Steps Forward

Took some small steps forward today. Steps towards the unknown in many ways.

The first of those steps is that I signed up for a Level 1 Triathlon Coaching Course today. The course is run by Triathlon WA and happen in a couple of weeks time on the 20th and 21st of May. Whatever coaching might look like in the future for me, this is really the first step. There will be plenty more learning in the future, some formal and some informal, but a lot of that learning starts with this training course.

The work I have been doing with Paul at Swim Smooth and Steve with BYL over the last few months has been awesome for me, I have had a ball, but that has all been about learning and gathering experience. Lots of it. Doing the Level 1 course is about the next step, getting a formal qualification. The formal qualification is a minor one, but important. At the very least the coaching course provides me with some insurance protection if something goes wrong while I am coaching. As well as that I am hoping the course will be another brick in the wall of knowledge I am building (that analogy doesn't quite sound right, but I am going to go with it).

My plan for the last few months, and the next few too, has always been to spend time gathering as much knowledge as I can before I go anywhere near trying to actively apply that knowledge in a formal coaching capacity. Build the wall of knowledge as I awkwardly put it above. As I acquire knowledge I will start to get an idea of what I like and what I don't. What I feel works and want I think doesn't work. I already have a good idea of what I think works, but I hope that as I learn more I can refine that idea, perhaps challenge parts of it and improve. From that I can build a coaching philosophy, determine my approach.

This course will be an important step in that journey of knowledge gathering.

The other step I took today was around what that application of knowledge might look like, what coaching might look like for me in the future. However, that development is in very early days and so I think I will leave that there and say no more. Watch this space though, hopefully there will be some news on this sometime in the next few months. Could mean some interesting things for the future.