Mountain Training's Coaching Award Scheme goes live

The Mountain Training Coaching Award Scheme has been gathering momentum this summer, and the new awards went live on October 1st as scheduled.

The Coaching Award Scheme has been carefully designed to be fit for our sport, benchmarked against many other sports for quality and content, with pilot courses run through the previous twelve months. These met with huge acclaim, with Jamie Holding (a British Mountain Guide and coach of the North Wales Youth Climbing Academy) suggesting that the coaches involvement in Mountain Training UK’s Foundation Coach pilot scheme already had a significant impact and contributed to their success at the Youth Climbing Series National Final.

This was recently followed by an induction of 18 carefully selected providers to meet the predicted demand across the UK. The list of attendees read like a who’s who of coaching, with experienced old hands, and rising stars alike.

The induction was hosted by Jon Garside of the BMC, Belinda Fear of the Mountain Training Association, and Martin Chester (Coaching Development Officer) who says: “It was great to get all this talent together in one room. After such a lot of development work (over a long period, by so many people) it is great to be able to hand the scheme to such a talented bunch to roll it out across the country. Each one of them brings some extraordinary specialist skills and a wealth of expertise to deliver a consistent and high quality product, on behalf of Mountain Training UK.”



With three levels of award in the scheme, it provides the ideal pathway to develop the coaches of the future, and get coaching know-how down to the grass roots of our sport. Martin Chester adds “some folks are concerned that anyone can become a coach. The reality is that only those who are truly competent will qualify at each level. This way we can finally recognise the exceptional skills of our top coaches across the UK. But at the same time, it is never too soon to get better coaching skills available for the many climbers involved in coaching across the country. I can’t wait to see the long term impact of building those valuable foundations in climbing from the outset”.

The new coaching award scheme is now live for registration, and coincides with the launch of a brand new digital log-book for recording that all important climbing and coaching experience. With the whole package ‘fresh out of the box’ it will take time for candidates to register, and for providers to add course dates – so please be patient and keep an eye on the Mountain Training website to find out more as this exciting scheme evolves. Furthermore, we will develop a list of Frequently Asked Questions, so you can quickly find out if that burning issue has been tackled before.