LOWA ACTIVE Team Erwin Schottler

Nature as a classroom

It is virtually impossible to describe Erwin Schottler. He has simply been in so many places and done so many jobs in his life. After completing his craftsman’s appren­ticeship, Erwin joined the police force and ulti­mately became a bodyguard assigned to its Special Oper­a­tional Unit. He even­tually left the force and began to run a hotel along with his wife. This line of work gave him an oppor­tunity to get to know the coaches and trainers whose work had fascinated him so much. But his ideas about coaching were different and new: He wanted to actively reanimate the values and approaches that lots of office workers tend to forget during the stress-filled grind that makes up their daily lives – and the word “active” should definitely be taken literally here. Erwin’s “Gehs­präche” (ambling conver­sations), “Walk­shops®” and many other incentive oppor­tunities are held outdoors, usually in the woods. The credo of his coached strolls is just as simple as it is ingenious: Shorn of all technical devices like smart­phones and laptops, the walkers focus on other aspects of life and auto­mat­ically deal with one another more respectfully. The creativity that frequently gets shoved aside during various stressful situ­ations then reemerges from the shadows. LOWA has been Erwin’s footwear of choice for many years now and adds a dash of colour to nature – thanks to the bright red colour of the coach’s shoes.