Below are some excellent ideas to help with improving your self-coaching skills.
These have been developed by some of our fellow Sabre sailors – Peter and Colin White, from Mordialloc Sailing Club.
Colin’s words: At the State titles forum we had on the Saturday they spoke about how to go about coaching yourself for improvement. After not performing as well as I had hoped in the previous few years, I had a chat with my brother Peter who suggested starting a Sailing Diary, which I did and found some immediate improvement. Over the last couple of years I have added a few other areas.
Self-Coaching Skills
1. Sailing Diary
File – Sailing Diary
Many top sports people will tell you how important it is to track your progress so that you can improve on errors and mistakes. Knowing what you have done badly and what you are good at, is the only way in which you and improve your overall results. However after searching far and wide on the Internet I couldn’t find anything that suited me, so I went about creating one. After a number of iterations and suggestions from Adrian Finglass I have ended up with this. Some will find this too detailed whilst other will want to additional items, please use and adjust this document for your own use.
2. Sabre Check List
File – Sabre Check List
This lists all the items on the Sabre that should be checked over regularly. It includes
Hull
Mast
Boom
Sail
Centre Board
Rudder Blade
Rudder Box
Clothes
Tool Box
Boat Bag
3. Sailing Diary Mistakes taken from http://www.impropercourse.com/search/label/Training
File – Sailing Diary Mistakes
This is an extensive listing well over 50 items and it allows you to track your mistakes and hopefully not repeat them
You rate each mistake as either:
Minor Mistake -1 point
Major Mistake – 2 points
Disaster – 3 points
Categories are:
Before leaving the beach
At the starting line
The start
The first shift
The first beat
Approaching the 1st mark
The 1st mark
The 1st reach
The run
2nd beat
Rest of the race
Finish
After racing
TOTAL POINTS for the day
4. Training Websites
File – Training Websites
The YouTube Videos and websites have been grouped them into the following categories below along with their duration some only go a couple of minutes others a lot longer.
I have also included a link and picture of how to build a Hiking Bench, which was quite easy to do and seems pretty good.
1. General
2. Shaping Sails
3. Pre-Start Routine
4. Starting
5. Upwind
6. Downwind
7. Hiking
8. Tacking
9. Gybing
10. Windward Mark rounding
11. Racing Rules
12. Books