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The long season is finally coming to an end across the board for the PBscience athletes. A good final weekend – an end of season PB; a 2 minute improvement on last years’ time; and a new course record. Not a bad way to end 2009!
So, attention is now on the post season debriefing process – all athletes have a post season questionnaire in hand, and I ask them to reflect on what went well, what went not so well while it is still fresh in their minds. ‘Coach’ is also doing the same – guided by my recent readings on ‘performance’, I am considering my own practises: what I did well, what I didn’t do so well. The difficulty for me is starting with the criteria for a ‘good performance’. Whilst athletes have figures: power data, times, rankings; measuring my outcomes is a little more tricky. I’ve said once before that if I attend a race and half my athletes PB and the other half ‘bomb’, does that make me a good cycling coach or a bad one?
I had a few days away at the end of the week – a chance to catch up with my friend and SIS team mate Annie on her home island of Guernsey. Like my athletes, I needed a little downtime after the long season, and also, the business start-up endeavours. Annie and I are very similar – in make-up, but also in career stage – she is also in the early throes of a business. So it was an ‘active break’, including some cliff running (3 days later, quads STILL in agony!) during which time we reflected on our coaching practices – I asked Annie the question “what makes a good coach?” – we both agreed that primarily it had to be based on our ability to communicate – to listen and understand. Next in our list came the knowledge base, and taking the responsibility to always learn.
It was quite appropriate therefore that I had been to an evening seminar event in London last week – to see the man behind the “Seven habits of highly effective people”, Dr Steven Covey. I’m a big plan of his philosophy: and every Monday morning I follow his strategic approach to planning, 20 minutes to ensure that I not only look at my list of things to do, but I prioritise them according to my life priorities: this enables ‘Quadrant II’ living – focusing on the important not just the urgent. So, when I had been discussing ‘performance’ with Annie at the weekend, I had fresh in my mind the two habits of “Sharpening the saw” (updating knowledge being an example of this) and “Seek first to understand”. Needless to say, in my weekly planning this very Monday morning, I have put aside some ‘saw sharpening’ time: reflection on my own cycle coaching performance.
I’m intrigued to see if the factors I see I need to continue / change marry up with the feedback from all my athletes!
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