Aha, A Blog of some sort!

This weekend just passed I attended the inaugural “Team North Coaching Symposium”, It was excellent and Gareth Field and His team of volunteer (coaching) coaches deserve a great deal of praise.

I learned a wide variety of things, and none of them are what I expected to pick up.

• I expect too high a standard as the “baseline” of abilities.
• Related to that, I also expect people to have a relatively low level of aversion to risk.

Right, it would seem that the group of paddlers to whom I was first “apprenticed” were both deceptively good, and very adventurous. Going to uni has only exacerbated this, I frequently find myself telling others to “harden up” and the people who form both my core social group and the focus of my paddling efforts are all of this simmilar mindset, however well each member of the group is doing, the pressure is on to take the next step and become even better.

On further consideration, the majority of people will reach a level of paddling which they are satisfied with, and will never want to exceed this. Whilst I feel very strongly that it is a shame for them to miss out on all the cool stuff I get up to, and aspire to; a fresh perspective gained this weekend, has finally brought me to realise that there is nothing Wrong with not wanting to push yourself, if you enjoy where you are and accept the limitations of that position.

Now for the biggy, I had until recently assumed that this level would be the hard side of grade 4; I would have saved years of puzzlement if I’d looked harder at the people I passed idly and realised that it’s probably closer to grade three and not too pushy or continuous at that. I now understand equally why so many people I’ve met over time have been alarmed at both the casual attitude of the groups I’m in, peer group paddling it seems can be perfectly safe and break lots of the fundimental “rules” of safety, so long as you all know each other well and are switched on enough to handle situations pragmatically; If you’ve never experienced this I’m sure it looks terribly irresponsible and dangerous.

• My personal skills are comprised of very solid techincal work, and scrappy fundimentals, held together with a tenatious roll.

Since ditching the training blade, I’ve continued to work on refining techniques, moves and “set pieces”; I haven’t devoted any time to getting fully accustomed to my boats and to differences in simple issues like forward paddling, edge control, balance and core stablity. Much of it has come naturally, but it’s no use having a picture perfect boof, if half the time you’re falling over on the run in because you didn’t commit enough to your offside (this has been a common theme for me). Had I done any of this prior to my trip to Uganda, rather than impulsively taking my C1 at the last minute, I would have got rather more out of it, and might have achieved some more of my personal goals;

Thats Life, EY?

• My coaching and leading style are geared to operating with compeatant paddlers wishing to further improve, and all of my most successful coaching has been out of remit.
• My path for progression in the coaching scheme is going to require quite a lot of commitment, and some biting of my tongue.

I had some work experience in “instruction” and teaching absolute beginners, and hated it with a passion, because many realised quickly that they didn’t want to be there, or if they did only as a laugh; I wanted desperately to share my passion for the sport, and get people to as high a standard as my own knowlege allowed, this has subsequently shaped all my coaching experiences, as I’ve actively seeken to work with the people who are trying to push themselves which (as we saw above) fits nicely with my own personal progression thing I’ve got going on.

My path appears to be to take a UKCC L3 training and then use the CPD system to let me build up specific skillsets for coaching areas I’m interested in; a lot of the core information appears to have only tangential relevance to me in most recreational and (potentially) commercial settings; but clearly I’m going to have to take the rough with the smooth and accept that I’ll have to learn about the methods used in training perfomance athletes too; It will probably teach me a couple of useful things.

• The new coaching scheme is geared towards competition and performance, curiously built off a core more suited to recreation, the further up the scheme one looks, the more one needs to take things with a pinch of salt if not working with a performance oriented athlete.

That’s purely my opinion of course, and I’m happy to anticipate being disproved.

Today’s wall of text was brought to you by the letter φ and the number i