Some interesting thoughts on changes to the GB childrens team

A snowHead

I agree with lots of this but also have some reservations, any comments

http://www.nanostars.co.uk/?p=411

A snowHead

I don't know enough about that world to comment fully - so can't comment on whether his solution would work... but I think his outline of the issues is a) accurate but also b) not necessarily the full picture - he is addressing / looking at what the issues are within our country - but is he not missing out the whole issue of how our country stacks up against others... the reality of ability to train (accessability / variety of terrain / etc.) if you are looking for success internationally, you need to not only address the selection and training process internally - but understand how it matches what is available elsewhere...

It would also be interesting to see his points laid out in the context of other sports - with Murray's success this year, compare it with Tennis - actually it is much the same, parental money / effort = success, though there are differences (more tennis courts locally than mountains!)...

but as a starter for discussion - interesting

Alasdair

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Ross Green is a top bloke and I would find it hard to justify second guessing his ideas, he even questions himself with Pro’s and Cons. I think he is on the right track with most of it, but fails to address a key point in the development of British Skiing. Attitudes, expectations and a specific parental type, things are definitely moving in the right direction though.

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a few thoughts I passed onto Ross

I think you need to broaden your ideas and place into context how a "no BCST" world fits within the overall UK skiing performance pathway.

How does your new world better motivate teens and their families to perservere with ski racing, to enter FIS and continue with the hard graft to succeed in their 20's.. Is the allure of a potential international start through a club allocation stronger than the status of getting your GB team jacket if you are a 14 year old and the family that supports him or her.

I agree that eliminating the whole get the jacket mentality of the GB childrens team would be a good thing, this seems to become the end goal once achieved most just fall off the scene once uni age hits ...

I would flesh out your fitness ideas and give best practice examples at club, academy and national levels...For instance I have never heard of a HN Talent ID camp, most clubs does little fitness training

Should passing published basic fitness tests be a prerequisite to selection for international race allocations, I think it should.

Do we end up with Home Nations Childrens teams effectively replacing the GB team? Parents and kids love jackets...

Did you try to run a what if analysis on last years British champs? what clubs would have gotten which allocations and who would you have guessed would have gotten to race? would there have been any notable exceptions or poor racers getting a start that didn't deserve it.

Does the results at only the National Champs give a true picture of the talent pool ? Should you expand to regional league results like ERSA etc or National Indoor circuits? Probably not as if you look at small pond race results on the UK scene we get back to kids spending every weekend racing in the pursuit of points at the expense of training time and LTAD. If you make selection for international duty based on the premiere event results at the National Champs only you reinvigorate the Brits and get more out the alpine races , a good thing in my view...

Do the strong clubs already pull in the best talent or do people stay with their local clubs to train. Are the allocations decided on first named club only or either first or second, if first only do you risk talented kids loyal to local small clubs missing out.

Did you scan previous international race starts and see who survived to FIS , U18 or senior teams? http://www.gbjuniorski.com/roll_of_honour/roll_of_honour.htm would the ones who stuck it out made it in your new regime?

I would question who within the clubs would make the selections and how they would do them. a real minefield there with people missing Nationals due to injury, committees and individuals making picks...

I like the Grass root clubs making the allocations but do we end up with only a few elite super clubs like DHO and people end up travelling away from their local clubs to ones who stand a chance at achieving a race allocation hurting the grass roots.

I would limit local and international race starts on a sliding scale depending on age up to 18, and what about stubbies versus full SL gates. BSS recommended stubbies by memory for up to U14 or maybe even U16 but they are only used at U12 from what I hear... Do we disadvantage our top first year U14's at Topolino if they havent learned to run full sized gates last year of U12....

Should you also have tech skills tests as part of final selection in addition to fitness? I hear mixed reports on how that worked and if other nations actually really use that method as opposed to race results.

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There are some good points there, but the danger is that it only reinforces the current situation which overemphasises the importance of the British alpine race scene and the few large British clubs/academies. It is perfectly possible for British racers to be members of French/Austrian/Italian/Norwegian/whatever ski clubs and race mostly in those countries, arguably competing at a higher standard than just following the British circuit around. Certainly this is not only a more economical approach, but one which fits better with the LTAD goals - races are usually fairly local to base, all over by lunchtime, only cost a handful of euros to enter and you spend more time racing than travelling. All of which leaves more time for non race training and practice. Anyone following this model is all too easily ignored at the moment, with the requirement for performances at National Championships or which are seen by selectors (who don't venture away from the British tour).

