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Calling all freestyle instructors.
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I coach a group of kids freestyle most weeks. Now apart for simple things does anyone have some decent exercises to keep these kids entertained? They get bored real easy and I find it hard to keep there attention some times.
They are all decent skiers, but all varing freestyle ability. If anyone has got any ideas of anything they do with if fun but still focus on improving skiing let me know please and thank you.
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How about riding the park with them, and teaching them different tricks on different obstacles?
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But of course you're British.
If they get bored easily why are they doing it? And why aren't you guys just lapping the park then?
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what age group are you talking?
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How dose me bein British have anything to do with things??
The kids get bord sometimes because I'm coaching a lot of racers who would perfer to ski gates than rails but there parents think it's a good idea to help improve their over-all skiing.
The are all between 6-16 I would say.
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So you're not asking about how to coach freestyle kids, but how to coach kids in general? You should probably have specified this.
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It doesn't, it was just a correct assumption of mine based on the thread.
If its not just freestyle you could have the guys who like skiing rails & jumps just doing that by themselves for a bit? I presume it's indoor so you'll still be there.
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6-16? That's insane!
There's a huge difference in personalities, learning styles and attitudes and all of them require a different approach. IMO your program administrator needs a swift kick in the teeth for putting those age groups together.
In all honesty, I really don't have a solution for you. In order to benefit your athletes you're going to need to split that group into at least 3-4 different groups. This way you can focus more on performance with the older athletes and more on fun and guided discovery with the younger kids.
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Maybe 6-16 is a bit too far, but if you had 2 groups it'd be fine. OP if you know the cairngorm snowboard club they're basically all ages but it works well, they just follow each other down the slope and give feedback and tips after.
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Dude, you have got your work cut out for you. Photos or link to your ski facility.
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what i do is ski with my kids and then i tell them to do things, ill do it with them and ill watch while other kids work. and ill tell them if they are doing good or bad.
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Your group is horrible,, i understand you frustration. well, I have no problem with them feeling bored, but when my group got spread levels I always give different tasks to them.
I only have park rats, so we're in the park, but people practice different tricks.
I assume there's a lot of fun shit your park kids can do while you're not in the park. Teach them presses, nollies, ollies, whirlybirds, the frontflip you can do flat with your hands in the ground (I don't know the English word for it), make the ski the racetrack switch, etc. I even just showed this kid once, who got hurt how or that you even could, cause he didn't know balance one pole with the other, he was amazed! a couple off weeks later he showed me he was the master of pole balancing. He said he even practiced it at home.
Good luck man!
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You sound like an awesome instructor
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It sounds like whoever is in charge of grouping kids together at your resort is not doing a good job. I've been working at Keystone and we break kids down into different age groups and ability levels. We try to keep groups at age 3-4, age 5-6, age 7-10, and age 11-14 in kids ski school. After that we break it down by ability level. 6-16 is just too big of an age gap to properly teach everyone, because different ages have different teaching strategies. I guess the best you can do is try to involve everybody and go over a variety of things. If your class just wants to rip gates all day, let em rip once or twice and then go over some teaching points. It seems like management needs to pay a little more attention to their classes.
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Just gotta lol at the idiot who voted down my earlier post for asking for a visual of the facility. Clearly we have clueless tools among us.
Considering it's June, and natural snow would be pretty limited in the UK, OP either works at an indoor ski facility or facility with snowflex or other artificial ski surface. So telling him to take the kids out for a few pow runs would be relatively pointless.
Since I don't know what kind of features they have at this facility, I will make the following suggestion:
"Everything switch" day. Set up an easy GS course and make them ski it switch. If you have any smaller jumps like rollers, set up the course so they have to hit them switch. There are tons of ways you can use this. Have them switch 180 mid course, for instance. Just get creative and change it up. Teaches them how to start carving switch and looking over both shoulders. Because they are racers, they will probably be into this too.
You can also lay poles down in between gates and make them ollie over them. If they get that, have them ollie 180. If you have any boxes or easy rails, incorporate those into a course too.
You could get a few weeks of material out of that.
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a nice game of follow the leader in the baby park. i always thought that was fun as a child.
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It would be pretty pointless regardless of the time of year haha, Pow in scotland? that's a myth.
All times are Eastern (-4)
