Monday 1 July 2013

Team coaching!

At the Southampton Kite Festival, Barry Savell (national director of STACK, and a member of Team Flame) asked us if we were interested in a day of team coaching. Barry, is a North Shore Radical noisy???

Team coaching took place last Sunday, at Stokes Bay. Weather was nice and sunny, with a pretty smooth 8-12mph wind for most of the day, so excellent circumstances!

The coaching consisted more or less of three different parts. First of all, Barry gave us general pointers to team-flying, focusing on spacing (on the ground as well as in the air), keeping shapes and patterns, and speed control.

All of these pointers of course followed by trying them out, and the speed control exercises got pretty extreme! Four-(wo)man Arc de Triomphe, anyone?


Then, Barry provided us with lots of new patterns and ideas, for us to play with and practice in the weeks and months to come: full team wraps, paired wraps, walking sticks, jitterbug, and lots of combinations involving circles and boxes.


And finally, we flew the L-katz team routine, and got feedback on how and where we can improve it and make it more exciting.


In all, a very useful day, which has given us plenty of material. Some of which will be used to improve our current team routine, and some will no doubt find its way into the next team routine.

Barry, a big public thank you for making the effort to come down for a day and help us improve our flying!

Credit for the last three pictures: Roger Backhouse

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