Discussion: Training exercises at home?

Hello everyone,
so I've been orienteering for a good few years now, and I'm starting to improve a lot; at the moment I run red courses but I often have one or two big mistakes per race which ruin my times. I used to run orange courses but as I am quite fast and have decent navigation they became less of a challenge. Really, I'm looking for ways to improve my navigation so that I can 'iron out' my big mistakes. I tend to get good placings on courses that are easier in navigation, but when it comes to more technical terrain, I'm riding my luck a bit. I'm going to all the events I can, but can not always get out into the forest to train apart from that. Recently, I have started drawing simplification maps at home on courses which I made mistakes on and that has proved useful, but I was wondering if there were any other decent training exercises for long orienteering that can be done at home?
Thanks all,
LTO

Thank you very much! I have seen this before, but I don't have a windows computer. I might try to run it using a parallel software of some sort though, so thank you!

There is always armchair O' where you just look at maps and pick routes. To make it more interesting, you can look at events with GPS tracking but before you watch the tracks, decide for yourself what route to take. Then you can play the track and see how all the experts did it.

Here is a link to some discussion about it that includes a link to the site
https://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/m...

Try making an orienteering map of a tiny patch of woods near home, even several acres. This is great practice for refining your sense of the relations between features...distances, directions, shapes.

If you could be more specific about the exact type of errors you are making -
"navigation' covers a lot of sins. For example - are you missing or misreading map features, picking less than optimal routes, or not executing the route properly? The first 3 can be improved by armchair map study, the last needs practice in the woods, I'm afraid.

You mentioned map simplification - have you reviewed the other basic concepts like using handrails, attack points, catching features, compass and pace? Did you use them appropriately when you made your errors? Or maybe miss applied some and didn't realize it. You can finish a leg without error, but could be faster with better navigation skills or strategies.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that there is a lot that goes into navigating a leg, and your practice time will be more efficiently spent if you can identify your specific weaknesses and focus on those. And then people could suggest focused exercises to help.