The smaller British clubs, and any racers who are not part of one of the larger clubs/academies, who dare to race in other national systems, or whose parents are not able to indulge in a bidding war to buy international race slots could so easily lose out unless there are measures to ensure that there truly is selection based upon ability to race, rather than ability to pay.

By allowing the large clubs/training organisations so much power you could just see them increasing their charges and attracting those who can pay, at the expense of those who have the talent - even allowing those who can pay to buy those international race slots at the expense of those who've earned those clubs the right to them. You would need some system of checks and balances to ensure that selection wasn't just on the basis of who would be most profitable.

I'm sure we're not alone in having a racer who will commit to plenty of training time, but not being able or willing, for various reasons, to buy in to a full year programme. Do you really need to be in the Alps to train with a slackline or a mountain bike? No, those can be done at home at a fraction of the cost. Does every moment of training need to be on a mountain? No - foundation training, tactics and rapid repeat of set gate patterns can all be approached (at least to some extent) on artificial slopes in the UK. Maintaining and widening participation can surely best be fostered by increasing the options available (including the financial options), rather than by narrowing them. Limiting options for anyone with aspirations to international competition to a few organisations who can insist on long term, high cost programs, could easily reduce even further the relatively small number of British racers.

skimottaret - In Austria at least I can confirm that regional team selections do involve competitive fitness testing and that results of the fitness tests are considered alongside race results. There are also technique tests (judged more like the way you'd be familiar with from ice skating) which count towards series results. As I understand it they won't usually select 1st year U14's for Topolino, which rather gets around that issue. But the situation as to whether U14's will race stubbies or gates (it was stubbies at the British Champs at Meribel last year by the way, but not at some of the other races, and certainly not at any non-British races) does need clarification - a lack of consistency doesn't do anybody any favours.

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My reading of Ross' post is that International Children's races shouldn't be seen as particularly important so it doesn't matter who you send to them.

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After all it is free

Okanagan, good points and I agree if there is a no BCST that a big danger of too much power in the hands of some "club selectors" could just make the sport more elite.

Strongly agree agree about training with local Alpine clubs, this happens to some extent already but from my limited knowledge was somewhat frowned upon at selection. Remember Sega Fairweather? Or ever hear of her?

I would also say that alpine training for UK based indoor and dry clubs could and should be made more accessible. Scottish clubs have the FAST alpine training group which is open to any club, cheap quality alpine training 4 times a year. Excellent setup in my view and dare I say it less exclusive and middle class than the English alpine clubs like DHO KAN etc . Philbo is doing something similarish with the new BISS setup and I hope that it succeeds and gains some traction.

In the absence of a strong national team pathway we shouldn't be spending our resources at Children's level. How we manage to keep our talent interested enough to go to FIS in their late teens and then stay with a full time programme in the early 20's is a tough nut to crack. In the absence of long term funding perhaps trying to partner with local Alpine clubs/teams in areas with strong Brit connections is a way forward? Look at all the senior teams and athletes and that are under funded, they are already doing this. Chemmy, Ed drake etc all train with other nations.

I think that the selection criteria at that age should be a balance of race results, fitness and tech skills. I take your point philbo on training specifically to pass a certain test but we see that all the time with studying for 11+, practicing for the old BCST fitness tests such as box jumps rather than concentrating on all round fitness, etc. and your right that there would be a temptation to try to perfect the set of tech skills but is that such a bad thing if we don't rely solely on tech skills for selection?

rjs positive as ever..

with regard to 'fitness' in younger athletes, I think you need to be careful in allowing for early years development, I think children having the chance to enjoy a variety of sports is important in that it not only builds fitness, but character, and social skills. We need to be wary of putting under 14s into one direction and skiing being the be all and end all, as we know that the vast majority are not going to go 'all the way' My son who is just 9 was 'selected' to join one of the major football club acadamies, and we turned it down for this same reason, they wanted him to play football when they said, and that skiing was a definite no no!! my opinion was at 8 he can play what he likes and enjoy it. development can be tweeked as they get older and then developed into 'pathways' as they enter their teens. just my thoughts anyway Very Happy

