Hi Everybody,
Below you can find some videos that I posted earlier in the year featuring some of the athletes I coach and some of the interaction I have with them. Being a Para Athletics Coach I often find my self explaining to people what my athletes do and how the sport works since there is still less awareness for Paralympic Sports compared to the Olympic Sports.
I’m often told that it must be very rewarding and inspiring to work with Para Athletes. My reply is that it really is no different to coaching able bodied athletes and sometimes might even be less rewarding since people still question the High Performance site of the Paralympics.
I tread every athletes that I work with as a High Performance Athlete. I demand full dedication in and out of practice and the primary goal for my group is to make the national team and eventually win medals at international competitions.
I see my self as a high performance coach coaching high performance athletes and I feel that the culture within our team reflects this wherever we go. It took us 8 years to build a group of 8 High Performance Para Athletes based out of the Sport Centre Atlantic.
Over the last 8 years we recruited over 100 athletes but only 8 of them made the cut to be on the team and stuck with the training regime. I only had to literally cut one athlete from the team and everybody else quickly realized if they were willing to make the commitment and sacrifices that I asked from them.
It usually takes about 3 months of training for an athlete to either stay with the program or move on to another sport or activity.
My athletes know I demand a lot from them and I think they all truly appreciate that.
Hey Ueli,
I liked the videos and learned a lot about para sports and athletes that I didn’t know. Do you think if there was less to demand initially, you would retain more athletes within a sport and allow for late bloomers to adapt? It seems that Pam has really been empowered by you to improve her performance but why after 3 months of training do athletes stay or move on to other sports?
Hi Alby,
Thanks for your comment. You bring up a valid point and so far I have never really seen it as a big problem since I always had enough athletes to work with and I guess somehow was content with the athletes that did stick to the program.
In my position as the Para Athletics High Performance Coach with the Sport Centre our goal is to develop athletes that eventually make it to a National Team Level. Unfortunately we don’t really have a clear Para Athletics Performance Pathway and often athletes have to accelerate pretty quick in order to make it to a National Team. I do think though that a more “recreational” program would be very beneficial for athlete retention and allow the late bloomers to stay in the sport and it is for sure something that I will look into. I will have to see what would work best? Maybe a partership with another club or a separate group within our program that would be lead by an assistant coach since my time is pretty much taken up by the Performance Group.
Hi Ueli, as a coach of para-athletes myself I can relate to some of the comments in your post. My first coach was very hard on new athletes and we lost a lot of new people because of it (It was a different kind of hard I bet as he was an A-hole and I don’t believe that you are). Anyway, my point is when I first started coaching my goal was not to drive athletes away by being hard on them particularily early in their career. I would wait until the expressed an interest in high-performance before I would challenge them. Are you demanding of people from the get go or is there an easing in period? When do you first see an athlete?
Adam
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your comments and thanks for thinking Im not an A-hole (:
Reflecting on my group I don’t think I myself am to demanding but rather the group is now at a point where it can be intimating to newcomers seeing the amount of training and the quality my athletes are putting into their sport. As you know in para sports very often people wither do it full out or do it not at all. In the past I tried to integrate the newcomers with the elite group but as I said we often lost talent. After reflecting on this practice we now have started a beginners group on Sundays. The purpose is for newbies to come out and try the sport. The elite athletes are there but their sole purpose is to mentor and teach the new athletes about the sport and we don’t really do workouts etc. I’m really hoping that this will help with the retention of new athletes and give them more of an entry level to start taking part in wheelchair athletics.