Coachy

This really has ended up being a very coachy kind of week. I guess I knew about each of the individual coaching sessions, but I hadn't really thought the sessions through in the context of the entire week. Pretty full sheet in the end. 

Yesterday was a riding session with Front Runner, this morning was helping out with a Swim Smooth session, tomorrow will be my usual Thursday afternoon track session and Friday morning will be some more work with Swim Smooth. Nearly something every day of the working week. Phew, busy stuff. 

The ride with Front Runner and the track session tomorrow are business as usual, but it is the coaching down with Swim Smooth that is the unusual part of the week. Head Coach Paul is away in Majorca running a coaching clinic at the moment (soldier on there), which means Swim Smooth Coach Sal is running the squad, the work I was doing this morning and again on Friday is really just helping her out. 

Being down at the pool is hardly a hardship though as they are some of my favourite coaching experiences. The squad is always a lot of fun and while the sessions are hectic, they are busy in an enjoyable challenge sort of way. The biggest hassle with the session this morning was that it was properly cold, less then 10 degrees on Pool Deck.

What do they say, there is no bad weather, just bad clothing and so perhaps it only felt cold this morning because of my wardrobe choices, still I would have thought three layers would have been sufficient. Apparently not. Whatever the cause, it was darn chilly, I think the folks in the pool were probably a good deal warmer than myself. 

While I am not too keen on regularly coaching every day, it has been a bit of fun for this week and again next week. The extra coaching, particularly the work down at Swim Smooth, is a bit of a break from the norm and a good chance to flex some different coaching muscles to the ones that I use more regularly. These extra sessions are great opportunities to practice some of those group management skills such as handling large groups with diverse abilities, track different session plans running concurrently, run multiple timers at once and just generally problem solve and think on my feet. I like to think I take a little something away from every session that I coach, and this is particularly true for the Swim Smooth ones. 

Great learning opportunities and a fun time. Win.