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Having spent so many years building the club and making sure all of our members progress, I have been very guilty of not having given enough one to one time with my own kids. This last year Brianna our eldest has progressed probably because at the start of the club I gave her the time and built a strong set of fundamentals, it has stood to her this last year having now completed her L3 skills, sat her L1 instructor training and came out with me now on quite a few whitewater mini missions.
Pool sessions are invaluable for the club but again my time is very limited by trying to ensure everyone in the pool gets equal coaching, inevitably our two wee ones don't get enough time from me. Now! this time of year is not built for the wee ones to be in the river and the pool sessions are great with the warm clear water however there still is limited time to coach and there is the added "fear" factor of learning to roll in water for them.
So after a year of thinking about a dry land rolling device and finally freeing some time between the million items task list I decided to put the concept to the test. A few hours in the garage and Julie now minus vital wheels for her bike and we have a rolling machine.
The design is simple and rudimentary, its purpose is to build muscle memory and hone the sequence of skills needed, I have to admit i'm very pedantic about progressions and insist upon having a strong low and high brace before moving onto rolling. They have this but the underwater 3d environment has them a little bit confused.
They tried a few rolls in the pool just after Christmas so their journey is quite new, I am hoping this device can help them when we move back to the pool.
Julie and I use Facebook like a live diary for our kids, capturing key moments that in later life they can look back or simply wait for it to come up on Timehop. So while giving the kids their very first go Julie recorded and posted the video to Facebook. We watched in amazement from Saturday evening and thought wow we could hit a massive 1,000 views, woke up Sunday morning to 14,000 WOW !!! I went on a river trip Sunday afternoon and got off around 4pm and when I check it we were are 47,000. As I type this today we are now sat at 108,000 views with over 1,000 shares.
I sat and read through all of the shares and comments from around the world and delighted to see that it's been well received and 99.99% of the comments are positive.
There has been a few comments around bigger wheels, helmets etc and they are appreciated. This is a simple concept just to help the kids and i've no plans to rebuild, this will make it easier for them but I don't want to make it too easy for them, the "boat" needs a level of resistance which i can control by holding the wheel.
