Have you ever wondered why you have to pay a coach to learn a new trick when there are countless tutorials on the web that analyze the move in detail? Why having a coach is important in kiteboarding?
The coach is is a professional who helps you in your trainig process. His goal is to obtain a desired position starting from the current one. The means at its disposal are his expeiences to get the best out of you.
A coach have to turn a wish into a goal, to transform potential resources into exploitable resources, to turn an obstacle into opportunities, to convert thoughts into actions, to support the realization of an individual project.
Even if this work can be done with a group of people, the role of a coach is to find a specific and personal instruction for any athelte according to his needs.
The level and the discipline in kitesurfing are evolving and this job is becoming even more important. It is no coincidence if the Italian champion Sofia Tomasoni pointed out how crucial was the role of is coach in the last Youth Olympic Games in the TT racing discipline where she got the gold medal, by defining this victory as “their victory“.
Let’s the coach speaks
Starting from her interview I decided to deepen the relevance of this professional position by taking advantage of the experience of two of the best coaches in kitesurf today, specialised in differents disciplines:
– Fabio Ingrosso, a snow kite champion and coach of the two biggest talents in kitesurf freestyle, Mikaili Sol and Maxime Chabloz.
– Anotoine Weiss, trainer of the foil and TT racing French team and coach of Poema Newland during the last Youth Olympic Games where she won the silver medal.
Here it is a list of questions to know what they think about the issue:
What does the coaching represent?
“Help someone to reach his goal“, says Fabio Ingrosso. “Every person who decides to come and train with me is looking for something, according to his level. For instance Maxime or Mikaili aimed to become the best in the world, but I have many other who wants just to realise a simple trick as a backloop. So to me coaching consist on helping the athletes to fullfill a dream“, keep saying Fabio.
The role of the coach
“Firts of all I have to discern two positions: the trainer who works mostly on tchnical, tactical and physical aspects, and the coach who goes with the atheletes to the competition. The last one has to deal with the abovementioned factors as well as to be able to let the competitor absorb and relativise his failures to turn them into strenghts“, claims Antoine Weiss.
“The coach has to understand his athelete and let him reach as fast as he can his goals. As a coach I need to visualise his objectifs and find the right keys to open the doors to his success“, affirm Fabio.
Also, as I see it, the coach is important because he has to convey an attitude to the sportsman. In this regard, I wrote an article on the ethical values in the kitesurfing competitions that you can read by clicking here.