Coach's Eye

Today is Thursday--only two more days until we're back in the ring! This weekend we are at Dream Park, just over the Commodore Barry Bridge in New Jersey. Many don't care much for DP, but if you live anywhere near the SE Pennsylvania area and you do AKC agility, you are probably pretty familiar with it. Personally, I like DP a lot. It's big (three rings running at once) and boisterous, and the level of competition is high. It is our home-away-from-home--we probably do around 15 trials a year there. What people tend not to like about it is the footing--red dirt that gets all over you and your dog, with hard-packed clay underneath. That clay can be hard on both the dogs' and the handlers' joints. I will say that if I trial too many weekends in a row at DP, my knees do start to hurt. But we generally do well there.

As often as possible, I try to get a video of every run we do. Although it's fun to catch one of our pretty runs on video, the best ones to get are the ones with mistakes. Then I can look at them and figure out what I did wrong (which is the usual problem) or what Mr. Darcy has done wrong. I usually get someone (most often my wife, Paula) to video us using an iPad. Once I have it on the iPad I import it into an app called "Coach's Eye." This app is really cool. It enables me to slow the video down to half speed or even go frame-by-frame, controlling the speed with my finger. Coach's Eye has helped me discover what was happening with two or three problems we were struggling with. Once I knew what the problems were, I could develop plans to fix them.

For example, by slowing down our videos, we were recently able to figure out that Darcy was frequently leaving out a stride and taking off for jumps one stride too early. He usually did this in front of the triple jump. When he took off early, he also came down early. regularly knocking the top bar and causing us an NQ. It took the Slo Mo of Coach's Eye to enable me to see this. I then did a lot of training with Mr. D on the triple and he got a lot better at judging when to take off to jump the triple. Since that discovery, no more bars down. (I'm sure bars will still come down, but hopefully a lot less often.)

In addition to Coach's Eye, another plus of using an iPad for videoing is that it has a relatively large screen (when compared with a standard video camera). This means I can look at my run and analyze it within minutes, while it is still fresh in my mind.

So usually after our runs, particularly after an NQ, you will find me in the stands with ice packs on my knees, obsessively looking at our latest video. If you're not videoing your runs, you are missing out on a great learning opportunity.

So, see you at Dream Park this weekend?! Bring your iPad and your ice packs.

Rob