North Island Athlete Development Camp August 2012

Deb Marras, the Sports Development Manager reports:

The first 2012 North Island Development Camp proved to be a successful event, given the short notice and time of the year. The camp was held over two days, attracting 7 coaches, 14 athletes and 3 officials. The camp content included:

o Strength and Conditioning – for junior and intermediate paddlers. (Craig Harrison Director of the Athlete Development Academy at Mish. This presentation was subdivided into a theory part in the morning and practical session in the afternoon.
o Sprint Rules, Boat Control and Top Tips. (CRNZ officials: Barb Harvey, Terry Newsome and John Trotter)
o On Water Training, fitness.
o On Water Technique, wash leads.
o Race practice with official, based on 200m
o Drug Free Seminar

The camp was also used as an on- going coach development opportunity.

The on water training was delivered according to the different levels of abilities. Paddlers were split into four different groups, Beginners, Intermediate/Advanced and Multisport/Surf Ski. Each group had a specific task to work on, mainly based on acquiring and improving their technique and fitness.

Saturday morning, I had scheduled two different sessions for the groups - an on water session for the multisport group and a strength presentation for the k1 paddlers. When I woke up, at 6:30am, and barely made it through the dense fog to the safety of the kitchen, it was clear that the 7:30am on-water session would have to be postponed. I must say, I saw some relieved faces amongst our “early morning” group, and everyone was more than enthusiastic about joining in the strength presentation.   Craig Harrison, who works as Programme Director for the Athlete Development Academy in Auckland and is studying towards a Phd in aerobic fitness of young athletes delivered a presentation on “Developing Physical Competence” in an athlete centred programme. The presentation, due to the amount of info was divided into two parts, theory on Saturday morning, and practical on Saturday afternoon.

 All the on-water sessions were focused on technique and checking the progress of our paddlers during winter training. We have been lucky enough to have 2 motorboats and 1 Jet Ski available for our coaches – with thanks to Gary Waller and Marshall Hollister-Jones.

Saturday sessions were based on: three times 2k in the morning for most of our intermediate/advanced, multisport group. While the beginners, main focus was on correct posture and paddling technique.
Saturday Afternoon: wash leads, with focus on technique for everyone, as well as wash riding skills.
Sunday Morning: Race practice, on 200m, with our Officials working on aligning and starts. This session has been great, for both Officials, giving them the chance to practice the starts towards Blue Lakes one, and paddlers, to get used to the starting procedure.
Acknowledgement goes to our multisport and surf ski paddlers who gave the 200m race practice a go, as they had never come across this type of set up before. Well done!

Our Continental ICF officials not only ran the on-water race practice on Sunday, but also delivered a presentation on rules and boat control, which created a lot of good discussion among the paddlers.

On Sunday we were supposed to have a technique presentation with Ian Ferguson but due to a small misunderstanding (our venue!) he couldn’t make it at the end. This gave the chance to our Development coaches, led by Brian Scott, to explain some fundamental technique concepts to our participants. The last presentation scheduled for the day, was a Drug Free Seminar, which I think most of the participants will agree was extremely interesting and eye opening regarding supplements used by the majority of our Athletes and a lack of standards regulations, and possible cross contamination around this type of products.

Once again, thanks to our coaches: Gary Waller, Ron Cole, Brian Scott, Imelda Marnane, Richard Forbes, Peter Brown, and Daniel Peacocke
Officials: Barb Harvey, John Trotter, and Terry Newsome.
Presenters and all our paddlers for taking part to this Camp, hope you enjoyed it and keep the good work.

Debora Marras

Sport Development Manager