Coaching
Most sports such as field and track athletics, gymnastics, football and rugby have invested in a professional coaching system that has developed a coaching syllabus and trained and assessed coaches who can deliver coaching to agreed standards of safe practice, as well increase the personal performance of their athletes.
As mountaineering is a hazardous activity which relies heavily on the ability to operate safely in natural environments, Mountain Leader Training Boards were set up to run awards which accredit walkers and climbers as competent in Leadership and Instruction of others in the hills. These have concentrated on safety skills.
It has long been recognised that climbing and mountaineering lacks a ‘coaching award’ which trains and assesses the coaching of personal physical performance that would be recognised in other sports.
However, in recent years a series of factors have led to coaching becoming more important, particularly in climbing, and the MCofS has initiated these pages to advise and inform climbers about this new and exciting development in our sport:
- The CoachWise section offers coaching advice for novices from one of Scotland’s (indeed the world’s) best climbers and sports science graduate Dave Macleod. New articles will be posted here every month
- Elite climbers who have researched training methods, are qualified PE Teachers or have completed degrees in sport science offering performance coaching are included in The Coaching Consortium
- The National Source Group is a UK Mountaineering wide working group tasked to investigate and take forward coaching in mountaineering. These pages will cover the work of the NSG as it progresses
- Coaching Research specifically into climbing performance and injuries (prevention) is relatively new, but details of relevant papers will be posted here
- Some information about the UKCC is also available