Our Comfort in the Boat sessions at Craftsbury are intended to bring us back to simple exploration and experimentation, or perhaps to put it in more familiar terms, an opportunity to simply play in the boat and see where it takes you. Leave your heart rate monitor and your Speedcoach on your nightstand once in a while, and spend some time training your nervous system with the same sense of purpose that you bring to the work you do to improve more measurable aspects of fitness. Mastery of the boat and oars leads to greater satisfaction with the sport.