BASI Level 2 Freestyle Coaching....

I was looking forward to this course but also really did not have a clue what to expect.... There were 20 of us doing it with Lesley McKenna and Hamish McKnight taking the course. I was the only girl doing the course but I love riding with the guys as thats what I'm used to and who inspire me the most, it was a fun and enjoyable course as well as being challenging!! For the level 2 you are on the mountain all day in the park hiking the jumps or box we were using and half pipe too. We would be up early as the park would get soft quick due to the hot bluebird days that time of year then we would have our tutorials around 7pm which was looking at and discussing footage from the day while getting lectures on bio mechanics in how our bodies move and as a coach what you need to look out for and how you are going to set up a coaching session that will help the individual!! It is more suited toward the higher end of coaching individuals who already have a good grasp of freestyle riding and are on the way to doing bigger better stuff rather than coaching those who are just starting out but the principles are really the same as sometimes to learn these things you need to bring it back to the basics.

Everyone doing the course were all dudes known throughout the british snowboard scene, all amazing freestyle riders and was a pleasure to meet and ride with them. A guy Mark King who I did my level 2 instructor with was back out for it along with some other guys he rides with at Hemel, Chris Mahony was doing it and the other 3 guys that I had been training with on the lead up to the course, I was not in their group but was stoked to be riding with knew people and both groups were pretty much doing the same thing on the mountain anyway. Sam Turnbull was also there doing his level 1 and 2 freestyle, awesome to ride with him and hang out. How the days worked were we would session the jump doing the criteria required to pass the course and if people were getting it then they could move on to doing whatever they wanted with Hamish giving them the push to do it and lil tips. 2 people in the group would work as a team in taking the session and giving feedback to the others as this happened though Hamish would come speak to you every so often on an individual basis to speak about what you'd just done and how you can improve it as you yourself at this level have an idea of what you are doing wrong too. Then the same would work for the box session. Hamish would be filming a lot of the time and this is what we would watch at the end of the day seeing what we needed to fix. Lesley also gave me some useful tips one in particular being think of a clock face when doing spins and rotate your hips further round that clockface to a certain time depending on what spin you are going for and it really does work!!

One of my favourite sessions was one day where we were riding the half pipe and doing backflips out of the bottom of it, this was not part of the course requirements but still good fun. On our last day it was total white out and the snow had been dumping so pow day, cruising around in our groups shredding the pow, front flipping, flat land tricking and chilling waiting to see if it would clear at all but no :( In the afternoon it was decided we would head to the park and we sessioned a side on down box, it was good fun and in a powdery park :) I was going for frontsides that turned into back 1's on, I was going in with speed and landing halfway down the box going big whereas a lot of the guys would get on and slip off half way and what I will take as a big complement coming from Hamish when he saw me hitting the box was that I was one of the gutsiest riders he's met and he's coached some of the best riders around.


Unfortunately I did not pass, I passed the coaching part but not the riding part, I'd done all the tricks but as I'm still in the transition phase from dryslope to snow I need more consistency and snow time to get there, I was gutted and sad as had worked super hard but also agree with that and it's only making me more determined and motivated to get better at riding on snow and getting used to snow jumps and hitting bigger ones :)


A massive thank you to Hamish for the training throughout the course and to all those who I rode with on it too, they were real supportive and learnt a lot from them, hopefully we will all get to ride again someday :)