My day started exactly as the previous week, I turned up early in case Ian wanted to take me through anything different. Once I met Ian and the coaching department we discussed the process of the next couple of hours. Ian took me into the gym prior to the session starting where we got all the equipment set up exactly how it was set up the week previous. To my relief, we was going to conduct the same circuit as the previous week which meant my research I conducted in preparation for this session would come into practise. When the athletes arrived, instead of feeling anxious and nervous I was focussing on trying to remember their names and trying to further build a coach athlete relationship.
I felt more confident today
approaching the athletes with some of the coaching points I had previously
researched and therefore was more vocal. However, I still felt there was a
barrier between myself and some of the athletes based upon their interest in
what I was about to say. I was aware the athletes had been doing this circuit
for 4 week before I introduced myself; maybe the athletes thought they knew
more than me about the specific drills. I therefore justified why I was giving
them the specific coaching points and as the athletes worked in pairs of twos I
got the other athlete to help. I pointed out the coaching points firstly to the
athlete who was on their rest period. This meant that once I mentioned specific
coaching points to the athlete conducting the exercise the one who was resting
would naturally adopt a sort of coaching role and would back me up with my
justification; e.g: when performing a back squat I would inform the participant
if they arched there back, I informed them that by pushing out their back this
would enable their back to adopt a more upright posture. The athlete on their
rest period would then get involved and tell me if they thought their partner’s
technique had improved. This enabled me to engage in conversations with the
athletes and get to know them in more detail whilst gaining their trust and
respect as they understood why I was giving the athlete the feedback I was.
Unfortunately, as I have
undergone resistance training for four years I felt more confident when I was
giving feedback on lifting techniques as appose to specific game situation
feedback when outdoors on the astroturf. I only represented my school in rugby
tournaments on a few occasions as my natural build was more suited for football
meaning I favoured football more resulting in my knowledge of rugby drills
being limited. As the training session progressed outdoors I found myself
shadowing the coaches again looking at how they projected their voices, the
positioning of the coaches and how they improvised for the injured athletes who
couldn’t take part in certain drills. Additionally I shadowed the grabbling
coaches and listen to how they conducted these sessions and everything about it
was new to me.
Using
Gibbs’ model to reflect on my first day last week really made me feel more
comfortable and more confident as I felt I had confronted some of the areas for
improvement. I tried to be more confident by getting my views and opinions
across but at the same time respecting the order of the staff members. I still
would like to interact more with the players and want to feel like the players
understand why I am giving them feedback but I understand that this will come
with time. For next week’s session my area to improve is my knowledge of the
rugby game specific drills the coaches used in today’s session and engage more
with the other members of staff in order to try and build connections.
By Connor
Franks
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