#RowCon21 Pathways for the Paralympics: How you can get involved in the Paralympic Movement

Introduction uh for those that don't know my name is alan minzner i'm the director the high performance director for u.s power rowing and i'm really excited to um have this presentation today because i think the most thing i hear from uh people uh is geez i have no idea how i'd be eligible or how to get involved or what i can do or where i should begin so that's kind of what we're going to talk about today and i have two coaches joining me uh this afternoon we have uh tom sadell who has been our para coach liaison since uh pretty much the uh selection for the world championships crew uh so we had a bit of a redirect there when the worlds were cancelled and uh tom came on as a coach liaison to get that squad uh refocused on some new goals and some new time frames so he's been a great uh help to our program and you'll hear from him a bit later um and now we have jenny who has also been in the pr3 mix four as a coxswain she actually was the coach of hallie our pr1 women's single sculler this year in tokyo and uh we just kind of want to talk about some of the different pathways that we are trying to outline over the next three and uh four year cycle up to 2024 in 2028. so maybe uh tom and then jenny would you guys uh just give a brief introduction for yourselves yeah totally well uh first off thanks to ellen and us rowing for inviting me on this is great i'm super excited for this my background started rowing uh towards the end of high school actually rode at a school down in connecticut and then came back started coaching and made a few stops at umass did a graduate program here in boston spent a little bit of time um coaching on at a intern role at harvard and have been at tufts ever since and do a little bit of other coaching through boston as well with cri been around cbc and union but yeah really excited about this new role it's been a ton of fun uh and excited to kind of dive into it a little bit and some of the resources we have for the athletes sure i'll i will introduce myself hi everyone my name is jenny i'm a caucasian female with dark brown hair braided to the one side and i was a coxswain as ellen had mentioned for seven years on the us national team and then and won the silver medal in the rio boat and then this past year made the jump over to coaching into the launch and and actually had the opportunity to coach hailey smith at the tokyo 2020 game 2021 games so i am really excited to be in this role and really kind of tackle pr1pr2 rowing in the us and making it extremely competitive because i'm competitive i don't know if you all know that oh yeah so that's that's awesome yeah so uh a couple of quick um housekeeping i see some people uh still joining in that's great what we're gonna do today is if you have uh substantive substantive questions use the q a if you uh but for the chat as you roll in why don't you let us know uh who you are where you're from just a name or town or whether you're an athlete or a coach or just uh someone interested in the process we would love to hear that so the chat will be used for more just interactive high fives little comments back and forth and uh questions will be monitored and we have brett's going to help us monitor that make sure we get to all of your questions so we will go ahead and get started sharing my screen here What is the Paralympic Movement so as we said we've got our panelists on today myself uh jenny and tom were like super happy to be here um i think that one of the things we really want to make sure that um people really understand as we set our sights on paris and la 2024 and 2028 that uh the paralympic movement is not just about you know the the athletes that are currently training and the coaches that are currently working with them we really need the entire rowing community and the greater community in general to really embrace the movement and help move us forward so we know that we need coaches we need athletes we need event organizers to be thinking about para we need volunteers we need fans we need sponsors and i think one of uh one of the things that i really believe is that our job is to make it easy and worthwhile for you to engage with the paralympic pipeline i know there's a lot of information sometimes it's confusing sometimes it can be a bit frustrating we're still learning and evolving but our job is to try and make it a bit easier for you to help us i think it's important to understand How much has changed since Rio as we think about where we're headed super important to know where we've been and if you've not been involved in para rowing you may not be aware of just how much has changed um since rio it feels like there's no way this could even be possible but in rio we raised a thousand meters um and it had been that way since the beginning of the of the paralympics the athletes that were involved in that crew and in subsequent years we really um really had a message of equity and equality that we were trying to get across and not to say that it was just us but there were a lot of other people who felt that way as well so not only have the distance now um been made equal to the olympic distance also the um the metal uh bonuses are also equal which was a huge change from uh rio 2016 to the tokyo games that the the metal bonuses were the same um para rowing at the world championships have also increased we now have uh knight pardon me i just went too fast through my slides there we go that's why i shouldn't monitor the old thing um at the world championships we've added events we now have uh small boat events that help build for the paralympic events so that we are now at uh nine events with 19 athletes and that's a big increase we recently uh just weeks before this uh presentation the international paralympic committee also elevated the pr3 mixed double to a paralympic event and so that brings us to five events at the paralympic games with 11 athletes total and since rio we have earned a total of eight medals in international competition and seven in the pr three categories uh various categories there and one in the pr1 and i make this point because