The past 2 =BD days in Peekskill, NY were an incredible experience for = me. I had the incredible fortune to be one of the attendees at Atlantic Kayak Tours Skills Symposium. Not only were the skill sessions incredible, the logistics, the food, the presentations--all superb.=20 While I learned quite a bit that will really help fine tune my own skills, the most important insights I gained were in how the sessions were taught. Each of the 5 Star Coaches had common approaches. The each were excellent observers, they didn=92t =93talk to much=94 (over explaining and complicating things), and probably most importantly they each communicated in every aspect their sheer joy and love of the sport. That was infectious to say the least! The other mantra I=92ll take back to my own teaching came from Bill = Taylor in his session on Coaching Processes=97=93Remember, your teaching People = not paddling.=94 Mark Schoon Coastal Kayaking Instructor & Guide Virginia Outdoor Center Fredricksburg, Virginia (540) 371-5085 [demime 0.92b removed an attachment of type application/x-pkcs7-signature which had a name of smime.p7s] *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
At 09:32 AM 7/31/00 -0400, Mark Schoon wrote: >The past 2 =BD days in Peekskill, NY were an incredible experience for = >me. >I had the incredible fortune to be one of the attendees at Atlantic >Kayak Tours Skills Symposium. > >Not only were the skill sessions incredible, the logistics, the food, >the presentations--all superb.=20 I had planed on writing a trip report about the AKT Symposium so rather than starting a separate message I'm going to piggy back on this one. I not only attended all three days of the symposium but also did the 3 Star assessment on Thursday. For those not familiar with what the Atlantic Kayak Tours sysmposium was all about it was essentially three days of training from 10 world class kayakers with the assistance of several other top notch coaches. The Symposium was the brainchild of Bill Lozano from Atlantic Kayak Tours and he had a large staff of people organizing, and making the entire long weekend run extremely smooth (except for the directions to the Saturday evening dinner..). Perhaps, Zane (of AKT) summarized the weekend best. He said, "This is the first sea kayaking symposium for the art of kayaking, rather than the sale of kayaks." Due to a change in travel plans I arrived a day early and signed up for the 3 Star assessment, although I have never taken the formal 3 Star training. Scott Fairity, with the assisstance of Shawna (?) from the San Juan Islands gave a review and training of the skill we would be tested on. I was unable to fit my boat on the car I came down in so I got into a Skerray demo boat since I own one. However, this particular boat had a slick fiberglass seat, a back band that I never could get adjusted to that it was confortable and little in the way of hip braces. It felt like a different boat and I never did get comfortable in it. During the "review" I tried my first hanging draw. Because of the fit of the boat I just didn't feel comfortable edging the boat and while I was usually able to get a decent one on my right side the left side was really shakey. I switched to a Romany for the afternoon to finish up the review and then the assessment. The last review skills we did were the recues, an assisted rescue after a wet exit, and eskimo rescues done presenting the bow and presenting the paddle. I did the first with a friend of mine and we both were able to get back in our boats in about a minute smoothly and safely. After we did, Scott said he'd use that as our assessment and that we had both passed. Being in the Romany and having passed the first skill gave me more confidence and I started to paddle much better. For the assessment of the eskimo rescues they have one person set up to the side and the other in front or behind you when you go over. Then, the coach point to one person or the other to do the rescue so that the victim doesn't know which is coming. I got the bow rescue first, but didn't have a very good hip snap coming up, so he had me go over and demonstrate a couple more hipsnaps. When we got set up and I went over again, I started thinking.."let's see, I kind of blew that first hip snap...I wonder if he'll make me do the bow rescue again....nah, he'll just check my hip snap when I come up using the rescuers paddle...oh...I feel a bow...whoops...where did it go?...then I felt a hand on my wrist and knew it was a paddle rescue and came up with a solid snap. Scott called another assessment skill passed and we all grouped up. We started off the formal assessment section with bow rudder turns. I got a good turning motion on both sides and felt pretty good even though I didn't edge the boat as much as I do when I'm in my own boats (the Romany wasn't a real good fit either). We went through one skill to the next and I was nailing every one of them. Even the back paddling on and edge in a figure eight went really well, something that I had never done before that day. Then I got to the hanging draw. I paddled forward heading towards a small piece of flotsam (or was it jetson) and did a hanging draw on the right. I