Saturday 16th January & Sunday 17th January 2010
Wyboston Lakes, Bedfordshire
Conference Success!!
Download Conference Presentations - over here on the right.....................................
Check out some pictures from the event here.
Find out what people have been saying about the event here.
For more photos and quotes, visit the Canoe England Facebook page.
Canoe England held their second National Coach Conference over the weekend of January 16th & 17th 2010 at Wyboston Conference Centre, just outside Bedford. The purpose built conference centre was fantastic with awesome food and accommodation as well as a first class conference hall, and numerous workshop rooms.
Despite the bad weather over 200 Coaches attended the conference, (a 180% increase on last year!) representing a wide range of the competition and recreational disciplines, and from all over the country. The freezing conditions meant that we had to run all of our workshops indoors, but some creativity on the part of our presenters allowed the sessions to run, with lots of really useful content for the coaches.
The conference kicked off on Saturday morning with the first Keynote Speech, delivered by Mark Woodhouse “Coaching for Performance”. Marks presentation focused around how we unlock a person's potential to maximise their own performance and the affect of attitude on the chance of succeeding. Mark introduced the Performance Equation and Performance Cycle as two useful models with which to consider the philosophy of coaching and the psychology of success. Together they provide a powerful framework with which to analyse people, performance, identify psychological barriers, unlock people potential, and enable them to be their best.
From Saturday coffee time through to the end of Sunday a range of workshops were on offer for coaches, including some specific BCU Courses; Paddlesport Fundamentals, Slalom and Racing Coach Modules, Coaching the Mind, Performance Planning, and Coaching Young Paddlers. Workshops were also on offer for Providers of the BCU 2/3 Star, FSRT, and Level 1/2 Coach Awards, helping providers share ideas and hopefully work towards a more common delivery.
A Strength and Conditioning workshop was delivered by Dave Clark, head of strength and conditioning at the sportscotland institute of sport. Dave has delivered strength and conditioning support to GB Canoe Slalom athletes since August 2003 and is currently the strength and conditioning lead for this programme, working directly with the senior athletes in the preparation for the London Olympics in 2012. He had the support of two of our GB Slalom Athletes, Etienne Stott and Olympian Laura Blakeman demonstrating the techniques and showing off their muscles!!
Julia Wells delivered a workshop on Performance Analysis show casing how the British Slalom team use performance analysis tools (e.g. in depth video or split analysis) to develop evidence based coaching. Julia has been providing performance analysis support to elite sports for over ten years and currently works for the English Institute of Sport, supporting the GB Canoe Slalom Team.
Alex Nikonorov ran workshops on the Racing Kayak and Canoe forward paddling technique. Alex is one of the worlds best in this field; born in Russia in 1952, a Doctor in sport science and with a PHD in Sport Biomechanics. Between 1978 and 1992 Alex was teaching sport science in Kiev Institute of Physical Education and coaching in Kiev in High Performance Sport School, he also spent much of this time leading scientific groups and working as expert in sport Biomechanics for USSR national canoeing team. In 1993 he was employed as Head coach for Spanish Canoeing Team; until we got our hands on him in 2000, where he became coach for BCU Sprint Canoeing Olympic Programmes!
We had a couple of workshops focused around improving coaching skills (Observation, and Practice methods), and a session to help our coaches when working with women and girls delivered by Liz Davidson from the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, while our own Viv Kendrick ran a session to help coaches working with disabled paddlers. A few heads turned from the centre staff when the court yard was used for the Traditional Open Canoe Workshop!
The event also provided coaches the opportunity to meet the ever-growing team of staff involved with Coaching within Canoe England. Comments regarding the high quality of session delivery, the friendly, professional, attitude of all the deliverers and staff was a recurrent theme on conference feedback forms!
With the success of the conference, both in terms of the opportunities for coaches to further develop their knowledge base, and to network with a range of coaches from all disciplines, and across all levels - it looks like we will putting the event on again next year!
Lara Tipper
English Coaching Manager