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The New Year is a great opportunity to reflect and review how the last 12 months has been. We’ve been thinking about what we’ve achieved and where we still want to make progress both as a business, a coach and an athlete.

The best part of being a coach is helping people to achieve amazing things so here are our Coached Athletes in Numbers so you can see what amazing things they achieved.

  • 16 pb’s across all distances and disciplines
  • 10 people completed a distance or event for the first time.
  • 2 people represent GB at the World and European Age Group Championships
  • 1 person started running for the first time ever and finished their first 5km and 10km races
  • 5 people finished Ironman Races
  • 1 person completed an XTri Iron distance event (Celtman).
  • 6 people completed marathons
  • 1 person completed an Ultra Marathon (100km)
Learning and Development

As always there’s been huge and ongoing investment in our coaching skills in our quest to develop expertise to be the best coach possible. The Total Immersion spirit of Kaizan (continuous improvement) is a fundamental part of YouCanCoaching.

Breast stroke, back stroke and fly: After a 3 day course in Alicante learning with Terry Laughlin and coaches from all around the world we qualified to teach all the strokes the Total Immersion way

Workshop Director Over a 9 month period I trained to be a Total Immersion Workshop Director. This included a 3 day training course, 3 days of shadowing and working alongside a Master Coach followed by an assessment and observation of my coaching.  I am now able to independently deliver Total Immersion workshops and am looking forward to hosting a workshop in Central London in February.

Interned:  I interned at a Total Immersion instructor training course helping to other coaches from all over the world to become qualified Total Immersion Coaches.  I worked as an assistant to the tutors and also had the opportunity to work and learn alongside Terry Laughlin and his family. This was an incredible few days helping me to refresh my knowledge and coaching skills and learn from the founder of Total Immersion.

Strength and Conditioning: I attended a Strength and Conditioning Workshop with British Triathlon

Psychology: I completed an online course about the Psychology of Injury and Mental Toughness for Injured Athletes

Running: I completed 2 days of training about the Functional Biomechanics of Running.

Coach Development: I shadowed other Total Immersion Coaches in their teaching and coaching and also participated in regular mentoring from more experienced coaches in both swimming and triathlon.

Triathlon Coaching: I am working with a more experienced triathlon coach to refresh my knowledge and develop my coaching practice

Experiential Learning

A fundamental part of our development is experiential learning. We believe in learning by doing the things that people we coach are experiencing. Being a student again is a great reminder of what my clients experience when they come for lessons or sign up for coaching. Plus every good coach needs their own coach.

Swim Technique: I’ve continued to work on my own stroke with regular video analysis and one-to-one lessons with Master TI Coaches. A recent session highlighted some old faults that had crept back in.

Strength and Conditioning: I visit a strength and conditioning coach on a regular basis. This is an essential part of my life as an athlete with injuries and is making stronger and faster. I am learning how to maintain my body, how to balance, move and do strength exercises properly so that I can carry on doing sport for decades to come.

Triathlon Coaching:  As an athlete I have my own triathlon coach. This has reminded me how my clients experience coaching, the challenges and benefits, what’s helpful and what isn’t and has re-invigorated my own training.  Of course I also have the bit between my teeth to be faster for 2018.

Run Biomechanics:  I’ve been struggling with running for a number of years and at times wondered if I would ever get back to running.   I worked with the Running School over 6 months to improve my biomechanics and learn how to run again.

Events and Racing: After a 6 year break I returned to racing triathlon.  I finished an Ironman with plenty of lessons learned.  I Swam the Channel in a 6 person relay with Swim and Tonic, and also cycled up Mont Ventoux.

Things the Business Achieved

Triathlon Coaching: We have more athletes on our books than ever with 20 signed up for 2018 with 10 people racing at Ironman Barcelona.

Swim studio. We use a private swim studio with an endless pool for lessons Mon-Fri and this has proved to be incredibly convenient for clients and a great way to learn to swim. This means we were able to offer improved availability delivering more lessons and teaching more people than 2017

Website: We launched our new website

Booking: We launched an online booking system for swimming lessons which streamlines diary management, pool bookings and payment processes.

Courses: We continued to run the popular 6 week front crawl courses as well as the weekly drop in sessions.

New for 2018

Training Camp: We have our very first training camp scheduled for 19th-25th May in Alicante.

Effortless Endurance Workshop in Central London: We are co-hosting a Total Immersion workshop in Central London with colleague Total Immersion Coach, James Ewart.

Run Coaching: We will be training with the Running School throughout 2018 to become a running biomechanics coach.

Strength and Conditioning: We will be offering strength and conditioning guidance for coached athletes.

Get in touch to let us know how your year has been (or even ask us to review your training for you), and if you want to make more progress in 2018 then book in for some coaching!