I've just got back from a great coaching conference hosted by County Durham Sport. The two day County Durham Sport Coaches Conference (was an opportunity for local coaches to develop their knowledge and understanding of key coaching concepts. I had a busy day, delivering two sessions.
The first session was looking at Fitness Monitoring and the final session was exploring programme design. The sessions were great and whilst there was a wide range in coaching experience everyone got stuck in and contributed to the learning experience.
I was up against legendary coach, Dr Frank Dick OBE, who was delivering a parallel session at the same time as my fitness monitoring session! Once we had established that everyone who was in my audience actually wanted to be there we got cracking! In one way it was reassuring to have such a good turn out for the session, despite someone of Franks stature talking at the same time, it confirmed that the delegates really wanted to learn about fitness testing.
When I talk about fitness monitoring I have to qoute Alwyn Cosgrove
'If you
ain't assessing, you are just guessing!'
We had a great hands on session which highlighted how fitness monitoring didn't have to use state of the art expensive equipment, something that I know the coaches attending the session appreciates, as budgets are always tight!
The programme design session was a monster! Cover every aspect of programme design in an hour and half. The mission impossible soundtrack just kept going round and round in my head! This was a content heavy session but I key messages in my opening slides summed up pretty much what I wanted to say.
'When can I stop making wild guesses and start making educated guesses?'
'It pays to plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark!'
Well done to the County Durham Sport team for organising a great event. Thanks for the invitation Catherine, I had a blast and I hope I get called back next year. Jjust don't put me up against a coaching legend!