Akin's Laws

A friend emailed me this link to a list of Design Laws put together by Dave Akin of the University of Maryland.  Having been involved in spacecraft and space systems design and development for his entire career, including teaching the senior-level capstone spacecraft design course, for ten years at MIT, Dave Akin compiled a list of 40 wise maxims, some of which I’ve included below as being particularly relevant to rowing coaching!

1. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong
2. (de Saint-Exupery's Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
3. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion
4. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time
5. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point
6. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis
7. When in doubt, estimate; in an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along
8. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over
9. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though
10. Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate
11. (Edison's Law) "Perfect" is the enemy of "good"
12. (Shea's Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up
13. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours
14. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct
15. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though
16. The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you've screwed up
17. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately
18. (Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which
19. When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)
20. It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it
21.  (Varsi's Law) Schedules only move in one direction
22. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right
23.  (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees
24.  (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week
25. (Roosevelt's Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have
26. Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great engineer designs them to be effective
27. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame
28. Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit because mostof the analysis was right...)

Fairbairnism of the Day #2

"Differences in methods of teaching are merely relying on different points to attain the same object.  It is like two men climbing a tree from opposite sides.  Let them go on climbing."

- Stephen Fairbairn

Elvis and Elephants

Everyone knows who Elvis was: he was one of the most important American musicians of the 20th Century; he was a cultural icon who changed the face of popular music.

His films and records pervaded society to the point that if I write “One for the money, two for the show…” you’re already thinking “Three to get ready now go Cat go… and don’t... step on my blue suede shoes…”. You can hear the backing singers and base line shuffling away and picture him dancing…

There are few figures who can be recognised simply by their silhouette, but Elvis’ trademark hair styles, costumes, records and films mean that he will maintain his fanatical following for years to come.

Now, if you can see a clock, I’d like for you to wait until the second hand gets to the Twelve O’Clock position.

Now try to watch that second hand move all of the way around the face without thinking of The King. Don’t think about Memphis, or Jailhouse Rock. Don’t think about his blue suede shoes, hairstyle or famous white suits with their huge collars. Don’t think about the sounds of his music.

Pretty hard isn’t it? Not to think about something when you’ve been told not to think about it. Life is full of these odd little phenomena.

When people learn to overtake when learning to drive, they’re told not to look at the car in front that they’re planning to overtake, but into the place that they want to move. If you look at the car in front of you, you’re more likely to crash into it.

How often have you said “Don’t look now” to someone only for them to turn around? How often do you hear someone tell you “Don’t look down” and you yourself look down?

The reason for this is quite simple: how can you be sure that you’re not thinking about Elvis unless you check back from time to time to make sure that you’re not thinking about Elvis?
One of Steve Fairbairn’s old sayings was “To call out “Three, you are rushing” will only result in making him hurry more.”

Telling someone not to do something makes them fixate on the thing that they’re not supposed to be doing – and how are you supposed to do the right thing when all you’ve been told is the thing you’re not supposed to be doing?

Just look at young children who are told not to play with their food – they fixate on not playing with their food and can think of nothing else. Sure enough, moments later, they’re playing with their food again.

Based on this idea – how can you stop a child playing with their food or the Three seat from rushing the slide? Simple – get them to fixate upon the thing that they’re supposed to be doing, rather than the thing that they’re not supposed to be doing.

A rowing coach might tell the Three seat to focus on floating up the slide, trying to move with the crew or to feel as little pressure on the tops of the shoes as possible. They might tell the athlete to listen to the wheels on the slide come forwards at an even speed or to picture the wheels slowing down on their way forwards.

By focussing on what you want the person to do, rather than on what it is you don’t want them to do you’re much more likely to get the desired response.

 

By way of example, I’d like you to spend a whole minute thinking about nothing but pink elephants. You might think about their big, pink flappy ears and pink, wrinkly skin. You might think about the rustle of the tall pink grasses that they walk through to reach the tall pink trees from which they feed. You might be able to picture yourself riding the pink elephant, with the slow, regular sway from side to side as it moves forwards and the odd candy-floss smell that comes from its hide. Finally, you might be able to hear the pink grasshoppers chirping as the big pink sun sets over the wide, rolling expanses of the pink, dusky savannah.

 

…and for a whole minute, you’ll find that you didn’t think about Elvis once.

Fairbairnism of the Day #1

"A crew will learn to row by racing, but it cannot learn to race by rowing."

- Steve Fairbairn

Train the movement, not the muscle

"The cornerstone of functional training ... is to train movements, not muscles."

- Vern Gambetta

"Joint angle does not provide the definitive decision on which muscles are going to be activated - it's the direction of force that will make the final decision on how the muscles will be activated."

