Foundation Coach Training at Alien Rock

Yesterday I went to Alien Rock in Leith, Edinburgh to deliver a Foundation Coach Training course for a team of 8. These are great courses to run looking at how to coach aspects of climbing to groups and individuals (as opposed to the FUNdamentals which look at the what and awards like the CWA which focus on safety and group management). The team today were from a wide range of backgrounds; full time wall staff, students and school teachers making for some great chat. It was an international team with British, American, Canadian and Spanish students.
We looked at the structure of the Mountain Training Coaching Awards schemes, different styles of Coaching and some of the skills of the coach such as; observation, giving feedback, structuring a session, a critical look at learning styles, reflective practise and spent plenty of time on practicals to let the team try things in a climbing setting. A grand day and great to visit Alien which is where climbing coaching started for me with the first FUNdamentals course in Scotland running there back in the late 90s.

 Starting to think about observation

 Part of the group coaching flagging

 Reach!

 Flagging coaching progression

 Which bits of the day were 'low hanging fruit', which were hard to reach at treetop level and which were already rooted in candidates practise?

Brain dump from the day