this is a message we want to really convey throughout this presentation is not necessarily the difference really of pr 3 and pr one or two The difference between PR3 and PR1 except for the fact that i do want to make it clear that 100 percent of the athletes in the silver medal tokyo pr 3 mix 4 crew rode competitively in college so i think that's incredibly important when we think about why is this event generally gaining more medals in international competition they come to the national team with a very robust set of racing experience and racing skills and we really are going to rely on the u.s high school and collegiate system to keep our pr 3 events moving forward and being as competitive as possible but we know that that is one of the key factors that allows them to be that competitive on the international stage so we're going to be looking at ways where we can create that type of robust and developmental racing opportunities for the fixed seat categories Pathways to the Paralympic Movement so when we think about different pathways to the paralympics um the pr3 are a physical impairment but these athletes are able to use a sliding seat use the full uh body motion that would be typical in a high school or college rower that's why the pathway for the pr3 is going to remain in that high school and collegiate system we want to be working toward identifying athletes that have the ability to stay in our program long term and develop as any athlete would along a long term development model so we are definitely looking at the u23 and u19 athletes set as we think about our goals for 2028 one thing that we really want to make clear though to collegiate coaches and even club coaches is that when we first encounter an athlete early in their career that's when we begin engaging directly with coaches and i think that maybe has been a missed opportunity in years past where we would identify an athlete and try and bring them into the national team system just in that way however we realize now that what we really want to do is not only recruit more athletes but we want a very engaged informed and aware population of coaches so that even if you do not work with a an athlete with a disability yourself you would have the ability to help refer an athlete to the system we know these athletes are out there we know that there's another john tangway or charlie norton out there rowing in college somewhere or in high school we know there's another danny hansen or ali ali riley out there rowing we want to make it easy for you to refer the athlete and that we also want to make sure that college coaches know that there's no real reason that the system that you have in place your goals for an nc2a championship or a youth championship uh the involvement of your athlete in a paralympic program does not need to interfere with that if the athlete is going to be in your varsity program we want to give them the time to develop in that program without sort of poaching athletes or having an athlete compete with um or have conflicting information from two different sets of coaching because we know that that's the best place for these athletes uh to to train and to get better is in environments where they are fighting for seats against people who are better than them or maybe have more ability than them so that's one thing we really want to stress with coaches so that it shouldn't be disruptive for you to refer an athlete to our system and we also want to make sure we extend the opportunity for uh coaches who are working with pr3 athletes to have opportunities to interact with the staff of the u.s para high performance team we do that by um inviting you to participate as a coach at some of our high performance camps we have started a monthly coaching call for for coaches who have submitted scores um for the for the paralympic for their para athletes so they can be much more aware of what's coming up on our agenda we have uh materials via the usopc's paralympians made here campaign i know that some of the athletes had that um the their collegiate flags and and logos there over in tokyo taking photos so that uh the colleges where these athletes were uh i don't wanna say where they were raised but where they really gained all of their skills could really get credit and notoriety so you have something to give back to the program so for the most part um the athletes that come into our program we will remain with a summer type of selection for this year for the pr3 and possibly into 2023 so that again just letting you as coaches know that um our selection for the pr3 for the for this year and possibly the next year will definitely not be in conflict with a collegiate system so i think that's very important to know when we think about Pathway for PR1 and PR2 the pathway for pr1 and pr2 while we know we are trying to develop opportunities for athletes with disabilities to compete at the collegiate level that would be amazing and we continue to push for that and find ways where college programs can make reasonable accommodations when necessary to make an opportunity for somebody in a pier 1 or a pr2 category to still represent their school so incredible opportunities with the dadvail regatta has stepped up in a big way to offer opportunities for collegiate athletes with disabilities who aren't really suitable to compete on the current team which is focused on aids i mean we don't uh we don't race uh singles at the collegiate level so we wanna make sure that there's there's good pathways so dadvale and hopefully some others will really step up but we know that the most for the most part um the way we identify a pr1 or pr2 rower is going to require a different pathway of communication with us and for now a slightly different structure so of course the first place is our own club adaptive programs those have been growing recently and we still want to make sure that they have ways to find find the high performance system and engage with it also i think an incredible opportunity exists right now in indoor competition because it can be virtual or in person we realize that a lot of athletes in the pr1 and pr2 the easiest point of entry for them is going to be on the rowing machine and indoor competitions have gotten very creative with how they uh offer different events of a range of events for people with disabilities the format that the that they can compete in uh there's been everything from nc2a style brackets so it's much easier for an athlete with a disability who may be in a pr one or pr2 category to find their way to our sport through indoor competition i think that's probably happening in a lot of ways but we also know that uh many of the pr three rowers that you have to have so much more on water time that that it may not be the the best way to identify people in the pr3 category or even a junior category um the other way we have is we want to start emphasizing our multi-sport para events multi-sport meaning a number of different sports offered for people with disabilities there's a high crossover potential for athletes who have mobility impairments that are significant enough that would make them eligible for pr1 and pr2 rowing and for those of you on the call i know we've got about 25 or 30 people on right now um pr1 and pr2 that's just we're just going to call it fixed seat and we'll get into those differences a bit later but i put some examples up here in the in the illustrations we have blake a great example of a crossover athlete crossing over from rowing to canoe kayak but highly successful so i just want to point out that uh that ability that ability exists for the athlete to to cross over and so we're going to use it on the flip side where we partner with other multi-sport organizations such as angel city sports um i think liz is maybe present liz greenberger from roe la she's going to be presenting on some of their efforts to get involved with para rowing and they've teamed up with angel city sports in la and that's a great multi-sport event that we're going to hopefully be a bigger and bigger part of in the coming years but that the athletes that are already engaged in these multi-sport events have a way to find rowing first through indoor and then on water we we work a lot with adaptive sport new england and boston and we've gotten some great referrals from them into our program and then i just list you know two of the main ones that are kind of on people's radar coming up in february the crash b world indoor rowing championships have a great number of adaptive and uh para rowing categories offered there and enduro is coming up another uh online event uh some in person but just one of the many ways you can find in person and remote competitions via indoor rowing and again since we often find um the athletes through these maybe non-conventional ways we do again want to connect directly uh with coaches if we can in that area but a lot of times the athletes in this category will find us and they don't have a coach so our first job is to figure out where they might be in the pipeline and to maybe refer them to a resource in their local community because that's going to be the best way that they can grow and develop and see if this is something that would be of of interest to them and a rewarding experience for them we also often hear from programs looking to start para and adaptive rowing programs within their current club and i'll say on the on the flip side um if there is a multi-sport organizations such as adaptive sport new england or an angel city sports or angel city games event happening connecting with those organizations can really help you get started in your own rowing program because they may not know rowing but they have worked with a population of a wide range of disabilities and it might be a great way not only for you to find athletes but for also you and your staff to get some exposure about how to work with the people um that are already in these organizations um we also prefer for coaches here that that connect with us same as we have for the pathway on the pr3 coaches and athletes we do want to extend the invitation that coaches can come and observe and help coach at some of our high performance camps that we offer not just selection camps but we do some winter training camps and uh short-term clinics etc it's a great opportunity to get exposed to like how we how we do things on the water at the national team and also again to participate on those monthly coaching calls if you've got an athlete that's submitting scores on a regular basis that that we want to help you understand where that athlete might fit in the greater picture of other athletes within their age group and within their specific category um so Certification process for PR1 you guys have heard a lot from me and you probably know my face a lot more from when i actually coached the pr3 so i'm going to let jenny take this next slide and kind of just give you a little bit of an overview about why there are two pathways and some of the considerations as to why it it may make sense uh for some really practical reasons so jenny why don't you take this slide will do and just before um i take the slide we did have one question come in um has the certification process for pr1 change since the rules get changed so the rules did change but i believe the certification process and by that the classification process for determining a pure one athlete versus a pr2 has not changed as far as i know correct yeah that's correct and and i think um you know we have just pierre 1 pier 2 pr 3 in para rowing and there are many other sports that have multiple categories so i think the pr1 is the most challenging event because of the range of impairments which is a direct um effect on the ability and the the length and the leverage quite frankly and leverages everything in this sport so i agree that the the pr1 category it is a challenge um but we've got well maybe we're going to have jenny talk about that a bit later you're taking my thunder no no no it's okay someone said that the other day and i think well people need to hear this reinforced there's no way we're going to say one thing and they're going to absorb every every single thing that we say so it bears repeating uh we're looking at you know different seat setups for the pr1 we we don't see any change in the in the very near future to the classification