okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Saturday, September 28, 2002

Learning by watching

I read an article in the KC Star this week about Nascar cup drivers watching Busch races to help prepare themselves for races.

In a lot of sports you can learn something by watching top performers. Skiers watch videos of Olympic skiers to help develop good technique. Golfers do the same (thought it seems like golfers will do just about anything to try to improve as long as it costs something).

People also watch themselves to try to improve techniques. Golfers video their swing and then study the tape trying to figure out how to improve.

I wonder if you could improve your orienteering by watching good orienteers?

If you could see Bjornar Valstad running through the woods, would you learn anything?

There are, of course, all kinds of practical problems with watching orienteering. If you sit out in the forest and watch, you only see a short bit of the race. If you try to follow from the event center, you don't see much either. At most races all you see is the run in.

As I've run races, I've seen some very good orienteers and I've run with them for a bit. But, I've never tried to watch what they are doing with an idea of picking up some ideas.

I suppose that watching a top orienteer might be useful. You could get a sense of how they move through the forest, how often they look at their map and how they look around the terrain. Maybe you'd learn something. Maybe not.

posted by Michael | 8:36 PM

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