BC Advanced White Water Coach Training with Matt Haydock

I did an BC Advanced White Water Coach Training with Matt Haydock overseen by Ken Hughes.

We started with Ken doing a session on paddling in a ~10m wide circle using constrains based coaching to limit the possible options of the person being coaching until they got the right answer. Turns out that when turning in a circle you use your inside stroke much more than the outside stroke.

We did a varied practice session on eskimo rolling with Matt. Go and roll. Go and roll after paddling about. Go and roll without any setup. Go and roll in the moving water by the fall. Roll and do Bren’s helicopter under the water then roll up. The point is that we rarely practice rolling in the river but on a not-too-cold day it’s fine to do if you have a drysuit and it doesn’t ruin the rest of the day and it’s well worth doing rather than just a roll at the end of the day when you are cold and tired.

We did some sessions on the first two drops of tripple step at the Ettive looking at attentional focus to get a clean line through the section. It does help a lot to look ahead of you where you’re going.

We practiced some boofs off the last drop.

The next day we had three students come and we coached them in the pool at the bottom, the bottom drop and then I did the top two drops. Using video to review and watching each performance to review who got the slickest. The aim is to do it, do it cleanly then do it so it looks good on Instagram.