Tonks' modus operandi oozes simplicity. It has seen New Zealand's rowers claim 40 Olympic or world championship medals (20 gold, eight silver, 12 bronze) stretching back to the 2004 Athens Games.
"The culture has built slowly through winning. Anyone who joins this programme has to believe they're good enough. That means they don't sit on the start line, look across at the Germans, the English, the Americans and the Russians and think 'aw hell'. Those other crews have to look at our black singlets and know they're going to be under threat."
Tonks points to the restructuring of Sparc allocations to athletes as the turning point in making the RNZ programme work.
"After 2004 athletes were compensated with a wage. Medallists in particular get quite a bit of money now which allows them to live and make training a job. Money and medals run together to a certain extent. The standard of training from each generation has since improved. The best example used to be Caroline and Georgina [Evers-Swindell] who were way ahead but the difference started to reduce between Athens and Beijing until other [New Zealand] crews started knocking them off their rankings perch."
Similar themes come through unprompted from athletes like men's pair world champion Hamish Bond.
"The twins [the Evers-Swindells] were the beacons to learn from before Beijing," Bond says.
"There's still a lot of experience and depth with the likes of Mahe [Drysdale], Eric [Murray] and myself involved. For instance we train with Dick and the women's quad on a daily basis while the men's lightweight and heavyweight doubles work together under [coach] Calvin Ferguson. That's the squad's strength, making each other better. The pressure and expectation is also spread across more people."
Perseverance plays its part. A good example is quadruple sculls crew member Matthew Trott who was replaced in the double sculls before Beijing in favour of Olympic gold medallist Rob Waddell.
"I considered taking up a career in the Western Australian mines but stuck with rowing knowing I was competitive enough. Fortunately I won't have to find a real job for a while. I've put six years into the elite squad and it's fantastic to finally have a crack at the Olympics after getting cut at the 11th hour last time. But still, we're here to get gold, not collect a T-shirt".
Tonks is normally the definition of reticent - even with his trusty megaphone on the training course - but can't help express pride in RNZ's current achievements. A record 26 athletes have qualified for London with 13 more as possibilities - a men's eight and lightweight coxless four get a chance to qualify at Lucerne's 'Regatta of Death' in May.
"At Beijing people were retiring and I thought we might struggle but instead we bounced back and did better," says Tonks.
"Our expectations keep extending. Three silver medals at the world championships in 2001 was a case of 'wow', then four golds in 2005 was another 'wow' but last year we got four golds and a host of other medals [one silver and four bronze] to almost top the world rankings. But we're still not satisfied."
That's because Tonks doesn't have the full set of crews competing in London. Even if the men's eight and lightweight four qualify, he's still a women's eight short.
If he gets that for the 2016 Games in Rio, he might even fork out for some shoes.
