COACHING JUMPERS ON-LINE

Lockdown ushered in many new ways of working, one of them was a move to on-line video communication. Love it or hate it Zoom meetings were the order of the day for many of us. Now, virtual face to face contact is normal. Last week I coached jumpers in Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland and Australia on-line!
I’m often asked how this works - can you really coach on-line? Is is possible to do technical sessions and gauge speed, see movement with clarity??
Well. It does work pretty well with some caveats.

Here’s what I’ve learnt.
It’s best to have either another person doing the filming or use one of the tracking gimbles such as xBotgo. This means that the jumper is tracked which makes it easier to gauge speed and actually “follow” what’s going on.
Failing that the jumper wants a tripod. It’s not the best idea to prop your phone up on a water bottle. Where possible you want the camera to be near to the viewing angle you’d have if you were actually there coaching Ie. near eye-level. That connects with your coaching brain even if you are hundreds of miles away.
The other contribution to an improved coaching set-up is immediate vocal feedback. We have experimented with the jumper wearing headphones and this has also been a boon as you can really communicate in real-time.
Having said that I have been surprised by the ability to hear the jumper via the phone’s inbuilt microphone and speaker. The latest models have really great audio, so even if you have to wait for the jumper to get close enough to the phone’s microphone it’s not as much as a problem as you might think.
What however can be a problem is intermittent internet …

Experimentation
I’ve experimented with Facebook messenger and WhatsApp video calling … although it’s really the quality of the 4G or 5G network that matters I’ve found the latter to work the best. Yes, you do get the occasional blurring but I’d say 90% of the time video quality is good enough.
What I often do is film my desktop screen as this makes it much easier to analyse a jump.
Other tips: it’s a lot easier if you have also physically coached the jumper as you will have much more of a 3D picture of them and their qualities. I have often had to ask how tall an athlete is for example when I’ve not met them in person.
However, you pick it up and usually I can see if the jumper is running faster or moving better - as you would in person. Some of it also comes down to coaching feel and intuition - as would be the case when also coaching in person.
So, yes you can coach on-line and it opens up huge opportunities for coaches and athletes.
I travel the world to coach from my office chair.

I travel the world to coach from my office chair. If you love the sport then it’s wonderful to be in different places and see and hear and work with jumpers who in the past you’d have never had the chance to.

In my squad I’ve jumpers from Hungary, Switzerland, Turkey and the US. I find that quite amazing. I travel the world to coach from my office chair. If you love the sport then it’s wonderful to be in different places and see and hear and work with jumpers who in the past you’d have never had the chance to.
In a future post I’ll talk about how you actually gain on-line athletes to coach and also other ways to coach on-line.

In the video below you'll see some recent on-line coaching examples. Quality does vary but consider that this is 1: via the 4/5G network, sent to WhatsApp and then filmed by my phone from my computer.