Leadership in Running Fitness

4 watchers

fetcheveryone Dec 2014 5:12pm, 15 Dec 2014 15,463 posts	0 fetcheveryone I've just signed up to do this in January Anyone else done it, or thinking about it? (Hello Katie, I know you've done it).
Chrisull Dec 2014 5:18pm, 15 Dec 2014 6,757 posts	0 Chrisull Yes I've done it, and just done coaching assistant... and will be doing coach in running fitness in the new year ... ulp! LIRF is fun, not too intense, stuff on warmups, organising and leading a session, lots of practical.
fetcheveryone Dec 2014 5:28pm, 15 Dec 2014 15,464 posts	0 fetcheveryone Excellent! Have you been coaching alongside the courses?
Chrisull Dec 2014 8:02pm, 15 Dec 2014 6,759 posts	0 Chrisull Yes I have - it's quite scary. We had a shortage of coaches in our club, so we've had 4 of us go through the ranks, 2 are now coaches, and the other 2 (of which I am one) are doing the course in February. I found it totally eye opening, I had an idea that coaching was more "old skool", where you prescribe, or advise, but it's totally the opposite. You set sessions and you guide, but the emphasis is firmly on self-discovery of the runner, with as little intervention as possible. You help them understand what they need to work on, how they can improve. It's about keeping things simple, focusing on one or two aspects, making sure everyone understands - by doing things like asking questions that require more than a yes/no answer, after you've delivered an introduction. The coaching assistant course is quite a bit more intensive than the leadership one. There' a pyramid of development, fundamentals (the abcs, basic things like co-ordination), foundations (how to perform a specific activity), event groups (speed/endurance), specialism, and performance. Most people think that as they've done loads of running they're automatically way up the pyramid, when perhaps they haven't got good balance and are missing some fundamentals, so it's about determining someone's level and creating appropriate sessions/workouts for them. Shaping and chaining - both principles from psychology were talked about as well, making sessions progressive, building on the last step. So if you're teaching good running form for a session, the first few reps you'd just get people to concentrate say on keeping relaxed, so you'd make them run with shoulders scrunched up, to get then to see how lack of relaxation can impact on form. The thing that is hard is keeping all this in your head, while trying to keep things simple, straightforward. Delivering it to adults can be quite challenging, I get to work with children as well, and that is nigh on impossible lol! You have to be quite firm, quite loud, and not afraid to make eye contact, single people out (in a good way - no criticism at all at any point), in fact if you see something you deem wrong, you call the group over and say, "ok let's do this" (which highlights what you saw) "how did that make you feel?" "what could you do differently?" This is probably more touched on in the leadership course than the running one, where it's more about knowledge - "what kind of exercise to do for a warmup, how long should they take, why do a warmup" kind of thing.
HellsBells Dec 2014 8:36pm, 15 Dec 2014 18,405 posts	0 HellsBells I did mine back in January but haven't used it yet
mxhornet Dec 2014 8:46pm, 15 Dec 2014 33,875 posts	0 mxhornet I did mine a few years back, having been involved in running for almost 40 years it was basically all stuff I knew, but handy to have the qualification all the same. So I've not led a whole course but have helped on 3 beginners and one improvers course, on around three occasions I've stepped in to cover for others something I'd not have been able to do without having done the course.
HellsBells Dec 2014 9:33pm, 15 Dec 2014 18,406 posts	0 HellsBells I did mine as I was hoping to be able to organise a beginners group based around work. Unfortunately there wasn't the will from other people to make it happen
Autumnleaves Dec 2014 1:18pm, 19 Dec 2014 5,158 posts	0 Autumnleaves I did mine in September and am helping to coach the middle group at my club (the one I am in). It was a useful day although I would have liked a bit more on running technique & some of the physical side of things (as I am always being asked!!). I am hoping to start a local group for beginners using the C25k in the New Year.
Wriggling Snake Dec 2014 1:21pm, 19 Dec 2014 8,238 posts	0 Wriggling Snake DON'T PANIC LiRF is a good day, relax. best advise already given, when you do some coaching keep it simple, concentrate on one thing. Pacing, endurance, footfall, arms, whatever. A handy thing to do is go back and re-read the course.
rf_fozzy Mar 2019 2:56pm, 28 Mar 2019 8,468 posts	0 rf_fozzy Ok, so a question. I do a weekly coaching group session (i.e. an excuse for me to plan a session for myself and then get others to share the pain). I therefore want to do my CiRF course (because it's the most appropriate). However, one of the pre-requisites seems to be that I have to do the LiRF. Is there any way round this? Doing the LiRF just so as I can do the CiRF seems highly redundant. The CiRF is definitely more applicable for what I'm doing though.