Early season, we ski with the kids for freeski drills. Explain what to do and why, show it, then give feedback.
Then when the snow is deep enough to set gates and wide enough for the ski area to give us a lane, we are often up against a race calendar - the default is to set the course, stand at the bottom to watch and give as much feedback as we can before the next race.
In this mode we miss out the effective instruction pattern: explain what to do and why, show it, then give feedback. But to do that, we insert ourselves into the training lane bottleneck (often, randomly, two or more teams run the same training lane), and as we ride the lift to ski down in view of some of the kids, others go one or more runs without a coach in sight. Plus: some of our athletes are much better examples of how to ski the course than we are, so just watch them instead. On the other hand, skiing the course keeps us (coaches) honest, and demonstrates to the kids that training and competing is not about being perfect, but about always making the effort.
My question to other youth race coaches is, how do you balance this? Of course, first we get as many other coaches and parents helping as we can. But even after all that, the tradeoff remains.
Then when the snow is deep enough to set gates and wide enough for the ski area to give us a lane, we are often up against a race calendar - the default is to set the course, stand at the bottom to watch and give as much feedback as we can before the next race.
In this mode we miss out the effective instruction pattern: explain what to do and why, show it, then give feedback. But to do that, we insert ourselves into the training lane bottleneck (often, randomly, two or more teams run the same training lane), and as we ride the lift to ski down in view of some of the kids, others go one or more runs without a coach in sight. Plus: some of our athletes are much better examples of how to ski the course than we are, so just watch them instead. On the other hand, skiing the course keeps us (coaches) honest, and demonstrates to the kids that training and competing is not about being perfect, but about always making the effort.
My question to other youth race coaches is, how do you balance this? Of course, first we get as many other coaches and parents helping as we can. But even after all that, the tradeoff remains.