This newspaper clipping takes me back to the 2009/10 ice hockey season, when I was working with players from the Bracknell Bees on their strength and conditioning.
At the time, I was only 23 and still relatively early in my career as a personal trainer, but having played competitive ice hockey myself gave me an understanding of the physical demands of the sport that I could bring into my coaching.
I approached the Bracknell Bees as I was beginning to develop my personal training and conditioning business, and that led to me supporting players who needed additional work away from the ice.
Using playing experience in my coaching
One of the advantages I had was that I understood the sport from the inside.
I’d been playing since my teens and had spent time playing as a defenceman, so when I was asked to work with players on areas such as speed, reactions and conditioning, I understood how those qualities actually needed to translate onto the ice.
There is a big difference between simply making an athlete fitter and preparing them for the demands of their sport.
The work needed to have a purpose.
Working with Bees players
The newspaper article particularly highlighted my work with defencemen Adam Jones and Carl Graham, who completed personal training sessions with me during the season.
The aim was to improve areas including their speed, motor skills, reaction time and awareness.
Rather than looking at those qualities in isolation, we considered how they related to situations they would repeatedly encounter during games – reacting quickly to play, changing position, responding to opponents and making decisions under pressure.
The article reported improvements in both players’ fitness and motor skills following the work we did together.
I was also available to support other members of the squad when the coaching staff felt that a player would benefit from some additional conditioning work.
An early chapter in my coaching career
Looking back now, this was an important period in my development as a coach.
I was beginning to combine two parts of my life that had previously existed alongside one another: my experience as a player and my developing career in fitness and strength and conditioning.
It taught me early on that good athletic preparation isn’t about making every athlete complete the same programme.
You have to understand the sport, understand the position, identify what the individual needs and then build the training around that.
Those principles have stayed with me throughout my career.
More than 15 years later, my coaching work has obviously evolved considerably, but this clipping is a good reminder of where some of that thinking began – working with competitive athletes, using my own playing experience and learning how to turn gym-based training into qualities that could actually help someone perform better in their sport.
Joseph Webb.
