Toolbox by ross montandon

COACHING TIPS

By Ross Montandon

Technical Understanding Coach Ross Montandon explains why it’s important for coaches to constantly question what makes good technique. Late summer and early autumn are always the time for play; the water’s warm and the days are still fairly long. This warm lulling season lends itself perfectly for trying new things. We don’t have to worry about the shocking cold and the sharp stab of an ice cream headache every time we roll. It gives us a chance to become slightly more adventurous in our paddling.

Should you lead with your head, or with your chest? As coaches we should be constantly anylizing and questioning what we know

The reason I bring this up is that by trying new ways of doing things we can broaden our horizons and increase our knowledge of our own paddling. The question is do we know what we think we know and what is the correct technique we should be teaching? With so much time being spent on the ‘How to coach bit’ do we lose what we should be teaching. I remember Pete Catterall, head of Observe a good paddler and work out what makes their technique good

Paddlesport at Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre, once saying that, “We could start seeing people coaching bad technique really well.” So what should we be coaching? There is the BCU Star Awards to give you a guideline. but does being able to perform those tasks make you a good paddler? Or, more importantly, a technically able paddler? You could use the star awards as a guideline, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that a paddler who holds a star award is also a good paddler, it just means that that paddler on a given day can perform those tasks, set to a syllabus, adequately. I’ve got a GCSE in English, but it doesn’t mean that I can write award- winning novels like Stephen King, or be as coherent and reel literary streams of language like Stephen Fry. I’ve also passed a driving test, but I am no Lewis Hamilton.

Definitions What is good practise then? And is good technique for one person bad for another? Are there myths in paddling that aren’t actually accurate? For instance rotating your head to improve trunk rotation. If I sat in my boat and looked to the left my trunk doesn’t actually follow the direction that I am looking at. Where as if you rotate your chest in the direction you wish to rotate

OCTOBER 2010

www.canoekayak.co.uk

Watch both good and bad technique from a variety of paddlers

you might find a slightly more accurate outcome. And, for instance, do we actually use a lot of trunk rotation whilst forward paddling in a whitewater boat? From my experience the key with all of this is to never think you’ve reached a definitive answer. As soon as you think you’ve reached a conclusion about a technique there will always be a way to disprove it. By doing this your technical understanding will improve and continue to develop. So as a coach you’ll be able to have that range of technical understanding to pass on to your students. If you have a student who wants to go into the nitty-gritty detail you’ll have the capabilities of being able to deliver to that individual.

Different Strokes… Here you go then, go and break it down, go and have a play, take some video footage of a strong paddler and a weak paddler doing the same skill. See what the differences are and break it down to the body movements. Now ask some questions to see if the paddler is aware of those motions. Get some other coaches involved and get some more opinions, compare and contrast, mix it up and think outside the box. What in your eyes is good technique? And what makes a good paddler? How

Is the ‘boof stroke’ really that complicated

would you describe a good paddler? Fluent, graceful, dynamic, controlled? So how do we get our students to be all of those things? Will the techniques we teach them be the best way to get them there? Interesting stuff I think you’ll agree. It’s something that is well worth playing with. When we are given a new idea we shouldn’t just accept it, we should try to expand it. The borrowing of knowledge is common within coaching, which is a good thing but by using other people’s ideas and coaching techniques we, as coaches have got to decide whether it’s correct. This is where the playing comes in. Can you turn a whitewater kayak with just forward paddle strokes? Can you break in and out without the use of a bow rudder? Is the fabled ‘boof stroke’ really as complicated as people make out? How do we actually edge the boat? Do we really lift one knee and drop the other? Any way it’s time to go think and play. I’m off to hit the river to catch a bit of late summer sunshine before it goes for good.

Info

Do you have any feedback for Ross? Perhaps on a coaching topic you’d like him to cover? Email him at rossm@warnersgroup.co.uk or visit our website www.canoekayak.co.uk