rules however that is talked about quite a bit at the international level among the athletes and the coaches um and probably i'll just say more to come on that from the international level but the answer the current question is uh no the classification itself has not changed and with that in mind and i think we can kind of go into the two pathways area so we have the sliding seat pathway which is the pr3 as we had been speaking about and then we have the fixed seat pathway which is the pr1 and pr2 and i think the largest difference um in these two is the actual time to get to come to competition level and for a pr three athlete generally speaking i mean these guys are the ones on your high school teams on your novice teams on your varsity teams takes about two to four years to get an athlete full sliding seat athlete completely competitive there's a lot of technical aspect on the water aspect that goes into it and and there's a lot of motion with other people that you have to get down pat as well whereas on the flip side of that you have the pr1 and pr2 fixed athletes and you have about 6 to 12 months to get them up and going competitive generally speaking for pr1 it's a little bit shorter for pr2 a little bit longer and that all sort of boils down to equipment and technical side of things so pr1 you're really only using part of your torso your arms and shoulders and then square feather the blade with pontoons so you have to yes you do have to find some stabilization there but generally speaking a pr1 athlete has a difficult time stabilizing to begin with so you don't have to necessarily worry quite as much about that pr2 athlete you're only really rowing with one other person in the boat right now for paralympic level competition or by yourself for that matter and you also don't have to incorporate the lights it's arms and body swing arms and body swing and so it's just a little less technical a little bit easier to get up to that competition level now to master it probably just as hard but we're talking about just getting a competition level and now another kind of difference with that well the overall like ore technique and rowing technique might be a little bit easier the actual equipment optimization time for pr1 or pr2 athlete is generally a lot longer so it takes i mean two three four months almost sometimes to even get the right setup for a seat and i see ellen one yeah and i'll even interject that i will say that the equipment optimization is honestly ongoing throughout the entire cycle of getting a pr1 or pr2 athlete ready for competition i i will just say that i want to make sure that you all understand that that time is fairly necessary it it can't be skipped there's no there's no cookie cutter for this equipment so the equipment optimization is is really um a really a lifelong evolution uh between the coach and the athlete and and making some decisions about rigging and or length and even just seat comfort and setup so i just want to make sure that um if you think that it's only taking you a long time as a novice coach of a pr1 or pr2 no it takes an incredibly um maddeningly long time to get it really optimized but um it's it's a trial and error process that uh that has to take place and it can't be avoided and with that being said hopefully in the near future it will be less trial and error and more knowledge based kind of as we test and as we get better seating as we get better equipment and but with the sliding seat generally speaking you have the sliding seat you might have a grip attachment you might have a foot plate change but the minute the overall equipment is pretty minimal equipment adaptation is pretty minimal um and i think that also speaks as i mentioned to the competition level time the pr3 athletes need more water time i mean you don't necessarily have to adjust their equipment as much but you do have to get them moving together you do have to coordinate three separate kind of motions arms body legs legs body arms and so it takes a little bit more time on the water versus the pr1 athletes where a lot of on the water time is spent equipment figuring out equipment in all honesty and so a lot of their on land time is where they're going to find all of their strength endurance and you can even work a little bit of technique on land with them but that equipment as ellen mentioned is just so crucial and really adjusting one aspect at a time of equipment is what takes so long so i mean we kind of talked a little bit about complexities of skill acquisition 1x training and racing for the fixed seat athletes and then for the sliding seat we have single training but it's team boat only racing so the pr three has the pair the double and four which are all team boats and the pr1 has a single pr two has single and double at world championships so there is like a little bit of team boat but the pr3 is all team boat train all team boat racing and try to do mostly singles racing just to get them that skill and that ability to row on the water that feel for the water and barriers to entry for the fixed seat athlete huge and at least getting on the water there's physical environmental equipment cultural barriers too i mean physical you have to be able to sometimes get a wheelchair to the boathouse and get a wheelchair to the dock get them transferred over and equipment you have to have seating you have to have strapping it can be a lot it can definitely be a lot and we'll talk about this a little bit more later when i go a little bit deeper into pr1 not done yet it's okay sorry about that that's okay i'll just keep going um so for the pr3 athletes generally speaking it's going to be a lot more water time we'll just kind of summarize here it'll be a lot more water time a lot more training on the water time a lot longer barrier to until you get competitive in the boat pr1 pr2 a lot shorter period a lot more equipment adjustment on the water and a lot more on land training time i hope that summarizes appropriately and makes sense for everybody if not throw a question okay moving on we're going to go to the fixed seat coaching considerations now so as i mentioned at the start of this i coach hallie smith