If your rook stays on its starting square for more than 14 moves you should see your chess coach immediately.
Srsly, while you might have a rook stay where it is sometimes, this is because there is a lot going on elsewhere and you don't have time to bring your rook in. Usually you should move it to one of the center files, where your pawns will have moved out of the way.
Pushing the a pawn is a bad way to develop your rook, because it takes several moves, and now that your rook is out, your pawn is just sitting there without support, requiring more moves to protect it.
Hi, in most games where I castle king-side, I have a rook still at QR1 (a1/8) and a pawn at (a2/7).
In the early middle game I often find that the rook ends up stuck there, serving zero purpose other than to defend the pawn in front of it, simply because it's blocked by my own pawns or perhaps there is still a knight, bishop or queen still on the back rank. Is this normal in good chess play, and its just that the rook is difficult to get into play? (Hence so many rook endgames).
Also, say I have a rook on a1/8 (or on the other side perhaps if I castled long), and its pawn is still in front of it on the second rank. I don't know the general theory about pushing the rook pawn or not. It often seems tempting to push that pawn, especially when I have no better ideas, but I'm always puzzled about whether that's usually a good idea or not.
So I guess in summary - can someone point me to some general theory about how to handle a/f rooks and rook pawns?