Coaching

I helped out with the WOD last night at CFNZ and I am definitely struggling with the crowd management aspect of coaching.

Darren and I ran two stations for the front squats, I could handle the form correction, spotting and loading components of running mine, but the logistics side nearly got away from me. I need to keep a balance between setting weights for people who don't know what they should be doing and letting those who have more experience pick their own. Add in making sure that the weights people pick don't exceed their ability to handle with at least good (I was aiming for perfect) form, some ROM and flexibility issues, not knowing many people's names, having to think of diplomatic ways of telling people their form needed some work and keeping the whole thing moving at a reasonable speed and I ran out of CPU cycles some times. I think I offended one poor lady who had very sore wrists when I told her it was because her shoulders were too tight to let her get her elbows up. I hope I get a chance to show her some stretches and drills she can use to improve that.

In fact I wish I'd taken a minute at the end of the whole session to show everyone what they could do in that area dammit. 20:20 hindsight I thought of as I wrote this.
Bugger, bugger, bugger!
There wasn't anyone I worked with who was really comfortable with the rack position and a couple of takeaway stretches and drills could have helped.
Damnit!

I was happy that during the metcon after that I was able to pull a few people up for not opening their hips at the top of the box jump. Not that I was happy to catch people out, rather that muted hip function (only found out that meant incomplete hip opening the other day, *embarrassed*) is rife at CF NZ and one of the things Darren and Tamaryn want to tighten up on. Getting rid of it during box jumps will start to send the message that it's not a good thing and that will transfer to other movements as we work on it. It was good to see ROM improving from earlier sessions as I walked around the gym, people are working at improving the quality of their movements and want to be told how to do it better. Very good to see.

I took along a hearth brush and cleaned out the grills on two of the C2s, they work much better now that the fan isn't just spinning air within the enclosure. I also tried to clean up the battery contacts in one of the broken PMs. Unfortunate they're so corroded I'm just going to break them if I do so I left it. A shame. I wonder if I can buy new contacts from jaycar or someplace. They're soldered onto the board and a few minutes with a soldering iron and solder sucker (if I can find it after all of these years) should get it off quite neatly. The C2s belong to another affiliate who hasn't found premises yet so they won't stay at CFNZ, but if I can get all three working properly it will help that affiliate which boosts CrossFit in general.