If someone told you that you could become a better sailor by spending some time cozied up in your living room, would you believe them? Can snuggling up on the couch with a virtual coach make you faster?
While of course on-sofa time can’t truly replace on-boat time and definitely won’t build your sailing fitness (unless you’re multitasking by doing some stretching, too), new technology has enabled coaches to join you in your living room via ebooks, videos, and webinars.
With the crazy cold winter we’ve had, water temperatures have been running colder than usual, too. This may push some of our springtime tune-up and boathandling practice sessions back a bit. A little focus time learning from some of the best in the business can make your on-the-water time—once you get there—even more worthwhile. Watching top sailors in action, then visualizing yourself making the same movements, can pay great dividends. Visualization has long been used in other sports (“picture yourself connecting bat to ball”); why not in sailing?
For more than 20 years, Jon Emmett, an outstanding Laser sailor from Great Britain, has helped other sailors build their skills—including China’s Lijia Xu, whom he coached through to her gold medal in the Laser Radial in the 2012 Olympic Games. Jon has captured some of his ideas on paper—and now in ebooks—so you can stay on the couch and use your wireless to download his coaching gems.
“There are just some points (and indeed diagrams) that I have done countless times, and so it made sense for me to write ‘Be Your Own Sailing Coach’ to try and help the people who didn’t have their own coach!” he says. “Likewise, ‘Be Your Own Tactics Coach’ was born out of seeing some tactical situations time and time again. I wanted to put together a book with a low word count that really helped people remember both the problem and the solution—hence the use of the easy-to-recall names, which has been proven to help people remember things.”
Jon uses video as a coaching tool as well: “When I am coaching I now use a huge amount of video, so the sailor can see exactly what I can see. You can usually see far more from outside the boat than you can from inside. It was a natural progression for me to put some clips on YouTube covering some of the most popular topics. After all technique videos are incredibly popular in other sports.”
While Jon’s uploads to YouTube focus on Lasers, you can check out good technique for nearly any class of sailboat on YouTube. So after you check out a few of the world’s cutest cat videos and marvel at the wonder of the double rainbow, cruise on over to YouTube’s search function and plug in a few words to describe what you’d like to see. 420 spinnaker set? Yup, it’s there. Thistle roll tack? Several options. Extreme Optimist sailing? Check. Sailing capsize? Nearly endless offerings.
A caveat: With the quick spread of GoPro cameras, it’s easy for almost any sailor to stick a camera on their boat and create a video. You don’t want to emulate bad boathandling, so as you search for videos, try searching for the names of top sailors in your class to ensure you practice good technique. At U.S. Sailing’s YouTube channel, you can access the Chalk Talk, which highlights college sailing results and successful sailors and techniques through some video and lots of conversations with top college sailors.
On the couch and online is also a terrific place to be for a rules refresher. North Sails’ NorthU (northu.com) offers an “on demand” Rules and Tactics webinar featuring six hours of content. Unlike YouTube, it’s not free, but it’s taught by rules guru Dave Perry, so it’s well worth it.
Enjoy your time on the couch, and I’ll see you on the water soon!
**************************
Helpful YouTube.com Channels
US Sailing (great range of topics, from match and team racing to boating safety): ussailing2
Quantum Sails (features teamwork among crew on smaller keelboats): Quantum1Design
North Sails (includes some Optimist and J/70 footage): northonedesign
Jon Emmett Sailing (Laser sailing footage): jonemmettsailing
Volvo Sailing (a bit of a surprising source but check it out, especially their Beginner Coaching Videos playlist): volvocarssailing
by Kim Couranz