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My 2 cents - Fitness is key which Ross has pointed out in his post. But fitness needs to be specific to race training on top of extra curricular sports. There is no guidance on alpine specific dryland training from clubs, maybe the bigger academy's but certainly not at the smaller UK clubs which is mainly where the core of our racers reside. No specifics on race tuning or guidance. If we look at Dave R as an example he is tuning his own skis so surly this is paramount to get the racers knowing this stuff and the correct way at an early age so that if they hit pro their ability on tuning for the right conditions is in the ball park if no outside help is available.
I believe we are not looking at the overall package here in the UK for an alpine racer.

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Edge2Win, The clubs don't do fitness because their coaches haven't been taught anything about it, even knowing what to say to a professional fitness coach to get them to run sessions for us would be a help.

I was at the session you did on tuning at Loughborough two years ago, it formed part of the formal L3 coach course. I would expect most coaches to know the basics of it.

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Agree that it's hard here to set up a specific fitness regime for young racers - coaches from other sports don't necessarily understand what's appropriate/needed for skiing, and what's feasible/reasonable will vary with age too. Junior tends to end up just doing a variety of other sports - football, tennis (the tennis coaches are quite good on agility training), triathlon, climbing, kayaking, trampolining, etc and hoping that somewhere along the way that covers all the angles. But it's more of an extensive programme than a particularly targetted one!

You know it makes sense.

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we had discussed ski race fitness for kids here http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=91194

personally I think clubs should be running sessions on fitness , equipment set up, tuning , stretching etc perhaps not as a regular thing but as an introduction to ensure all young uns and parents are at least exposed to these things..

A snowHead

Does anyone have contact details for Ross/nanostars? They've not responded to emails for over a week and the phone number on their website is now disconnected...

A snowHead

I'm not sure whether Ross is on Holiday which would explain why he hasn't had a chance to reply. but the contact that he would usually respond to is on this link - http://www.hemelskiraceclub.co.uk/index.php/nanostars-ross-green/

iskar, It is almost impossible to run viable fitness sessions for many UK based clubs as the parents are not interested in anything other than slope time.

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If its so difficult for the fitness due to kids living far away etc then surely it makes sense to get the kids invested in some sort of self programme, ie give a coached fitness session at start, make big noises about how important it is, explain what its about and give the kids programmes that they can take away. Get some sort of tracking software, kids then record online what they have done etc and can interact with coach online if required. Sure some kids won't do anything, but at least the motivated ones will and they are probably the ones you want to capture. At the moment parents are in control, give control back to kids by at least offering a distance opportunity. Fitness could even be done on Skype through tvs or something?

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parents and kids what slope time not fitness, so the likelihood of these kids making it past 15 years old and going anywhere in skiing is slim, not sure how many times it has to be said

unless we change the whole system nothing will change and we will not have any skiing stars of the future

until the clubs all take the view that other things (rather than just gate training) are essential to athlete development then nothing will change... are the kids in this to be ski racers or to get a jacket and go on a jolly

it almost cries out for a 2 tier system, one for those who want to race and get good at it, and a second for those who want to play in gates once a week, which one you attend, well that is up to you, but be dam sure if you want to get better then fitness, equipment set up, nutrition etc etc are all going to be part of the program

there is no reason for a coach to be stood over an athlete while they carry out a fitness session, give them the program, run through it with them and let them get on with it, those with commitment will do the task and get better, those without will fall by the wayside, british cycling has a great system of finding talent like this, skiing should learn from it

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iskar, I’m not saying to replace snow time with fitness - as mentioned in my post 'guidance' on specific alpine dryland training and guidance on race tuning as well as nutrition etc..

I have parents of racers coming to me spending a day in the service workshop learning the skills to service their children’s race skis. This costs money for them to be taught by me and it doesn’t need to be this way. I also know some racers even have personal trainers once a week to go over specific alpine dryland training with them which again costs even more money.

In my opinion this should be all delivered through guidance by where it all starts - the local race training club. Both the service and the dryland skills then become stronger when these kids make the jump to an alpine academy. But the foundation of these skills should start at a local club level - this is the bigger picture, this is how we mould these young racers into the basics of specific fitness training, race tuning, and nutrition to give them the fundamental skills to enable them to then go on to their chosen alpine academies with this basic knowledge which can then be built upon.