the pr1 woman at tokyo 2021 and i also have been around the national team adaptive world since 2009 actually so i've seen a lot of pr1 athletes i've coached a lot of pr1 pr2 athletes and the main thing that i want to drive home today for everybody that's on the call is it's not necessarily what your athlete is diagnosed with it's how your athlete injury is presented so let me explain that a little bit more you have you might have an athlete that has a mid lumbar injury let's say but they present as a lower lumbar injury and get a little more range of motion than what they can do so they might be classified pr1 or pr2 either way you want to train them at their kind of like top tip level so if you have an athlete that has let's say a mid-level injury presentation you might strap them there because that's going to be like their juice that's where like they need the strapping for racing when they go hard they need it there but for actual training you kind of want to train them with the strap maybe a little bit looser or a little bit lower to really strengthen all of the muscles that they can around that area and that's what i mean when i say athlete injury presentation level it's kind of like they present in one place and they may or may not be able to race in that place but they can definitely try training in that place and working towards ultimately racing in that place and then also taking into consideration the athletes current ability level i think for pr1 and pr2 athletes it is so easy to over train them i mean we're talking about these injury levels that can be mid mid level and when you uh kind of take that strap down a little bit you got to be really careful because all of those tiny muscles that they haven't been working for years all of a sudden might start twitching might start working and it's so easy to just pull them get them out of whack over train them injure them further they are so prone to these sort of smaller injuries and per se and so i think you really have to take into account your athlete's current ability level push them a little bit but not so much so that they injure themselves and i'll talk about that on my next slide a little bit more and then i think other challenges to coaching six seat athletes at the national team level specifically are a mental health i mean this goes for any national team athlete any athlete in reality um but mental health challenges can be extremely relevant and present when an athlete rose and trains and so it's definitely something to sort of watch out for and adjust for with your athlete talk about with your athlete and then with these spinal cord injury athletes comorbidities a lot of times these athletes have more than just their injury going on and i'm saying injury this could be a birth disability from birth disability this could be a car accident i just say injury because we're talking about an injury level that injury presentation level versus actually like someone with spina bifida who was born with spina bifida has an injury presentation level of lower kind of core stability no leg stability that's more what i'm talking about just to clarify with everyone a little bit so those comorbidities though may make it difficult if you know that someone has an injury from a car accident all of a sudden they're slamming against back against their seat next thing you know they get another herniated disc in their back because they were more prone from the car accident to begin with i mean that's like that's an extreme example but you have to be aware of that as a coach especially when you're training them as hard as we train our athletes next slide ellen Comorbidities we got this i promise we are professionals um speaking of like comorbidities we have different physiology for these athletes this summer one thing that we really had to take into account was sweating and how hot it was going to be and a lot of times these athletes are more prone to really hot conditions or really cold conditions and can't necessarily regulate their body temperature as well so kind of when you start training an athlete of this nature take note of that kind of ask them beforehand hey do you have any predisposition to effects of heat or cold do you sweat in your legs if they don't use their legs a lot of times these athletes don't sweat as well in their legs and just note that they are going to have that different level of physiology and and i think that also comes into play when you're creating workout plans for that and training plans for them and waits for them too you know these athletes are going to get really good benefits from doing timed pieces but may get a different benefit from doing a metered piece that you would have for a pr3 athlete it's all kind of plays into the different physiology that these athletes have and how long it might take them to complete a piece so the last sort of thing that i want to talk about with everybody about these fixed seat coaching considerations is what i had mentioned kind of originally about pushing limits but not overstepping them so i mean when we're training for national team level you want this athlete to be as strong and as fit as possible and you have to push the limits of what they're capable of so that might mean training with the strap lower that might mean training in a boat that's less stable but make sure that you listen to the athlete listen to the athlete if they're saying i'm really not comfortable doing this or no my body is not happy with this listen it's okay you can talk to them and work with them to figure out what might work in that situation also major thing in para rowing be open to creativity you have to have an open mind to trying different tactics and working around the challenges that come up um one way that i like to kind of talk about coaching in general is like you don't you're not gonna talk to a math major and say row like a haiku and you're not gonna talk to like an english major and say row like a parabola it's the same sort of concept with coaching these athletes if there's a challenge if they have one mindset if they have one thing that's going wrong you have to kind of switch your mindset you can't just continuously