had the paddle nice and tight and could see that the boat move nicely to the right. Then I did it on the left. I got the paddle too close and almost capsized. I did another one that was marginal but it felt better than others I had done earlier. The rest of the skills progressed nicely. I got in a couple of really good high braces on the move with my face in the water on both sides and got a "nice hip snap" comment from the coaches on my roll. After coming back in I felt pretty good about the assessment considering that I had never even tried a couple of the skills before and was not familiar with the BCU standards on others. After an hour or so I went in for the result of my assessment. They said that I was a tough case but they were going to ask me to come back and try again in October. I had met the standard, exceeding it on several skills across the board, except for two things. On the bow rudder I was marked down for not edging the boat as much as I should of. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I had done the skill in one of my own boats I would have easily passed it. The other skill I got marked down on was the hanging draw. Specifically, I hadn't met the 3 Star standard because I wasn't *looking* toward the side of the draw, even though it was an "effective" stroke on the right, the standard dictated that one has to face in the direction of the draw. Even though I hadn't passed I got some really good instruction and know exactly what I need to do to pass it next time. The 3 Star assessment is a tough test that requires proficiency in a wide range of skills and every one of them has to be done well. It was a bit of a humbling experience. Next, in a separate message, I'll write about the first official day of the symosium... *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
I'll second Mark's rave review of the Atlantic Tours Kayak Skills Symposium. This was the first and only Symposium I've attended in which the entire focus of the event was refining and developing kayaking skills. There was **no** commercialization, no effort to sell anything at all, except kayaking skill and safety. Like Mark, I attended the two-day Coaching Process workshop before the Symposium. It was an intensive affair, with perhaps six hours of lecture material and four hours of on-water coaching practice and demonstrations of coaching techniques on *each* of the two days. The emphasis was on how one learns, in general, and how one might best teach, in general. The material could apply as well to teaching piano or martial arts as it could to kayaking. It was - quite simply - wonderful. If anyone who is truly interested in kayaking has an opportunity to take this course, don't pass it up. You don't have to be a coach to benefit immensely from it. As for the three-day Symposium itself, there was just too much excellent material to include in an e-mail, or in several e-mails. Mike Devlin, director of coaching for the BCU, gave several excellent talks. Bill Taylor, Mike's second in command, gave several others. (Bill and Mike were also the presenters for the Coaching Process course prior to the Symposium.) There were four other level 5 coaches from Wales, in addition to the staff of Atlantic Kayak Tours. Nigel Dennis gave a superb slide talk on his trip to Antarctica. Chris Duff gave his talk on the trip around the south island of New Zealand. Doug VanDoren gave a three-part mini-course on traditional paddling techniques. Nigel Dennis gave a masterful 90 minute talk on the bare essentials of kayak navigation, and then he and the AKT staff helped us through an interesting on-water navigation excercise. The paragraphs above don't begin to convey the excellence of these days. Even after one good night's post-Symposium sleep I'm apparently too fatigued to write coherently - but I'm very grateful that I had the chance to be part of this event. My one disappointment is that, because of a shoulder subluxation I suffered a couple of weeks before the Symposium, I had to cancel out of the post-Symposium 5 Star training I'd hoped to take. So - as I write many of the men and women I met this past week are out on the eastern tip of Long Island (New York) waiting for the training to begin tonight, directed by Bill Taylor, Mike Devlin, Chris Duff, Bill Lozano, and other American and Welsh Coach 5's. When will there be as good a training as that one? Because attendance at the Symposium was limited to 80 participants, each "course" was manageably small, including a senior coach and an assistant coach, and 6 to 8 students. Even thos participants who had kayaked for years at a reasonably high level of skill were exposed to dozens of helpful and innovative tips and a great deal of new knowledge. It was a privilege to be present with a group of "students" some of whom were relative newcomers to the sport with not-quite-3 Star skills, and others who are BCU 4 and 5 level paddlers, some who are "just" very part-time kayaking coaches and others who are experienced coaches with years of full-time experience - all students! Bill Hansen Ithaca NY *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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