Whitewater Kayak Coach Training Course overview

[Tim]

I’ve written the following as a memory aid to myself, Oliver and Rich. It will help us recall stuff before taking the assessment.

1. Information gathering. You find yourself coaching a group you have never met before. What questions would you ask? Think about medical conditions, injuries, emergency contact, paddling background, sporting background, swimming ability and water confidence. What are their aims and objectives.

2. Bank based warm ups/ice breakers

3. Safety brief including signals and the swimming brief

4. On the water student paddling skill assessment. On the course we had the task of assessing a student’s edging ability.

5. We ran a section of whitewater. One big learning point here. Involve the students in the decision making progress. Have you run this section before? What level? What line did you take? (horse shoe)

6. We viewed a coaching demonstration. The student paddlers were simply asked to go across the flow from one eddy on one side of the river to another eddy the other side. The students were given individual tasks. One was asked to count the number of strokes it was taking. (I assume aimed at reducing the number of strokes). Another student was tending to turn/spin on the eddy line. A series of questions were asked to try and discover the students level of understanding.

7. At chain bridge we each coached a student developing the ideas we had just observed.

8. On the way to serpents the students were asked to make eddies with the boat still pointing downstream going into the eddy.

9. Serpents Tail. The students were given a couple of minutes to formulate their plan and then it was discussed with the coach. The lead coach would best be positioned on the bank with the boat ready to go into the water if required.

10. Coach demonstration taking a group through Mile End Mill using video analysis. The students were given 2 minutes to decide a plan of action. This plan was then discussed with the coach. The student was then asked to give 3 things that went well and one thing to improve upon. The video was watched and the run took place again.

11. A session based upon performance models. The way strokes should look in an ideal performance. Boat, body, blade, speed, angle etc. I worked on ferry glides. Rich and Oliver worked on surfing.

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