hammer and so as long as you're open to trying those different tactics and whether or not they fail that's all part of the testing that's part of the you know every day trying a new thing seeing what works seeing what doesn't that ongoing two three four month equipment testing um but it's crucial so i think that those are kind of my nail in points i've i could say so much more on this um but i'm going i think i'm handing it off to tom yeah i just want to make one sort of follow-up point i mean i think just to sum up you know listening to the athlete they're the user expert a lot of coaches are don't know exactly so listening to the athlete and taking a lot of time to get to know what those other considerations might be other than what category they are and the other thing that you mentioned jenny is like you know mainly we of course as coaches want to do no harm especially in those first interactions with an athlete and uh we don't have it quite ready yet but we're um the the pts that work with the um athletes in boston are putting together like a a screening uh pt screening that kind of looks like it measures uh different strengths and maybe some of the asymmetries so that will and hopefully that's going to be able to be rolled out um so that an athlete could have this assessment done at any uh pt in their community so that way we want to we want to empower people to make good decisions with how they work with athletes and to know what they're getting into so um hopefully we make it uh less stressful when we begin working there so i'm gonna you mentioned that one thing i just want to say one more aspect so in addition to coaching i work in disability advocacy and bringing that into the coaching world ask the athlete too don't like you can listen to them but ask them um especially if you're a coach that wants to get into high performance level training you have this awesome athlete like ellen said they're the user they know what their body is going to do they know how to transfer what would be the best way to go about doing this just ask them and then listen great and speaking of questions if you have questions for jenny or anything else you can throw that in the q a but i think we'll move uh next and let you guys uh hear from tom and uh i'm just gonna let you go ahead and uh take it away here yeah yeah totally well let me know if i miss anything too and i've got my chat open on the side here anyone has any questions or wants to hear something more specific about what we talk about so i have taken on sort of a unique role a new role um and it seems to be kind of constantly evolving which is super exciting and fun to to be a part of um and i think you know the biggest thing about this role is that it's uh not involved in selection and i think that's where a lot of the value is is added to the uh to the athletes in the system because i can sort of sit back um you know listen help and try to manage without them thinking or knowing that i'm gonna have to you know be at the selection camp to make the decision about where they sit and what boat or whether they're sitting in one at all um and this this sort of gives us a pretty good framework to just sort of chat figure out what's going to work best and and i think the honesty that comes with that is is really awesome um and and you know even so far it's been i don't even know six months maybe and we've been able to really sort of sort out a couple of issues that may have sort of been kind of pushed to the side uh you know if if maybe you know someone was kind of deciding their future based off these things so i think it's been great but yeah i mean to kind of describe the role one of the biggest things i do is try to manage the training program especially the communication of it and the organization of it with ellen and the other coaches and we store the national team training program on training peaks we send out an outline every month to all the coaches and athletes that are involved kind of at the high performance level you know and there's kind of some steps to get to that point but again you know using training peaks if you haven't checked it out it's some really cool software um that you can you know message your training program you know store the workouts on each day and then also as the athletes upload their data if they're using things like smart watches their phones gps any of that stuff all of that data can be uploaded so we can kind of you know part of my job is to look and see you know how much time are they spending in different heart rate zones how much time are they spending rowing versus cross training versus lifting weights you know that kind of thing and so yeah training peaks super cool great tool definitely check it out when you have some free time and so besides that the other big thing is just managing the the physiology testing so again we're kind of talking about the high performance group athletes especially the ones local at the high performance training center which is cri in boston and so what we're doing there is a lot of lactate testing and i'm happy to you know kind of dive deeper into that if anyone's interested but we're you know doing that on a regular basis we've got some strength training outlines and a lot of the athletes actually work with their own trainers or their own groups but we do want to kind of provide something as an outline and especially for those that need ideas or resources or don't have access to those resources so that's been pretty cool and then the final piece is just doing a little bit of analysis with their baseline testing and every month we have uh some baseline workouts that we're completing you know maybe we're changing the rates or changing the rest um and and i think you know one thing that ellen has done really well is try to store the data and so we can look back month over month see similar workouts and see hey is this uh is this actually working you know are we are we doing what we need to be doing and if not um you know it's been good so far but if not we could adjust right and we could figure out what we need to do next the the next big piece is just kind of needing to consult with all athletes that are