Level 5 coach Development Day 6 

Back on the Dee with Elaine and Gerwen, Pete to coach first

Checked if wants had changed, Elaine happy with the theme of developing confidence, Gerwen wanting to learn more about reading water.

Would have been good to have asked how they felt today, tired, brain full etc.

On the top pool got them to warm up and think about what they did yesterday. Elaine was doing fine. Gerwen had lost all rotation from his forward paddling. Worked on keeping the top arm level, a clean slice out of the water and not bending the back arm. Still not working so came up with an Austin Powers fembot analogy, shooting enemies to either side with his nipple guns, 10 degrees to start then 20 degrees, this finally brought in rotation and he could feel it in his back. So we ended up with a short powerful stroke, I wanted to move on to the beachball between the arms to stop bending of the back arm. Spikes next step if that didn’t work would have been to get him to put his hands right out to the blades.

Now i had been neglecting Elaine, giving her some trim tasks on the jet, the tasks were not specific enough and the venue was rubbish. I could have dropped down below the bottom drop, got Elaine working on some decent water and still had flat water to work with Gerwen. I don’t think I finalised that session before I started working on the next theme. I ended up changing venue and task, breaking the flow.

Running the top drop got them to think about trim (which Elaine had been working on today, and Gerwen yesterday) this didn’t work and would have been better just having fun paddling down rather than shifting threads.

Next below the top drop I wanted to get them both paddling more efficiently. I asked Gerwen just to paddle across behind the big rock and back then asked him to use the river features to make it easier, that worked. With Elaine I asked her to paddle across and back without first defining efficiency, too loose a task, then I asked her to use the river features specifically the wave below the “hole ” on river left, the mid eddy and to ride the back of the small stopper over toward the big rock. I chose this approach because she dropped down a lot on the cross, but i think that, rather than lack of understanding this dropping down was down to the lack of confidence that Elaine was aiming to work against. When I specifically asked her to use the wave she still missed it due to timidity and not using the sweet spot but trying to use a run up which she then stalled.

Moving on we ran the middle drop, I again tried to get them to use trim to help with the drop and I wanted Elaine to stick with a planned route, which she had not done on the top drop. Again Elaine changed her mind, Gerwen ran it OK without sinking. Again I feel I gave Elaine two things to work on and wasn’t specific enough in my instructions.

On to the mini wave 30m below the bottom drop hole/wave.

Spike pulled me aside and got them to play on the wave and asked me a question of both of them

• What do they need to fix here
• How do they like their information

I correctly identified that they liked getting answers drip fed to them and they both needed to sort their position when getting on the wave. Both the same basically.

So i got permission to be more directive, and things started moving forward quickly. Gerwen was going in too fast and bouncing off the front wave, Elaine either being too timid and not getting on the wave or hitting it too high. At this point a demo would have been really good, I fell into the trap of playing with the newer toys of questioning and task setting when a demo would have spoken volumes to them, as would framing the task with the simple “We are going to work on surfing, using our position on the river to work with the river and make life easier”. Anyway, I made them stop the boat and find the sweetspot to get themselves easily on to the wave. I started using bandwidth feedback, discouraging the negatives and reinforcing the positives to improve their performance. I was missing some basic observational points, Elaine went back to taking a run up and was bouncing off the wave. Once Gerwen was getting on the wave consistently he was dropping off the back when he ruddered to turn, his rudders were out to the side and too far forward creating a lot of drag, I got him to move them back and parallel to the boat and voila, he stayed on the wave consistently. Once they both got consistent quality performances we broke for lunch. If it weren’t for lunch time interceding a change of venue t o the bottom wave would have been ideal for carrying on the thread. They also where consciously using trim on the wave, a great session with some good questioning from Spike to keep me on track while coaching students with a  high level of performance.

Things I missed? I didn’t box off subjects with summaries and clear reasons for moving on, nor did I frame each new thread with motivation for the students or give them my aims for each session. Early on in the session I didn’t fix variables enough, and when getting them to work things out, I wasn’t clear in what I wanted them to look for.

The afternoon – Dan runs a great session on boofing and trim

Warm up on the top pool, hop out to inspect the top drop, great preamble about what he was looking to get out of the session for them, then repeated running of the drop just to the right of the boof rock, adding in timing, angling the boat so it goes straight when you do the boof stroke, dry land drills on lifting the feet. Then a change of venue to the middle hole for some great performances keeping the front deck dry, even in a Pyranha Stretch.

Next question from Dan “would you like to head down river to somewhere you can put this in to practice in a bigger environment”, and off to town falls. 6 on the mile end mill guage, so after an inspection Dan got Spike to demo a line running from left to right to boof off the anvil. Elaine nailed it, running the rapid despite a previous bad experience hitting a rock at the bottom she overcame her nerves to give a great performance, Gerwen didn’t get enough speed across the current and ended up flipping in the pot but rolled well. All out at the Ponsonby car park.

Spike was happy to say little in the debrief, other than a great session at level five standard, the only thing he might have added would be making sure they where aware of short term trim (boofing) and long term trim (leaning back), awesome one Dan.

Gerwen on the Town Falls Approach in Llangollen

For me a great day, knowing where I am and where I am moving towards, lots of positives and lots of ways I know how to improve, big smiles.