COACHING INTO UNICORN STATUS
By Brendon Cameron, Two-time Olympian and Cycling Canada Head Track Coach
With the dust settling post-Olympic Games, I’m wrapping up my time with Cycling Canada as Head Coach of the Track Program. As a coach and Olympian, being at the Tokyo Olympic Games was very special. I have had the opportunity to work with a great coaching team over the past three years that helped create some amazing results across the board, from naming the largest track squad in Canadian history, to seeing Lauriane Genest win cycling’s first medal in the women’s Keirin, to witnessing Kelsey Mitchell not only win Canada’s 24th medal, but become an Olympic Champion on the final night of the Games.
As I reflect on the past three years, I realize that I not only grew into the role of Head Coach, but as a coach as well. Like any coach, we all start somewhere, whether it’s at the club level, or creating your very own training program. Some people even become coaches accidentally by being asked to help cover some training sessions or provide guidance for some local kids. Whichever way you arrived here, you all bring to the table a totally different set of skills, qualifications, and experience. Each coach will have different strengths, whether it be communication, specific sport knowledge, a motivator who has a high level of understanding; whereas other coaches may be rock stars in physiology and data and can create the ultimate online training program which captures all your metrics on a daily basis.
I don’t think there’s many (if any) coach that possesses all of these qualities—that is unicorn status. However, I think it’s important for every coach to understand what their strengths are, and where their coaching gaps are to ultimately improve as a coach and keep developing over time. No one has ever reached legendary status and no longer needs to keep learning; this is especially important for the athlete that are in your care. Across a group of athletes, there will be a wide range of personalities, learners, athletes that won’t need much instruction, while others may have 16 questions before each interval session. Much like a teacher in a classroom with their students, coaches need to be able to connect and communicate as best they can to link to this wide range of people. Above all, the question becomes, how do you manage the athlete that needs attention in your weak area?
One easy way for you to receive this feedback is to ask your athletes how they’ve found your coaching over the season, and in which areas you could improve. There’s a fair bit of humility involved, as you may think you’re meant to hold the key to all knowledge, and this may show a weakness or a gap that you didn’t want the athletes to ever see. At the same time, it also shows that you have a desire to get better, which in turn has benefits for everyone.
Another way is self-realisation. Personally, I had an inkling of what my gaps were, but it was never really addressed, or I tried to hide them and just kept focusing on my strengths. I never worked or improved on those weaknesses until I signed up for a coaching course that had workshops every 2-3 months over a year. Within this group, we had nine coaches from a wide array of sports including sailing, athletics, cricket, dance, soccer, etc. It wasn’t until we were well into the year that we started to share our experiences, issues, philosophies, and learnings and we became more exposed to a wider form of coaching.
The real win for me in attending these courses was finding the motivation, inspiration and the “why” of how I was coaching. The experience truly helped me get out of a rut and address those weaknesses I had as a coach, while working on my strengths and being vulnerable in acknowledging the areas that I could improve. The realization here was that there is a wider scope to learning as a coach and always an opportunity to perform.
With that said, I encourage signing up to any coaching webinars, coaching courses or weekend workshops (non-cycling specific) and to network with leaders in other sectors. Allocate time to reading articles to help build your own coaching philosophy and connect with another coach to share ideas, problems that need to be solved and any resources that may help both parties.
In celebration of National Coaches Week, the Coaching Association of Canada is offering coaches across Canada the opportunity to diversify their coaching knowledge with free or discounted NCCP education. To learn more, log into the Locker to access specific eLearning modules from September 18-26, 2021.
