The official coaching magazine of Table Tennis England ISSN 2059-4925 Edition Four | Summer 2016 | £2

Mums on the movePenny Rother on energising fellow mums

Level upLevel 4 coaches get a boost

Maria’s motivationInspiring girls to get involved

TURNING THE TABLES

The women take over: addressing the gender imbalance

P L A Y I T L I K E P A U L .T H E N E W P A U L D R I N K H A L L B L A D E S E R I E S .

T H E C O M P L E T E S E R I E S - O N L Y A T

3LATEST NEWS

NEWS UPDATE

92184 Edited, designed and produced by Coachwise Creative Ltd. Published August 2016 Editor: Anna Gutridge Email: agutridge@coachwise.ltd.uk Tel: 0113-201 5533Photography © Table Tennis England unless otherwise stated.

Coach Mentoring

Inspired by Team GB’s performances at the Rio 2016 Olympics? Then don’t forget to apply for our coach mentoring scheme. Would you like to be mentored by coaches currently involved in the England set up, which will include Team GB and England Men’s Head Coach, Alan Cooke?

To help develop our next generation of coaches, we have set up a Coach Mentoring scheme. The scheme will support coaches working with young players within the Table Tennis England talent pathway and coaches will have the opportunity to develop their coaching skills and experience, whilst gaining an insight into how our current junior and senior England players are being trained.

To apply to be a part of this fantastic opportunity, please register here

New AppointmentMarcus Gustafson is the new Manager for the Talent Development Centres (TDCs). He will support these appointed clubs with their development. He will also assist the national coaches with the NYS. As a player, Marcus reached the Swedish junior nationals. In the Swedish Premier League team Spårvägen Stockholm, he played doubles with Jan-Owe Waldner.

Coaching Background:

2000–2002: National Head Coach of Trinidad and Barbados

2002–2007: Head Coach and Manager of Spårvägen Stockholm

2007–2008: National Head Coach of Australia

2009: Coach in the Swedish National Centre (medals at Swedish junior nationals)

2010: National head coach of South Africa (men’s team finish in sixth place at Commonwealth Games)

2011–2016: National Girls/Women’s Coach of Norway; Head Coach at the National Centre.

Top Tips:

Don’t waste time in the training hall, and always practise with concentration and fight before self-evaluating.

Enjoy competition from a young age. Also try to play abroad as much as possible for increased experience and exposure.

Find a role model who is a top junior or senior, and who has a similar playing style to you. Try to copy some things you think could be important for your game.

The Coaching Department is now on Twitter. Follow @TTE_CoachEd

i

Alan Cooke, Team GB coach, could be your mentor

My first move was to focus training sessions specifically to attract girls, recognising that they often approach sport differently to boys. It started when I put together a questionnaire that asked the girls what they wanted: to train with boys or just girls? They unanimously decided it was ‘girls only’. After creating a poster and putting it up around the school, it was time for the first session. I must admit to expecting low numbers when I first put the idea forward. Actually, pretty quickly, I was pleasantly surprised.

Along with the normal equipment that we needed, I thought it was essential to be able to chill at the end of a session and have a little treat such as cakes or a biscuit. I was prepared to do whatever it was going to take to get those girls into the session. Well... food definitely worked! The session started with two or three girls at first – which if I am honest was quite discouraging. But I felt I had to stick to the plan of a ‘girls only session’. Eventually, the numbers increased until around 10-12 girls regularly attended. A coaching philosophy alongside clear rules and goals for the session are very important. It’s important for the players to know what is expected of them.

My expectations were high for these girls to achieve, but the reality of a school environment was much different than a regional training session. Whilst two of the girls progressed really quickly, the main core of the group were slower to pick up the skills. My goal wasn’t to produce world champions, but to get the girls off the sofa, into the table tennis training environment, and to give them a passion and a love for playing table tennis. I’m glad to say, a year or so on, we are thriving here at Raine’s Foundation School.

My exercises and plan are different depending on the person and standard I have in the training hall. When I have beginners and people who are new to the sport, it is important that I make it interesting, fun, achievable and engaging. It’s so important to engage players in the training hall and make them want to come back again!

HERE COME THE GIRLSThe Winning Edge spoke to Maria Ingles, a regional table tennis co-ordinator and head coach, about her success in attracting a new wave of girls to the sport.

Maria Ingles gives one of her pupils an insight

5GETTING GIRLS INVOLVED

I started just helping out as a volunteer at BATTS table tennis club in Harlow and it went from there. Once I was in that environment I was hooked! The feelings of passion and excitement for the game came flooding in.

Within four years I had taken qualification Levels 1, 2 and 3 and was offered a role as Coach Co-ordinator for the East. Taking that job was one of the best decisions I’ve made. It was a great opportunity to learn from more experienced coaches.

At times I felt way out of my comfort zone, but I had a mentor to lean on and to push me to be a better coach, challenge me on the way you do things, and also encourage me to hang on in there. Mentoring was so important for me, not to just learn from, but to put myself beside top quality coaches who were passionate about the profession.

See page 15 to read about our coaching grant, which is being made available to support women in coaching.

There are certainly not enough women and girls involved in the sport at the moment, which is a real shame, as table tennis is so accessible. It’s quite gentle to begin with: there’s no strenuous exercise required and it’s got a nice learning curve.

With sport being so crucial to developing life skills, all girls should find one to get involved with and, if we do it right, table tennis can be that sport.

Boys will often come in and get on with hitting balls immediately. Girls are different. Most love to talk and socialise, so give them the time and space to do that. