Do you keep making the same errors over and over again?

Then it is probably time to think about your orienteering in a more structured way, to understand what is going wrong and what you can do about it. You can then review your skills and work out how to improve them. This is not a once through process, but one that will need repeating again and again, to build up a comprehensive skills set and a body of sufficient experience to help you implement them.

Orienteering navigation is very complex. So, it helps us to think about your skills in terms of progression from Basic to Intermediate to more Advanced skills. If you haven’t got the Basics mastered, then you will keep setting yourself up to make easily avoidable errors.

How well am I orienteering?  3 self-diagnostic questions

Try to honestly measure yourself against these 3 statements of orienteering ability

Question 1

Answer

NO

Review your basic routines and practice applying them reliably.

Be aware of other techniques but focus on delivering the basics right every time

= FOCUS ON BASIC TECHNIQUES

MOSTLY / YES

Reinforce your basic routines but explore which other techniques you could use more often

= EXPLORE INTERMEDIATE TECHNIQUES

Question 2

Answer

NO

Be aware of Advanced Techniques but

= FOCUS ON IMPROVING INTERMEDIATE TECHNIQUES

YES

Systematically identify where you are losing time

Practice different mixes of techniques to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie

= REINFORCE ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

Question 3

Answer

NO

Try exploring BEYOND ADVANCED – HOW TO JOIN IT ALL UP. 

Use the suggestions on visualisation and psychology to help you process the Advanced Techniques in race conditions

YES

Congratulations your are orienteering beyond the remit of this guide !  Please consider contributing suggestions on further content to include in this guide to help others follow your success.

You can download a copy of these questions:

The categorization of skills development used here is not meant to be strictly linear, since some people find mastering a given skill much easier than others do. It is simply a framework to structure your thinking and our discussion on skills.

Whatever your level of orienteering, it is helpful to periodically review even the most Basic skills to make sure you are executing them reliably and consistently. So, I would still encourage you to review all the skills discussions so that you are aware of them, whatever your suggested current level of orienteering from the Self Diagnostic Test, but do decide where to focus your skills development to build them up in a structured way.