Grant Wilson - Coaching Course - 10-12 Sep 12

After the races at the weekend which were eventful as mentioned in Carl's blog we had the rest of the Sunday to recover and rest before starting the cross country skiing coaching course at Glenmore. When we arrived we met up with our instructor, Roger, and first of all started with a short brief covering what we would be doing in the course. Once finished we headed out for our first lesson, embracing the good Scottish wind, starting to learn about different teaching techniques. After a lunch break we were back once again but this time classic skiing. One day down two to go. The next day we were greeted with the image that usually bears Scotland's name, of course I'm talking about rain! Luckily before we arrived at the course the rain stopped which we were pleased about until this brought a new problem……….Migies!! One thing after the other but never mind, after a short classroom lesson we found ourselves once again out on the track though this time getting taught a different teaching style. To start though Roger set up some games including some hockey, which my team won (of course), Steve Perry also joined us on the Tuesday which allowed us to race with equal teams. The last day of the course, Wednesday, saw us learning about how to coach athletes on a race day and how to warm up and cool down properly. After the lunch the assessments started. For this we split up into two teams and in three’s all took it in turn to teach the other two. While we were teaching, Roger came and assessed each person teaching. Once a short cool down we went upstairs to find out if we had gained what we were all there to do. Happily we all passed. The Boss and I passed at level 1 (with myself achieving a deferred level 2 pass, just require to sit another technique assessment) and Carl, Coach, Frank and Steve all passed at level 2.