Author: derek.begg

• Do you have a spare hour or two once a month?
• Have you been away from the club for a while, and would like to ease your way back onto the scene?
• Have you had inspiring coaches in the past, and feel you could share your rowing tips?
• Have you been coaching (or wanted to) but found the time commitment and organisation was beyond what you could give?

If any of this is you, then we have some great news.
This season we are proposing to run a new rowing structure – one that allows coaches with almost any level of experience and time commitment to be involved with the club, and to contribute to a team coaching culture.
We plan for the squads to move to bigger, more inclusive groups. To give you some idea of how things will be run:

• Winter training will have a skills and fitness focus. Squads will be mixed and will not train in set boats or by sweep/scull only.
• The head/sprint/masters phases are aimed at maximising the competitive experience of our sport.  We will focus on boats chosen across the squads and with an equal priority.
• Coaches will primarily coach the squad, not the same boat, working in pairs so that each rower gets the benefit of each coach’s experience (as does the other coach).
• Boats will not spend the entire session with one coach, moving between work with the coaches and away on their own.
• In each competitive phase of the season, as key regattas approach coaches will work more often with specific boats, although the group approach will remain.
• We will have set weekly club training sessions.  Squads will be run using a combination of online sign-up boards and dedicated squad organisers.
• Training plans will be set for the entire squad, so coaches available for any particular week simply need to deliver one of the session plans allocated for that week.