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Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 11:31 pm
by Spiderman
Cardington Div 2/3/4 Slalom this weekend 
Just put the majority of the course up today and if you follow the link below you will see how to build a slalom course in less than 60 seconds!
60 second course building
ENJOY!
PP
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 6:59 am
by Dadstaxi
Well we would follow the link .... but must be a VKC secret that you don't want the rest of us to learn how to put up a course quickly so we can practice more. Have I uncovered the secret? Anyway tried the link comes up with 'Access Denied'.
See you Saturday.
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 10:01 am
by NathanF
Dadstaxi, it worked for me, it may have been changed though. Spiderman how do you manage to get so many volenteers to put up the course? Thats Amazing
Nathan Fuller
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 11:01 am
by Dadstaxi
Obviously removed the 'secrecy' as its working now.
Must say Gate 4 looks interesting!!
see u tomorrow
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 11:25 am
by Spiderman
DT, glad you managed to get in! Just a temporary glitch by the sounds of it. I can't beleive you took the opportunity to check out the course! Im impressed! Nathan, you are looking t a bunch of schoolkids who were bribed with a run down the course after the "Hippo's" were in place, then back to school in the afternoon. Good teambuilding (as well as coursebuilding) skills As we have to literally build the riverbed, setting up Cardington needs many hands. This is why VKC is constantly moving towards getting this facility in place permanently. Few people realise that we paddle here only 2 or 3 times each year!!! Very frustrating but we are making headway with it lately. This is partly due to The Environment Agency funding Rescue 3 of Bala to undertake risk assessments of all our local white water spots The interim report looks great and after Chris Hawksworth of the BCU saying that he will assist in various ways too, we have the right people on the case now Anywayssssss......fingers crossed for fine weather this weekend. Very windy here at the moment but hopefully that will blow all the clouds away!
PP
Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 7:30 pm
by Munchkin
Thanks to the guys at Viking. I can't believe how many late entries you had (note I was not one!)!
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 8:14 am
by Dee
Munchkin - div 1 - and to think that last year you almost "bottled out" of a div 2 course 
Congratulations!
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 9:42 am
by John Sturgess
Michelle
Time for a little commercial on the benefits of coaching, and wouldn't it be good if all clubs provided it?
John
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 11:33 am
by Munchkin
Indeed
! I have been very lucky for someone that comes from a club with no formal coaching system in place. Kate Kent very kindly took me under her wing over the winter and we went off to bigger water venues like HPP, Shepperton and Tees (shame the Tryweryn was never running!) to work on my water confidence, which was very helpful at Shepperton and Tully! She even helped me out while preparing for her own races at Tully.
Since Tully I have joined her sessions once a week and have been training on gates AND I have been training with John once a week at the bigger water at HPP. With Ester helping me out at events too I have been very fortunate to get access to fantastic coaching and hope to continue upwards!
John and Mr Munchkin have had long discussions regarding coaching, particularly bank based coaching as I have yet to convince Mr Munchkin to take up the sport. These discussions have resulted in Mr Munchkin putting more pressure on the BCU to sort out the slalom coching syllabus. They have promised one for later in the year, let's hope it materialises!
As a club we are slowly getting more people involved in slalom. At Cardington we had 8 competitors and won 5 trophies on the Saturday alone. This has sparked more interest in the Proteus slalom next weekend so hopefully we will get a good turn out there too.
Once Mr Munchkin has sorted out the BCU we should hopefully be able to put a formal slalom training system in place for new comers to the sport, until then we will have to continue with the current method of curent competitors passing on what they know (or think they know!). This is not ideal as it will only get people to a certain level, I really do think you need proper coaching to get beyond that...
Is that an okay advert John?!?
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 3:01 pm
by John Sturgess
Michelle
Excellent - it shows that where there is a will there is a way - which sums up your remarkable paddling progress as well!
John
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 3:35 pm
by jke
John Sturgess wrote:Michelle
Time for a little commercial on the benefits of coaching, and wouldn't it be good if all clubs provided it?
John
John I don't understand your statement. We do our best at the grass roots but there are no courses for potential slalom coaches to go on. A mentoring system would be good too.
For the record, for a club which isn't suppposed to do slalom, I had 20 competitors at Winchester and 12 at Loddon.
And 4 maybe 5 at Cardington. Which reflects the fact that div4 or even div3 paddlers, or their parents, don't want to travel 130 miles to a race.
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 4:34 pm
by John Sturgess
John
As Michelle's answer indicated, there is currently a problem with slalom coach training. There used to be a separate system, which I sort of ran - and trained well over 100 coaches for lots of clubs in c. 10 yrs
However,when UKCC came in there was what I have to call a political decision that there had to be a common core Level 1 (certainly not imposed from outside: Gymnastics have 8 separate Level 1's, for disciplines closer to each others than Polo, Slalom, WWR, etc).
It is now over 2 years since I have been able to put anyone on that path; and the promised add-on slalom modules have yet to appear. There was also meant to be a bank-based Level 1, run in conjunction with water-based Level 1 (a lot of the coaches I trained were non-paddling parents- a normal situation in sport as a whole). But people I know who have tried to access that report that organisers are not offering that option.
There are also cost problems. I see level 1 courses advertised at £250, whereas in most sports a Level 1 comes in at well under £100; and while I was still deliveing the usual cost for Level 1 and level 2 together was £60!
I take your point on willingness or otherwise to travel; but I am currently doing some number-crunching for Mark Shaw which indicates that youngsters who get promoted to at least Div 2 then do more events, not less; and are far more likely to stay in the sport long-term.
Nevertheless my number crunching indicates that there has been a resurgence this year in entries in the Tandridge/Reading/Winchester/Frome region; possibly because the events are better spread out this year; possibly an effect of the new inter-club initiative to promote competition down there?
John
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 4:49 pm
by John Sturgess
John
PS: in reading through that, I was puzzled by your comment about being 'a club which isn't supposed to do slalom'. In terms of Junior presence on the ranking lists last year, Frome is the 8th largest Junior Slalom Club in England, and 9th largest in Great Britain.
John
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 6:14 pm
by c2canoeslalom
Mr Sturgess,
I would argue that the people who have experienced problems gaining access to bank based coaching is not a fault of the UKCC, but a fault of the coach educators running the course.
Secondly, I highlighted a similar point with Canoe Wales re. multi discipline events such as swimming, gymnastics and athletics all which have separate L1 courses for separate disciplines.
However, I believe that the new system isn't perfect but is moving in a direction which will benefit all coaches, new and old. Learning the 'how to' of coaching is just as important as learning what to coach. Something the new system is explicit about.
The mentoring idea is a good one, however would be difficult to co-ordinate and a good relationship is one where both parties can learn. i.e. there is not a single passage of 'knowledge' from the mentor to the protege. One can assume that this would only work if the protege and mentor trusts and respects their counterpart. In this case the protege should be looking for someone they believe will genuinely develop their practice. This may not be possible if done by region.
A potential solution is to have more regular coaching forums where coaches are able to share their ideas (even if these are indepedant of coach educators). This allows the coach to actively construct their own learning as opposed to being told the 'correct' way to coach. This forum would allow for the evolution of coaching practice through reflection on their own and others' methods. Coaching research demonstrates that coaches learn from their peers and personal experience through informal means. Coach education courses should be harnessing this knowledge and incorporating it in to context. i.e. why do we coach our peers from the course when the L1 is designed at coaching novice paddlers....it is a very different environment!
Gareth Wilson