- Tony Reynolds

"When training movements in sport training, both the movement and load vector must match the movement as practised in the sport in order to be specific."

- Bret Contreras

Winning Ugly?

There was little to choose between Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador by the time they reached Stage 15 of the 2010 edition of the Tour de France. Each had identified the other as his main rival and they were playing a cagey game of cat and mouse.

In cycling there is an unwritten code of respect between riders that dictates that if the rider wearing the yellow jersey suffers from a mechanical failure, or a puncture, that the rest of the peloton will wait for them to recover. Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich granted each other this respect on several occasions. However, when Schleck, who was in yellow, missed a gear change and dropped his chain in 2010, Contador continued to push the peloton onwards rather than waiting for his rival.

He mounted the podium at the end of the stage to boos and heckling, but ultimately went on to win the Tour (though he was recently stripped of this win when he was found to have doped).

In the furore that followed Chain-gate, a good number of Contador's supporters pointed out that Schleck had not suffered from a freak mechanical fault, or from a puncture, but from a poor gear change: that is, they argued that it was his own fault.

Is taking advantage of a situation 'winning ugly', or should you allow your opponents a way back into a race when they make a mistake?

The tennis player Brad Gilbert wrote an interesting book called Winning Ugly in which he talked about the various dirty psychological tricks that some people play during tennis matches. He went into the mind games employed by some of the greats of tennis, from Jimmy Connors to John MacEnroe. Rather than just losing his cool, McEnroe's famous tantrums were a genius dirty trick intended to put good opponents off their game. The momentum shifts so frequently in a tennis match that he'd throw a well timed tantrum whenever his opponent looked to be gaining the upper hand.

Is staying focussed 'winning ugly', or in a one on one contest, is the mental game just as important as the physical one?

Following the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race, much has already been written. But something that has come up again and again is the assertion that Cambridge should feel that theirs is a hollow victory.

The race was hotly contested over the first half of the course despite many (myself included) feeling that Oxford were going to walk away with it. The Umpire stopped the race when a man swam out into the middle of the river and the crews were restarted from slightly further back up the course. Immediately off the restart, Oxford steered aggressively into the Cambridge crew and were warned no fewer than eight times. A clash followed and the Oxford six man's blade was broken. As Oxford had moved into Cambridge's water and as he was warning Oxford at the time of the clash, the Umpire allowed the race to continue. Cambridge walked away with it and won with a reasonable margin.

Given that this is now several hours after the race, the conspiracy theories are already starting to sprout. I've heard it said that the bucket rig employed by Cambridge has special blade breaking abilitiesand that the Tabs were going out there to break blades. I've heard it said that the Oxford cox deliberately targeted the Cambridge boat close to the bucket rig as they were more likely to go on to catch a crab...

But neither of those are true. Did Cambridge employ underhand tactics? Did they intend to go out to break their opponent's blade?

Obviously not. To suggest that Cambridge did either of these, that Oxford should abandon the race so that the result would read 'Race not finished' rather than 'Cambridge won' or that Cambridge's win should be hollow because of a coxing error would be Losing Ugly and would disrespect both the athletes and coaches.

It was unfortunate that the race was not clean, but this is match racing where clean results cannot always be guaranteed - who wants to see the course buoyed next year? Anyone? Didn't think so...

TC

P.S. Latest on Alex Woods is that he's conscious, stable and set to make a full recovery.

Rigging Boundaries

“Harry [Mahon] passionately believed in the harmonious timing of body and boat, a relaxed but powerful interaction of the human engine with a sleek racing craft“

- Martin McElroy

Put simply, rigging is about taking a group of people who are inherently different and creating an environment in which they can move together. Far from just mucking around with measuring tapes and spanners, rigging is absolutely fundamental to moving a boat with speed and encompasses a great deal more than many athletes and coaches realise.

Everything that we do in rowing is motivated by the desire to see a crew rowing long, powerful strokes in time with the rhythmic flow of the shell. To do this, they’ve got to be able to connect and sweep their blades together, driving the shell with the same power at the same point in spite of their varied physiques, strengths and rowing styles.

It is vital that all decisions should be motivated by this desire to see the crew rowing those long, powerful, rhythmic strokes. Anything that can be done to move the crew towards this golden ideal should be considered to be within scope.

Your concept of rigging should go beyond the limited changes you can make to the boat’s settings to accommodate athletes of different physiques or to modify the manner in which they exert their power.

Your concept of rigging should encompass each athlete’s core conditioning and each athlete’s flexibility. You should be rigging them to fit the boat and the picture of the stroke you have in your mind just as much as you rig the boat to fit them.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.”

- Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer