 Alright guys today we are starting a new video series on the channel which is going to be about coaching and how to actually be a better running coach so this is you know anyone can enjoy watching these videos but particularly they're geared at the running coach out there. Perhaps you're already a coach and you're looking to sort of up your game or perhaps you are an aspiring running coach you want to get into some coaching and you're not really sure about where to start, how to do it. This video series is all about just giving you some tools and sharing some of my experiences as a running coach with you in order to help you improve. Being a good running coach relies on a few different things that we'll get into in different videos. We could we could talk about different pillars of good coaching but below those pillars there's a foundation right and the foundation of good coaching is in my opinion communication alright communication is key if you want to be a good running coach and there's a bit of a spectrum here where you know the optimal coaching situation is obviously going to be one where the coach is actually there with the athlete right seeing the athlete on a daily basis probably that's like elite level Olympic coaching where the coach is just constantly following up the athlete tweaking things from day to day you know that's that's like an absolute top-notch coaching situation. On the other end of the spectrum we might have someone who communicates with their athlete you know once a month or so and if you if you actually if you look back in time I've heard that before the internet etc some coaches would actually do coaching by mail by post right so they would be sending a training plan they would create a training plan for their athletes send it to their athlete the athlete would complete the training make a training log and then send that training log back to the coach with some comments and some reports from training etc then the coach would look at that analyze it take it into consideration when creating the next plan and of course today with internet we are very lucky to have ease of communication we can do video chat we can make videos like this chat messaging we can be on a phone you know there's endless possibilities even if we can't meet in person we can still communicate very well and that's really important because if you think about it there's a lot of training plans out there on the internet it's it's fairly easy to find a generic plan for half marathon for example and those can be great for sure better than nothing usually but there's something to be said about actually having a coach following up your training and customizing the plan to fit you and that's where communication comes in so I would say that the more you as a coach know about your athlete the better it is right so the idea is that the athlete needs to give you feedback regularly as to how things are feeling how tired are they how are they handling the mileage is there any pains or injuries did they like the work out you did last week was it fun did they feel like they were able to do it well now with gps watches etc we can actually as coaches look at their training and what we have to do then as coaches is to not just be you know computers looking at the data and then prescribing a workout and not really thinking about the human being that's behind those numbers and that's where communication comes in that's very important we need to be able as coaches to listen to our athlete we need to give them space to share to communicate their feelings regarding our training because sometimes an athlete will feel like they need to do the training plan because you've written it right and they feel bad if they're not completing the workout etc whereas the truth is of course that you're actually your job as a coach is to actually tailor the workouts and the plan to the athlete the athlete is not supposed to try and fit themselves into the plan which is often what happens and that's the only way to sort of get that working is to communicate right as a coach you need to be able to explain why you're doing things the purpose of the workouts you know get your athlete to buy into the plan and to believe in the plan otherwise it's not gonna work usually they're not gonna do it and then the athlete needs to report back to the coach with all kinds of details the more details the better so I offer different levels and types of coaching for my athletes most of them are on a monthly or bi-weekly plan where I update their plan once a month or every two weeks after consultation half an hour on Skype where I gather information but I also use another platform to gather information and I just wanted to share that with you here at the end and that's V.02 I'll put a link in the description and just so you know it I am affiliated with V.02 just so you keep that in the back of your mind but I originally found the platform because I'm a very big fan of Jack Daniels his book Daniels Running Formula and this platform is basically built on that system so just we'll get into that in another video I want to show you guys the platform that I use and how I use it but just for for the purposes of this video I wanted to just quickly show you how easy it is to communicate with athletes in this program so as I said I do have Skype consultations with most my athletes I have a WhatsApp messaging situation going on where they can ask me questions anytime and we can sort of communicate a little bit more in depth but it's really nice in this V.02 platform here in the calendar you can see that the athlete can actually comment inside of the actual run so I'll program the training into this calendar they'll complete it I'll be able to see if they completed it I'll be able to look at the at the stats and you know the pace and the heart rate and all that stuff and then at the bottom they can actually add a comment after their run where they tell me how it went maybe if there was an issue or whatever and they can also say if they skipped it and why they skipped it etc and then I can comment back so that's a really good way to be able to sort of it's a training log essentially and a good way for me to keep track of how they're doing and how they're handling the different workouts in the context of the workout itself because it's sometimes difficult to to get a message on WhatsApp and then you have to go over to their training plan and sort of try and figure out which which run are they talking about again they said they had a had a bad day which day was it okay and then you have to find that run in the calendar well here the the comments regarding a particular run will be in the actual run itself in the calendar easier to keep track of it and it sort of adds context and as a coach I can also add workout notes of course explain how to do a workout and you know the more information the better the more information I can give the athlete to why we're doing a workout the better and the more information the athlete can give me as to how it's going and why they did what they did or didn't do what they didn't do or I just find that platform really really useful in that regard in terms of communicating with your athletes so if you're interested in in checking that out as I said the the link is in the description you can check out the platform it's free to sign up as an athlete so you can use that for your own training plan and play around with a little bit and as a coach you pay based on how many athletes you're coaching how many clients you have basically so go check it out that's it for today we'll make more videos in this series coming up coaching 101 or I don't know what I'll call the series but thanks for now thanks for watching please subscribe to stay tuned to the rest of the video series and remember as a coach number one priority communication all right bye