It’s goes without saying that keeping an eye on students fears and trying to empathise with them is key to delivering great lessons and getting people stoked. This session was a cool window into what it feels like to be a beginner again with some interesting pool noodle placement – sticking a little bit of foam behind your boot in your highback through everyone’s balance totally out of whack!
We all got to grips (slowly) with some beginner progressions tasks foamed up, I definitely felt some fear trying toeside with my heels lifting up all over the place. We also took a look at how the Argentinian system talks about stages of learning; starting out with exploratory for students new to a skill, concentration for once students know what to do but are still building confidence through to automation for when they’ve got it fully dialled in. Really similar to our Cognitive – associative- autonomous phases and cool to hear their take on it.
Once we mastered the beginner progression we went back to foamless riding (phew!) and played around with some one-footed tasks. They talked really well about coaching students to help interpret the feedback their body is giving them through proprioception & feeling to help them master skills quicker and move past their fears. Really cool to hear them talk about a concept we’re starting to talk more and more about too through our feedback models like augmented feedback and seek-give-seek. A really good hint of things to come before our clinics on feedback later on in the week!
Rich Waldie
SBINZ Tech Team