This past Thursday (20th March) I attended the BMC FUNdamentals of climbing 1 workshop. The workshop was run at the Quay Climbing centre by Guy Jarvis of Undercover Rock.
The FUNdamentals 1 workshop is one of the prerequisites for the new Foundation Coach award. Whereas the Foundation Coach training focuses on how to coach, the FUNdamentals 1 focuses on what to coach.
We started off the workshop with a power-point presentation and had discussions on various things such as Istvan Balyi's Long Term Athlete Development and the 10,000 hour/10 year concept. Istvan Balyi's Long Term Athlete Development is a model in which Balyi focuses on the long term development of individuals. In the simplest terms, the Long Term Athlete Development model is intended to focus on an individuals lifelong development in sport by focusing on a long term approach to maximising potential. The 10,000 hour/10 year concept was first coined by Anders Ericsson (1993). The concept focuses on the length of time in which an individual must spend practicing a certain skill before they can be accepted as an expert. Roughly 3 hours of deliberate practice daily amounts to 10 years. Hence the 10,000 hour/10 year theory.
Once we had finished the power-point, things became far more practical. We headed down to the climbing wall and spent some time focusing on warm ups and floor games which can be used prior to a coaching session to prepare individuals for climbing. We looked at the role pulse raisers and aerobic activities can be used at the start of a warm up to ensure that the blood is flowing around the body, muscles become pliable and the brain becomes more engaged and aware. We then looked at the second part of a warm up which was focusing on dynamic stretches such as hip rotations, leg swings and shoulder windmills. Once we had done this we looked at part three of a warm up. Specific moves for climbing. This can be done by using easy traverses and focusing on agility, balance and co-ordination.
Next up we played some wall games and focused on weight transfer, economy of movement and the role that the body's centre of gravity plays during specific climbing manoeuvre's. We climbed with blindfolds, no hands, balls in each of our hands, using only fingers and using only bolt holes. The latter was extremely difficult. We done each of these exercises on slab walls and vertical walls. Once this was done we analysed and gave feedback to our partners on each skill.
One area which was an ongoing theme throughout the whole workshop was the ABC's of climbing (Agility, balance and co-ordination). It is extremely important for coaches to be aware that when coaching juniors it is these fundamental areas which must be focused on. If an individual does not receive an adequate amount of input in these fundamental areas by the time they reach the age of 12 the window for training these areas effectively starts to close. An individual can still learn these afterwards but it becomes a much slower and harder process. This is why it is extremely important for us as coaches to develop these areas before focusing on techniques.
We also covered areas such as skill acquisition, cognitive development, emotional development and the use of correcting fundamental movement errors. However to write about all of this would constitute an in depth university standard assignment. Far beyond the scope of a standard blog post...
An extremely well run workshop by Guy to an extremely high standard.
I thoroughly recommend that any individual out there who coaches junior clubs and/or squads attends one of these workshops.
No comments:
Post a Comment