Sunday 18 October 2009

Staff Training

Feeling a little drained today-could be Jane's cold/swine flu or whatever about to hit me :-(
Fortunately a physically easy but interesting day was on the cards at the Ice Factor. I spent the first part of the day watching various instructors running different types of sessions on the rock walls, ice wall and the high ropes course. Then we had a session where I raised some questions about what I'd seen and explored the skills and techniques used by the guys.
We discussed topics as far ranging as:
Getting a perfect helmet fit on varying head shapes
When and if coaching movement technique might NOT be appropriate
How to observe clients and the difference between hollistic observation and deductive observation
And tracking a point/marker on their body as they climb to observe movement.
Its easy to go into overkill with these concepts, especially when the guys are running sessions ranging from 1-3 hours so we also discussed simple methods of getting clients to understand concepts suitable to the time frame and the group. In the best traditions of staff training sessions I picked up a new idea from Guy too.... if I ever stop learning (and stealing ideas from other instructors ;-) I must have stopped teaching/instructing/coaching.
We spent a little time in the ice wall transferring some of these ideas onto a different medium and finished off getting Guy to pass on some of the problem solving ropework he has been practising for his MIA Assessment to see how well he has grasped the concepts.
Busy day!

No comments: