Following the face to face sessions held at Royal West in April the aspiring coaches are going to undergo assessments of thier work at thier own clubs this Autumn. These assessments will be carried out by an external British Rowing approved assessor, David Thompson of Welsh Sea Rowing. One of the first to be assessed will be Ali Grant of RowPorty, pictured above at two during one of the sessions in Greenock. Ali was awarded a grant (pardon the pun) by Edinburgh Leisure to help towards her course fees and has been working hard over the last few months. She writes:

“I will be sitting my assessment on Friday 14th Sep at 2pm in Portobello. I am REALLY hoping for friendly seas! I have worked through a 5 step progressive lesson plan from inducting complete novices to sessions on cox commands, buouy turns, timing and racing starts. My final session will be looking at building up power and stamina.

The main thing I’ve enjoyed continues to be coming up with new exercises and activities to ‘coach’ particular things – everything from singing to waltzing! I’ve had some really willing victims who have not only let me try things out – some of which worked and some of which didn’t- but have also given me great feedback and helped me figure out how I could do things differently. I’ve really appreciated that.

I think the key thing about the coaching award is that it just makes you ‘think’ through from start to finish how a session should look and understand in your own mind what you are trying to communicate. More importantly, it challenges you to come up with activities which are going to achieve that – and make the sport of rowing fun! I think it’s important to never stop learning.

I’m happy to expand on all of this for the SCRA website once the 14th is over! I’m also really keen to get a SCRA coaching group established who can share training ideas. I think you need to keep coming up with those to avoid becoming ‘stale’ as a coach.”

All club coaches should be thinking along the same lines as Ali. Keep it fresh and fun. Lets also be thinking about sharing our knowledge to smaller and newer clubs near us.

There is a cluster of assessments happening in the Lothians over the weekend of 14th-16th September before David travels through to Lochgilphead on 21st Sept. to assess Ian Sinclair (in the coxes seat above) at Mid-Argyll RC, then to Troon CRC on 22nd Sept. to assess Alan Farrell & Mick Boden.

As Ali says, once these coaches are in place we will try and form an SCRA coaching group to support clubs without qualified coaches, both to get qualified but also to just get started.

Adam Graham
Training & Development