Structuring a Session

The G.R.O.W. model will help you to plan a solid coaching session – do you remember this from the Intro to Coaching Seminars?

GOAL: What does the athlete want?

REALITY: Where is the athlete now?

OPTIONS / OPPORTUNITIES: What is possible to do with time and resources available?

WILL DO / WORK ON: What can be done now, in this session?

Did you know that New Zealand’s most successful snowboard coaches, who coach olympic medalists, follow the same delivery format as our Level One certified instructors? It’s very simple…

PLAY: Having fun with what they already know! This should ideally progress from the warm-up into the first few runs. Applying one of the simpler skills that your athletes have been working on recently is a good way to prepare the body and mind for the main part of your session. The length of time spent here is relevant to the overall length of your coaching session and should adjust depending on how your athletes respond.

SKILL & ADVENTURE: Put together a series of tasks or activities to help your athletes break-down a new trick or build a new level of awareness. This is likely to be be a shorter, yet very focused, part of your session. Knowing when to move on from each tasks in this phase can be tricky. This is where the Skill Acquisition Model comes in handy. Do you remember this from the Intro to Coaching Seminars?

Use each task individually to help develop the cognitive stage of learning. Your athletes should be in the associative stage of learning when you take the new skills into adventure, where the sense of achievement and stoke unfolds.

This is the time to experiment taking it to different terrain and potentially the whole mountain. This is where a skill or trick can be taken from associative stage into the autonomous stage of learning. To achieve this, you will need to quantify/adjust each movement using power, timing or range of movement to increase or decrease the challenge/complexity of the trick or skill. A good coach will make sure this phase will take up the majority of the session. Knowing when to push your athletes a bit harder or pull them back to keep the session safe is a valuable skill here.

SUMMARY: Recap, reflect, reiterate! A great summary will involve reflecting on what the initial goal or goals were. Ask yourself, did they take a step closer or further away from their goal? A question-based approach will help give your athletes ownership of the process.

This happens when the session has ended and you’ve finished with your athletes. It could be back in the locker room or driving down the mountain at the end of the day. It could be later that evening when you’re washing the dishes.

When reflecting, look back at your G.R.O.W. plan that you setup before your session began.

GOAL: Whether you’ve succeeded completely in reaching the goals, reflect on any other achievements that occurred along the way, however small they may be. These will be useful in future sessions.

REALITY: Did you keep it realistic? If the established goals weren’t quite reached, this could be a contributing factor.

OPTIONS / OPPORTUNITIES: Did you use all the options to the full extent and utilise opportunities as they arose?

WILL DO / WORK ON: What do you think would be good to continue working on with them in the next session?