entering that high performance group and just as a couple of examples you know people returning from time off you know the athletes that are maybe coming back from the paralympics the athletes that were in the last cycle but are thinking hey i want to give it a go again um and then some of the other common things that come up people wanting to maximize recovery you know we have athletes that are at least at this level are all adults and you know some are doing phds people working full-time jobs people in you know other aspects of school and a lot of the time i feel like i spend trying to work with them about how can we maximize your recovery um how can we balance the training versus you know trying to go on vacation every once in a while trying to spend time with your family and you know get the most out of all this and then i think the last big piece is just training zones and that comes a lot from the lactate testing and some of the heart rate stuff that we do but you know especially people that have been around a while and training a while we want to make sure they're maximizing their time and they don't feel like every day is you know the hardest thing they've ever done right they're training intelligently and we can help through that process Resources and uh and for this next slide uh we've got sort of some of the resources um and you know ellen jenny jump in on all this stuff because i know uh you guys also have a ton of info and knowledge on this but the pera newsletter will be coming out quarterly uh that'll be starting in the new year which uh you know i don't know if ellen you want to mention any more about that but i think that's going to be a pretty cool way to just get information out yeah so for the uh for the current national team members they'll be still getting their national team newsletter uh that won't change this one will be a little bit more it'll touch on national team but also let folks know about upcoming opportunities for classification for competition uh any uh new information that we have that we want to get out to people any deadlines for submitting erg scores we've got we've got a fairly robust calendar um that is the third thing on this list here but it'll just kind of keep that information flowing and uh we really want to make sure that one of our jobs just kind of increase that awareness so we're excited about that it'll be somewhat national team but also a lot of knowledge geared toward that those sort of junior intermediate and development levels before one gets to the national team yeah yeah totally and the next thing on that list for the resources is we have this baseline metrics form this may have been touched on early on but this is for anybody that you know may be even starting to compete not even compete starting to train or explore rowing with a disability and you know this is just how we get in contact and and store the info information again uh more data you know it's got some basic stuff on it to fill out and uh you know this is even stuff like you know at cri they have a um you know teen para group this is a great thing for them to fill out we just see hey who's participating in this so again you know that's on the u.s rowing website as well um and and we can uh i think people should definitely have access to that and i think it's posted at the end right ellen yeah it's posted at the end and it's also on uh the us throwing website but again it's really just literally uh seated height wing span uh vertical height if you're a standing athlete push-ups an inverted row you don't even have to row to be able to fill this card out and we've actually identified um two high potential athletes just from this random google form uh they're gonna be good crossover athletes now they're in the system they've been introduced to some of the resources at that level and we're trying to steer them toward resources in their own community so they will have time to develop as well so it's a very simple form and the more information we have from that the better our data will be moving forward so if we have a few years of information about people's baseline metrics um we can start to identify who of that group has been successful are there unique characteristics that seem to be a trend in a successful pr one or two athlete or a pr3 athlete that then we can uh we can sort of mold around and target our recruiting a little bit better so um i'm excited about what that you know very rudimentary process can mean for the program yeah and that that is a you know once we get that information in that's sort of where it leads into this junior development and senior pararowing uh events calendar and uh you know we just kind of once we get that info you know we want to sort of initiate contact um and then how where do we put these people uh like how do we get them in the right spot you know coordinating with the right people are these uh like ellen mentioned you know some really high potential people that we need to say hey you know you're around the boston area or you're around the la area or whatever let's get you in contact with somebody and really get things moving or is this somebody more on the junior level that's you know hey in the next few years like you know let's uh let's just see what happens and see what develops maybe we'll shoot an email to your coach so we want to have those tracks uh available for everybody um yeah next we we talked about that pt screening a little bit i got to see that the other day and i think that's going to be really cool they're kind of measuring you know force people can produce at all these different angles with different body parts and that'll be really awesome when that is kind of widely distributed and we can see how to help people at a little bit more detailed level um and then the the paranational team results form that's for people that are again kind of at the high performance level i guess that would be senior level maybe development you know if they're in college or something and that's you know just these monthly workouts these baseline workouts they're just submitting this google form we're storing all the information tracking stuff over time you know and that's