Coaching Resources

For information on coaching courses see the separate Coaching Accreditation page that explains the Australian coaching pathway and specific orienteering coaching course options.

To compliment the skills learn’t in coaching courses, on this page, we have pulled together some ideas and links to resources that are useful for orienteering coaches. Our top suggestions are listed below:

Talk to other coaches

Coaches are encouraged to seek a mentor and to share their coaching challenges with other experienced coaches. Active Level 1 and above coaches are encouraged to join the Orienteering Australia Coaching Group on FaceBook. This is a forum where coaches can share ideas and support each other.

YouTube

OA has a YouTube channel which includes a number of introductory videos. There’s also plenty of other videos available on YouTube to help viewers learn what the sport is about and some of the skills. It is worth searching YouTube regularly as new videos are often added to the library.

Books

There are some great books available on orienteering coaching. For example, we recommend Crowood Sports Guides’: Orienteering – Skills, Technique, Training by Carol McNeill.

Another book which is helpful for orienteers to use is The Little Book of Orienteering Techniques by Jean Cory-Wright. This is available as a free pdf version or an updated edition with colour diagrams and images by Ed Cory-Wright can be ordered by contacting Jean via this link to Orienteering New Zealand.

Resources for Introductory and School Level Coaching

A number of the States have compiled material which is very helpful and some have also produced their own material to assist coaches. For example:

Orienteering Queensland has produced Orienteering Games: The Ultimate Teaching Resource. Other excellent resources available from the Orienteering Queensland website include the free download Games Orienteers Play and technique skill pamphlets. Lesson plans for different education stages are also available.
Orienteering NSW has developed the NESA accredited OK-GO program which is widely used in the Sporting Schools program. Activities can be modified for all ages.
Orienteering SA publishes a starter pack of information for getting an in school program underway in SA. More resources here.
Orienteering WA publishes an Orienteering for Schools Booklet with some program suggestions as well as sample lesson plans.
Orienteering Victoria offers educational resources and activities for teachers and for teaching orienteering to school children.

From the British Orienteering Federation:

Xplorer Schools is a cross-curricular resource, designed to introduce orienteering to Primary school pupils.
resources for orienteering based games and activities with associated resources can also be freely downloaded
Better Orienteering , also from the UK are the resources from Duncan Bayliss. Duncan started orienteering as an M10 with Wrekin Orienteers, encouraged by his father. Now an M50 he still runs for Wrekin.

From Orienteering Canada:

First class suggestions on orienteering group games, armchair orienteering activities and group training options.

From Sweden:

Sweden’s Göran Andersson and Silva have also teamed up to produce COOL, AWESOME and EDUCATIONAL material for introducing orienteering, with versions also available for both primary and high schools (in English). It should be noted that the downloadable High Schools version is a large document (35MB). A combined digital version is now available here.

Development of cross-country navigation skills

Check out an interesting skill progression chart for a typical teen orienteer produced by Orienteering Canada. More details are also available.

The Orienteering Canada website also includes a lesson plan bank with some excellent lesson plans for introducing children to bush orienteering. There’s also a treasury of group orienteering games, armchair orienteering activities and training activities.

Most suitable for Level 1 and above coaches focussing on bush orienteering, O-training.net contains loads of training ideas.

General athlete and coaching resources

Sport Australia’s website contains plenty of support material for coaches. It ranges from ‘How to Motivate Young People’ to ‘Coaching Older Athletes’, nutrition information and session planning.

The Australian Clearing House for Sport also contains a vast library of general sport and training information.

Comprehensive sport coaching resources that are useful for athlete fitness and psychological development planning are available through sites such as BrianMAC.

To supplement orienteering coach training, coaches might also consider undertaking the Level III and IV personal trainer qualifications, strength and conditioning coach training or specific running coach training. Athletics Australia has a specific running coaching streams which may supplement skills. Courses are conducted by State athletics associations.

Play by the Rules has general resources available, such as Guidelines for coaches when dealing with children.

Online quizzes and printables

Software for orienteering and online simulation games

The International Orienteering Federation publishes a summary of most of the software which is available. With the increasing prevalence of gps tracking, post race or training analysis of route choice and performances are very powerful tools.

Most commonly used gps tracking software for race analysis:

Routegadget

Livelox

Some of the more common games are:

Course and activity planning software for coaches

Purple Pen is user-friendly software which is a free download. It’s great for planning courses. A big benefit is that it allows course setting on a pdf or jpeg image which can be particularly useful for schools.

OCAD is very powerful orienteering specific software which is ideal for planning technical training exercises. As it can be tricky for infrequent users, tips have been published on how to use OCAD for some of the more common training formats.