COACHES CORNER – HEAD COACH MARK TURNER

THE TRI ALLIANCE COACHING TEAM

Welcome to the first edition of coaches corner.  The purpose behind this is to give members of Tri Alliance Queensland more information around everything coaching and training. Things such as the training focus for a particular time of the year, what some of the coaches are up to and why we do what we do as a coaching team.

To start with I’ll try and give people an idea of how we do things behind the scenes and the reasons behind the way we have structured the coaching at Tri Alliance.

As we have grown as a squad over the last 2-3 years my role as Head Coach of Tri Alliance Qld has changed and continues to change.  The main area of change are the amount of coaches that now form part of the coaching team across Brisbane and Gold Coast.

With a squad as large as ours it is just not possible for one or even two people to coach everyone at all the sessions.  In the past that was a model that was used however in my humble opinion, one that is not sustainable.  The triathlon industry has changed with multiple events through out the year, more and more people taking up the sport and a very short off season.

As the industry changes at a rapid rate, we as a coaching business need to move with it. That is why we are about developing a team of coaches across multiple locations. Our coaching team is now 13 strong and continues to grow to meet the demands of the squad. We have plans to grow our member base across Brisbane and Gold Coast in the coming season so it is vital our coaches are adequately trained.

In addition to the 15 members of the Tri Alliance Victoria coaching team we have years of experience and resources to share which means a better service for our members.  We are always working behind the scenes to offer Tri Alliance members across Australia more information and services.

Areas such as the http://tri-alliance.com.au/news-and-media/tri-101/ on the Tri Alliance Australia website give members updated and current articles on training and racing.  All the articles on here come from different members of the coaching team in Victoria and Queensland.  Writing and developing this content is good for the coaches as they are constantly learning about their craft.

In Queensland over the last 12 months especially I have been working with our coaching team to develop their skills and ensure they are delivering their sessions professionally.  All of our coaches in the Tri Alliance Queensland team love what they do and are very keen to further develop their coaching capabilities.

As a coaching team we meet every 2-3 months, discuss and review the training, plan for up coming events and include some professional development work.  At our next coaches meeting this weekend we have Wayne Goldsmith coming along.  Wayne is the National Coaching Development Manager for Triathlon Australia and he will be talking to the team about the latest and greatest in coaching.

Even though I may not be at as many sessions as I have been in the past I am still in contact with all of our coaching team to get their feedback on how things are going at the sessions they coach.  My role is to challenge them to be better so we talk about session content, session objectives, athlete attendance, athlete performance, delivery of the session and the training plan for the next month.

For example since the season finished in June the training plan was very much about easing things back with volume of training, limiting the structure around sessions and reducing the intensity.  By doing this it allows athletes to enjoy their training a bit more and not have such a set structure to training.

Routine, structure, specific training sets all play a very important role in a training program but it is not something that needs to be maintained all year round for age group triathletes.  There has to be a time of the year where things are not so structured to give yourself a mental and physical break.

Now that we are getting close to some key events again the training sessions will change accordingly.  Time trials, specific training sets for different levels of athlete and distance and a gradual increase in the volume and intensity will help get everyone ready for these key races.

Our coaching team are passionate, dedicated and love what they do.  They all balance it with their other careers, family lives and their own training.  I am very fortunate to have such quality people working with me and I know the future is a very exciting one with them on board.