workouts to stuff like 2k 6ks so again yeah storing all that information and then national team training plan we touched on that a little bit stored in training peaks the high performance group you know gets a an email monthly with the big things to hit you know when's the deload week when's when are the measured workouts all that kind of stuff and then finally the opportunities to qualify for direct athlete support this is kind of a pretty cool aspect of all this hey if you're hitting these benchmarks you can actually you know receive some funding for it so uh you know kind of exciting i think uh where all this is going you know it kind of feels like all the momentum is building in a really exciting direction so pumped to be a part of it but did i miss anything jeffy yeah people can find all these resources um on the u.s rowing website under uh team usa para olympic and para rowing tab but all of that information uh be there it'll be available and uh we are really excited to kind of build that database i'm gonna jump to the next slides i know we're running close to the end here um so basically just to kind of sum up Summary you know for now through 2024 like one of our main goals like this will actually help us get medals if we increase the number of para knowledgeable coaches not necessarily working with para athletes but just para knowledgeable coaches that can refer eligible athletes um it's on us to create clear pathways for athletes and coaches to engage uh with our system so hopefully the google forms are accessible to lots of people we'll try and get a little more sophisticated as we go but it's working right now there's a good flow of information because i'm not always available to answer every athlete question and that's where tom comes in to kind of relieve some of that bottleneck of all range of questions we want to identify young athletes that can remain in the system and give them the time and the tools to develop so yes we would love to see more athletes come out for paratrials in this year only if they're really ready we want to make sure that the athletes have the time and the tools to develop and again that's going to be an ongoing process over the next couple of years um and we want to increase the number of athletes that compete in our existing domestic events things like the bayada regatta down in philly san diego crew classic have events for people with disabilities dad bail because we really want to make sure that as athletes have more experience before they even come to our trials they'll have that much more experience by the time they actually get to the line in international competition um the other thing we want to do is develop and improve our systems of athlete metrics and data collection which really hasn't been done before so we're really building that very basic um knowledge of our athletes so if you have any athlete that's even inclined to fill out that baseline metrics form you're actually helping us build our data set nobody can make data-driven decisions on a a set of you know a very small uh set of data so the more data we have the more we'll actually um be able to identify some trends and if we do a good job at that then you know the goal would be through 2024 and 2028 that we have a deep and competitive pool in each paralympic category um that we have a strong data set of athlete metrics that can guide our training decisions and and guide us as we go over time and that by the time 2028 rolls around we'll have a clear metal potential in multiple events at the la 2028 games so uh that's just some some general goals and overview of what we're trying to be about we're like right on the hour mark i think um but i do want to give um a few minutes or or so for any um questions or QA comments i'm not monitoring the q a but we i don't know that we have any oh but we have another guest there brett you've got a guest with you that's fabulous yeah she came in just in time for like when i might be on camera very good might be a little young for you know for 20 to 28 but yeah she's not quite there but we'll okay we'll see anyone have any comments or or questions i've seen a little bit of the chat uh teresa wright um you worked in the 96 games that's awesome big shout out and hello to jason beagle i know i've been in touch with him earlier this week so that's fabulous uh the more we can help uh even connect you guys to one another like we're definitely happy to do so um so if there are no more questions or comments then i think we will let people uh have a breather before they head out to the final presentation of the day how does that sound right i think that sounds great and i think also like you guys did such a good job of like making the pathway clear i mean that's the point and like the process and moving forward what coaches should do and how they could help and i think you may have kept it simple so i think the objective of the talk was definitely achieved so thank you all i don't know if it was a coincidence or not but i had a college coach refer an athlete to me this morning so i'm really happy about that uh whether it was from last night's presentation or um just from sort of the word getting out so if you're still on this like if you've taken anything away from this it's just that we need more knowledgeable coaches so uh keep spreading the word yep and i think you know it's really you know similar to what we do we try to get across the level two trainings that really it isn't any different the identification process it's you know coaches talking to each other everybody having one concerted effort and knowing what the pathway is so whether it's para or you know the traditional uh rower pathway it's it's the same in that way so thank you all for making it clear and creating these pathways for everybody great no problem thank you guys and uh thank you tom and jenny much appreciated all right great well we'll say goodbye and we'll see everybody hopefully in the final session today with uh paul thompson giving his thoughts on you know the trends that we saw in tokyo this summer it should be should be a lot of fun all right but have a great afternoon everyone we'll see you back here soon