Ropes Course Training

5-28-10

For the past two days I have been going through ropes course training at camp. The main instructor is a director at the camp. He taught the group of us everything we needed to know about running the high ropes, low ropes, giant swing, zip line, and climbing tower. Since I’ve been running these for 3-4 years already, I was sort of an “instructor” as well. Half of the time he would teach them and the other half he would make me teach. This was good though, because it just helped me be better at what I do. There is a saying that the only way you know you’ve fully learned something is if you can teach it to someone else.

So when we were training on the high course, of course, I went up with the trainees to the very upper level and taught them how to completely set it up and break it down. Now, I’ve facilitated the high course hundreds of times, but when ever go up after not being up that high for a couple of months, I really remember how high up it is. We all went to the upper level and I realized… “Oh yea! This is really, really high”. The other three trainees were very scared and didn’t even want to venture off the main platform. I realized that I’m up here with my friends and I expect them to learn how to run all of it without being scared and here I am, not entirely confident… It was kind of eye opening for me. I realized that I needed to step it up and be strong for them. So I did and it worked! I got one of them to travel off of the main platform with me! Of course we still need to work on the other two.

The take away: sometimes fear is a good thing, it keeps us from doing stupid stuff, but often times it gets in the way of our rational thinking and causes way  more harm than good.

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