Have the club hold fortnightly hour sessions before training or afterwards for the group of racers that are looking at the bigger picture. Charge this group for the session. Say 3 quid – you got 10 racers that’s 30 quid to go towards the person that’s delivering the session be it, servicing, nutrition or dryland training techniques. That’s only 6 quid for 2 x 1 hour sessions per month which if an alpine racer is looking at the bigger picture this is not a lot of money. You add all these sessions together and what do you have – from April to October you have around 14 hrs of solid ‘guidance’ that a racer can take with them to their academy over winter.

To the racers that just enjoy indoor racing and bashing gates – thats all good, no skin off their nose as its not going to cost them anything or get in the way in what they are doing.

But for this small group of racers, their local club is building a skills foundation for them.
Each season this skills base will get bigger and bigger and finely tuned when at their academies over the alpine season.

And this I believe in my opinion is the bigger picture.

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Edge2Win, I don't consider that knowledge about tuning is lacking in clubs, you may not feel the same but I don't think it holds kids back nearly as much as technique or fitness issues do.

I do feel as a coach that I don't know as much as I should about fitness, I know what seems to work for me but have had no real training on what kind of volumes are right for U16s and younger.

After all it is free

rjs, you could always take a qualification in it, which if you're a coach would probably be really useful. REP (Register of Exercise Professionals) is I think their equivalent of BASI, so would be a good place to start.

kieranm, We have a UK Coaching Pathway, I would expect the courses to indicate to trainees what they need to do to become good coaches.

To pass L3 you are required to demonstrate that you understand strength and conditioning by producing a sample annual fitness plan, I would like to have been taught something about how to do this rather than it just being a pass/fail test.

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rjs, yes, that sounds like a good idea. I don't know much about the higher levels of the UKCP (just thinking about the L1 at the moment) but it's a shame if at least some fitness training isn't taught as part of it. I suppose there's nothing stopping people becoming better coaches by getting this from elsewhere though.

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Whatever people say it IS difficult trying to work out an appropriate fitness regime for young skiers unless you are an expert yourself or have access to relevant expertise. Have a look at the attached from BC Alpine (a Canadian provincial governing body for skiing). It is in English which certainly helps monoglots such as myself and has quite specific information for K1 K2 (= CH1 CH2) and for young FIS skiers. It also indicates the fitness standards demanded of provincial team athletes at various ages and standards:-

http://bcalpine.com/pages/Dryland_Training_Info/

I have already downloaded the documents in case they become suddenly unavailable for some reason but I really can't comment on their quality other than they have been produced for ski racers by a "recognised" ski nation. In the absence of anything similar from British skiing bodies it may help some people.

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g444eneva, excellent find many thanks !!

Should the british children's team be lobbied to fund fitness resources/fitness training for coaches?

It seems that might be more useful than focusing on individuals at races?

The Canadian aim to win kind of stuff which very much focuses on the biological age and what needs to be gained. ie there are things that are better done pre growth spurt. It seems in UK, you race, you progress , you are good , then suddenly at 16 you are expected to bowl straight into a FIS level fitness programme, largely self led. It makes sense to do it incrementally; coaches are struggling with setting up programmes so why not have group resources that are up to date?

As said on the other thread here the U10s here start dryland, but a portion is also focussed on injury prevention, they want the kids to be fit enough to ski full weekends.

You know it makes sense.

I just wanted to bring the Canadian resource to peoples' attention because we have found it helpful .

However what I do find frustrating about British skiing is the failure by the national bodies to "make the best of a bad job" out of their resource constrained situation. Because they are resource constrained and it is parents who provide the majority of funding at virtually all levels their prime focus (now, today rather than in some idealised world) should be on providing good solid professional advice to parents on best practice and where to get it. There are loads of other things they could do to help keep the cost of the sport under control too.

Too many policies & strategies and not enough pragmatic advice is how I would characterise their approach.......it would have been nice to have thought that the kind of information provided on the BC Alpine website was on BSS and the various national bodies' radar.

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Help!!

Some interesting thoughts on changes to the GB childrens team

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