On the 29th April (2017) I went to the first Female Coaching conference, organised by the Female Coaching Network and Project 500.
I’ve followed the Female Coaching Network for some time, and like the knowledge sharing they do across sports and countries. They often have useful articles and profiles, as well as a great social media presence for networking.
The Conference itself was at Surrey Sports Park in Guildford, which was handy for me but many other attendees had travelled much further. The location was excellent and had great facilities. I’m not great at formal “networking” but there were plenty of opportunities to get to know the people sat near you, at the tea and coffee area and over lunch on smaller tables.
We started the day with a talk from Karen Brown, who coached the Women’s Hockey team to Olympic gold. She had lots of proactive and useful advice on how to plan training, make things engaging, how to practice the key skills and demonstrated her passion and dedication by the hours of opposition footage she watched to plan the best tactics. The importance of letting the team define how they wanted to work, what the team atmosphere should be etc and not breaking from that no matter how important the game was important an fascinating.
It got me thinking about what team and psychology aspects there are in running, it’s not the same as a team sport but there is a lot to learn.
We had great seminars, the first on how to improve speed of an athlete with sprint training. Lots I already knew, but great to recap sprint mechanics and just how much it can help runners and anyone with elements of running in their sport.
The second seminar I attended was about mobility assessment and improvement for athletes, a great practical session with tests and exercises practiced in small groups which worked very well. Something that will be useful for both my coaching and massage clients!
The highlight of my day was a talk by Lois Fidler, a football coach who was the first woman to achieve the top coaching licence. She talked through her story of working her way to the top of a very male dominated sport, with tips, stories and advice. It was an inspirational talk including lots of management and leadership tips;
My favourite quote of the conference came from Lois;
“Feel the fear; do it anyway”
What a great day!
Check out Alexa’s website here: alexaruns.blogspot
