The BMC Coaching Symposium is underway at Calshot Activities Centre this weekend.

Sixty five climbing coaches have come to the South coast from afar as South Devon, North Wales and Scotland for two days of coach education.

Saturday kicked off with Neil Gresham charting how the climbing and coaching scene have developed over the last twenty years.  Amusing anecdotes of climbers adopting year-long carrot diets or dead hanging crimps for an eternity were interspersed with how the climbing community’s perception and acceptance of coaching has radically changed in a relatively short period of time.

A series of practical workshops were then delivered by GB Team Manager Ian Dunn, PyB coach Adam Harmer and BMC National Academy coach Simon Rawlinson.  The theme for the symposium is coaching in performance clubs and each presenter looked at different aspects of this topic.

Ian covered principles of periodised training plans and different types of physical training. The delegates were sent through various drills, and certainly got a good work out! 

Simon talked about setting routes for children, including often overlooked issues such as how differently designed holds can place different pressures on finger joints.

Adam got delegates to think about what they are actually looking ‘at’ and where to look from when coaching climbing.

The first day finished with Mountain Leader Training UK Technical Officer Steve Long outlining current progress with MLT's coaching scheme and plans for a future performance coaching award.  Steve’s talk created some very useful feedback to feed into future developments.

Everyone then put the day’s knowledge to the test with an evening’s climb on Calshot’s climbing wall.

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