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| Junior Training Camp, 2004 |
Moran State Park |
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All together at the end of the camp
Photo by ©Alexei Azarov
All photos are here or click on the picture
First of all many thanks to all the people who took part in
organization of the camp. You've done great job and I am happy that
you gave me the opportunity to be a coach for this camp. I think it
is extremely important for orienteering development in United States
to organize as many training camps as possible. Every training camp
is a great opportunity for young orienteers to learn something new,
to improve their orienteering technique, to make one more step to
the mastery of orienteering. The orienteering in United States is
not so popular now like in Europe and American orienteers results on
international events are not very impressive yet. But every year
more and more people are interested in orienteering. They want to
achieve great results in orienteering and therefore they want to
know how to improve their orienteering skills, how to organize their
training process to make it most effective, what exercises they
should do. The main purpose of training camps is to give answers to
all these questions. I do believe that there are a lot of talented
kids in United States and properly working with them, developing
their talents we can in near future get competitive Junior Team and
finally Senior Team. Yes, it needs a lot of work and training camps
is a step in right direction. So, many thanks to everybody again!
And Good luck in your hard but very interesting work of developing
orienteering talents!
Trainings or what we were doing at the camp
1.
On the terrain (to get an idea about the map we used click
here - map
sample 137Kb)
1.1 Marking-O.
This exercise dedicated to improve ability of map reading while
running and also a lesser degree of using compass. In this exercise
participants follow coach in the woods. The participants use blank
map to figure out where they are running. The coach stop at some
features and the participants have to show the exact position of the
feature on the map. Due to wide range of orienteering level the
participants were divided into two (2) groups for this exercise (led
by me and Eric Bone). On the right photo Eric Bone discuss the
exercise with a trainee.
1.2
Line-O.
This exercise is useful for map reading skill development and as a
demonstration of perception oneself as moving point concept in
action. For this exercise the participants have to follow line on
the map as close as possible. There should be a number of controls
in the woods along the line (the controls are not shown on the map).
If participant follow the line precisely he/she should see the
controls on the terrain. After finish the participants should show
locations of all controls they found. About the
concept of perception oneself as moving
point see my
talk presentation
.
1.3
Orienteering course.
This was just regular orienteering course.
2.
Trail run with map reading
This
exercise is useful for map reading skill development. Each orienteer
in group has a map with an orienteering course. While the group is
running the participants one after another choose routes on
different legs on the course and explain the routes to everybody
loudly. After each leg everybody everybody can discuss the chosen
route and might be suggest another route choice.
Again
the participants were divided into two (2) groups for this exercise
(led by me and Eric Bone)
due
to big number of people and wide range of their orienteering level.
There are a lot of other
exercises you can do with map outdoor (not on the terrain). The
weather conditions and tight schedule did not allow us to do that
exercises during this camp.
3.
Indoor exercises with map
During the
camp we had three (3) training sessions in classroom. We did many
different exercises with map individually and in teams. For more
information about the exercises see my
talk presentation.
4.
Theory
Every day we had about one hour lecture about the
orienteering theory. You can find the
talk presentation
here. First part of the presentation is review of my
article in ONA (see reference below). The article is quite difficult
for reading and understanding, so I tried to explain the ideas in
the article simple and clear. The second half of the presentation is
a sequential step. It explains of how to apply the concepts from the
first part to orienteering training process and make orienteering
training program to be most effective.
That's probably it regarding the trainings but the camp was also a
social event. Usual
evening social at the camp (left picture).
Where to get more information
Contact me directly:
Email:
Alexei Azarov <alex@alexplace.com>
Phone: (848) 459-7769
Web-pages about previous training
camps I ran:
First Russian Style Orienteering Camp (Harriman, July-August 2003):
http://www.alexplace.com/Orienteering/2003/Camp0703/
Junior Training Camp (Delaware Water Gap, March 2004):
http://www.alexplace.com/Orienteering/2004/Camp0303/
ONA article:
Alexei Azarov,
"An Orienteering Philosophy", ONA 2004
July/August issue*
*If you don't have this ONA issue you can download an
electronic copy of the article in MS Word format
here
(System of actions.doc 86Kb)
This version of the article is slightly different from one
published in ONA but no major changes were made in it.
©Alexei Azarov -- Washington State -- 12/31/2004