Coach Development – the next steps

Monday 22nd September 2014

Allan Scott and Rodger Harkins at the Emirates Arena on Saturday – photo: by Bobby Gavin

Key dates to help you plan your coaching journey

Our National Coaching Conference felt like a big success at the Emirates Arena and the response from across the Scottish coaching community is much appreciated.

Over the course of the two days we had very close to 300 sign-ups and that is encouraging for the sport in Scotland. Everyone at scottishathletics would like to thank the conference presenters, delegates and athlete demonstrators for their attendance and on-going commitment.

Both Stephen Maguire and his successor as Director of Coaching, Rodger Harkins, stressed the importance of coaches staying on their learning journey as the Emirates focus fell on three key elements: conditioning, technique and planning.

So, what happens now in the scottishathletics Coach Development programme for 2014-15?

A series of Event Group days are now planned on three separate dates through the winter to follow-up on the hard work carried out over the weekend.

The dates and venues for these are now confirmed and can be added to coaching diaries.

Event Group Coach Development Days:
26 October 2014 – Emirates Arena
7 December 2014 – Grangemouth and Pitreavie
22 March 2015 – Grangemouth and Pitreavie

The sessions will be led on those days:
Speed – Tony Hadley
Throws – David Parker
Jumps – Femi Akinsanya
Endurance – Mark Pollard

The Coach Development Days will contain practical workshops on technical development, development of physical competencies and planning for coaches working with club athletes.
To register your interest please email Mary Anderson.

Here’s a bit of feedback from coaches who attended:

Paul Allan (Pitreavie AAC):
‘I was at the first session with Kelvin Giles and there were a few things in there which I had already been working on over the past couple of years about movement.

‘We’ve young athletes come into the sport and they just can’t do basics movements. So we have to work on that. I learned a few more things I could potentially use or adapt. Steve Fudge’s stuff gave me aspects to work on for starts and biomechanics.

‘What I liked about the Conference is you don’t agree with everything but it does make you think about what you have been doing. And how you can improve.

‘The raw material we are working with now in young athletes is difficult because they are the ‘X-box generation’. For me, they are less competent at movements skills than when they were five years of age. So we can’t start to teach someone how to be an athlete until they have the very basics.’

John Scott (Edinburgh AC) on our Facebook page:
‘What a tremendous weekend. Just what I needed to help me become a better coach.’

Ali MacPhail, Alison Davis and Brian Davis (Orkney AC):
‘We enjoy coming to the Coaching Conferences. We feel it gives you some new ideas, confirms some of things that you are doing and gets you thinking and talking about your coaching.

‘Like the way that it ties in with whatever stage of the season we are at – you can take that back to the club and see how you can implement some of the things you have learned.

‘There’s an extra bonus for us in the sense that it gives us a great chance to talk to other coaches and clubs. Obviously we are isolated a bit in Orkney so we don’t have all that many opportunities to ‘network’ in a sense and that’s a feature now of the National Coaching Conference as well as the more obvious benefits.’