Philosophy

I have fairly strong views on how athletes, coaches and those charged with the overall direction of the sport should interact. I won’t take on just any athlete to coach on a personal level, I have to believe that the athlete and I will have a good working relationship and for that to work we must have similar moral standards, a few of which I have outlined below.

• Trust & Honesty - This works both ways in that the athlete has to trust the coaches guidance and the coach has to trust the feelings and gut reactions of the athletes.
• Reliability - Coaches and athletes must always be reliable, for example turning up for training sessions on time and filling in training logs quickly and accurately.
• Openness - The relationship between a coach and an athlete should always be open and approachable and it is often a fine balance between being a coach and being a friend. Often what effects an athletes personal life equally effects their training and racing
• Realistic - Coaches and athletes have to be realistic about what can be achieved from either side. When setting goals both parties must agree that the goals are realistic, I wont tell an athlete they can get to the Olympics until I fully believe they can.
• Scientific approach - As a coach I believe that an athlete should have access to detailed, methodical analysis of technique, past training volumes and current physiological fitness. This HAS to be used when defining training programs and volumes.
• Communication - Athletes and coaches have to interact regularly to give real time feedback as to progression through training cycles. Some of this can be using virtual means such as email, online training records, but nothing beats a good old chat on the phone (or SKYPE)
• Transparency - For the minority sport of cross country skiing and biathlon to develop there must be transparency from the NGBs down to the athletes on the ground. Progress in the sport will be negligible as long as national coaches and managers continue to work in small secretive groups without sharing and consulting athletes on the ground at the grass roots.
• Athlete centred - This has often been used as a buzz phrase in sports development, but every time a decision is taken by coaches, or the NGBs, the question "does this benefit the athletes?" must be asked.