I got asked a question by a friend trying to play devils advocate to my work as a coach and instructor. I was stunned for a minute, but essentially offered the argument that for many people what a coach/instructor offers is a unbias analysis of your performance. In that it is hard for an individual to be impartial about themselves, as they can barely see the proverbial ‘wood from the trees’, as they are too close.
More importantly though when we see what part of someone’s performance needs working on we have a variety of tools to help us improve that specific area. In essence though it is the ability to analyze performance that enables us to offer and appropriate intervention, after all everyone is different so there is no one size fits all approach to coaching climbing.
Over the years that I have been instructing and coaching, I have come up with various typical behaviours that climbers use when various techniques are lacking. Clawing blindly at the rock signifies that the climber hasn’t bothered to plan where the next hold is, often due to the fear. Similarly pedalling indicates poor footwork. Most of it is common sense however it is only through experience that we as coaches learn to pick on on these things very rapidly.
If you are interested in some coaching to improve your performance then I offer my services at £150 per day, the climbing coaching is based in North Wales. You can contact me via this website. As well as the information on this blog, my other experience include freelancing for Plas y Brenin for over four years including directing some of their climbing courses, writing a book due out later this year for pesda press on self-coaching climbing and studying an MSc in Applied Sport Science, with units in sport psychology, performance physiology and effective coaching methods.