I’m fine-tuning our week‑3 plan for the pole‑top rescue and basic climb assessment on a 40’ class 4, and I’m debating whether to teach body positioning before or after gaff placement drills. If you’ve gotten strong pass rates on NCCER or similar, what cadence and time blocks worked best for you, and did you integrate knot refreshers (bowline, clove, square) into the same session or split them out?
We’ve had the best NCCER pass rates by running two 12-min cycles on a 12–15’ trainer: body positioning with the cue “hips to the hook, eyes to the next step,” then straight into 6-min gaff placement, knots as a 90-sec rest station between climbs, and only then moving to the 40’. For nervous folks we flip it and start with a ground gaff board and a 30-sec static hang to feel bite — like practicing parallel parking before the highway, @cameron_smith76; do you time the rescue separately or fold it into the last ascent?