Tag: atba-uk

This month marks my 60th month with ATBA-UK. That’s five years. Longest I’ve ever done anything in my life.

This time last year I wrote about what I wanted to achieve over the next few years, and it all seems to be going to plan.

The “Make Mountainboarding A Sport” campaign is gathering speed with shops and suppliers coming on board to help us catch people buying mountainboards for Christmas. In the new year the PR will go out to raise awareness outside the mountainboarding community, and then in the spring the Centres will (hopefully) be handing out lots of postcards and collecting new riders details for us. All of this is about adding all those mountainboarders we don’t really know about to our database to demonstrate that there are enough people participating in mountainboarding to justify it being a sport. Of course there is still a lot of policy and documentation writing to be done but I’m working on that too.

My strategy documents are progressing too, with the objectives for each business function of the ATBA-UK almost complete. These strategy documents are a huge piece of work but are essential for formalising our priorities and how we approach the work we do to ensure we are achieving our mission of supporting the growth of mountainboarding in the UK.

The past couple of months have seen a bit of a resurgence of the Instructor Training Programme with me delivering Instructor Training to an Activity Centre and Training Provider Training to a Mountainboard Centre. It’s another one of those massive projects that should be a full time job and is going to take years, but it’s good to see it progress.

Over the coming months I want to spend some time improving and making better use of mountainboarding.uk.com, both as a resource for new riders and as an income stream for the ATBA-UK. I wish I had more time to focus on this but hopefully with some help the site can be improved and can become more successful.

I wonder where I’ll be with all of these this time next year?

When someone asks me what I do for the ATBA-UK I always have trouble explaining myself. I do quite a few different things, even in an average week.

Discussed downhill comps with committee members.

Analysed the results of a riders survey to help inform the ATBA-UK’s decision-making process.

Wrote up my notes from the AGM.

Worked on the ATBA-UK’s Marketing Strategy and Plan for 2014 so that we have a coordinated and structured means of communicating with the riders and encouraging them to go to the competitions.

Started a calender for organising event dates for 2014 so centres don’t clash weekends.

Discussed with committee members alternative ways of selling raffle tickets for the snowboarding holiday that Pleisure donates to the ATBA-UK, so we can make more money next year.

Blogged my realisation about how I see the AGM differently to some other people, and what I can do about it.

Wrote a reference for someone who does volunteer work with the ATBA-UK to help their application to college.

Went to library to do some market research for an idea I have that would help the ATBA-UK market mountainboarding more effectively.

Discussed next years Downhill comps with committee members.

Spoke to an Accident Insurance company about providing accident and injury cover for ATBA-UK members at a discounted rate.

Organised some Instructor Training for a Regional Representative.

Added Regional Representatives to the Ride Guide Maps so they can keep their regions maps up to date.

Read some information about funding for sports organisations.

Created some auto-responder emails for Regional Representatives.

Updated company information on the Companies House website.

Applied for funding to pay for Regional Rep’s to do First Aid Training.

Updated Membership letters for 2014 Membership Packages.

Designed Entry Form for 2014 Uk Mountainboard Series.

Emailed someone who is interested in having a mountainboard lesson.

Different Mountainboard Instructors teach in different ways. Some focus on turning as a fundamental skill for controlling a board, some focus on powerslides to ensure their students can stop effectively. Its great that we have so much diversity in the way instructors deliver Mountainboard lessons. Its such a stronger position for a sport to be in than instructors arguing that their way is the right way or for the national governing body to try to force everyone to deliver lessons in the same way. Instructors need to be able find to way that suits the hill they are teaching on, and need the freedom to experiment with different techniques to find new and better ways.

I was chatting to an instructor who had found a new way of teaching mountainboarding, and said he found that kids fell less and increased their confidence quicker, and also had seen an increase in kids returning for more sessions after their initial lesson. The hill he teaches on is quite steep and he had found that when getting riders to link turns they would accelerate part way through the turn (when the board is facing down hill), panic, and loose control.

So, he now takes riders to one side of the slope, gives them a target to aim for on the other side and gets them to ride diagonally across the slope with the instruction that if they want to go a bit faster to turn down hill a little, and if they want to go slower to turn up hill. This way they get a good understanding of how the angle of the board on the hill affects the speed of the board and instead of learning turns to control their speed because they are going too fast, they learn to use turns to pick up speed, and at their own pace too. Then they ride the other way across the slope, gradually getting better at controlling their speed and linking their turns right from the start.

Diversity is a good thing. Let’s find more ways to teach mountainboarding and share them.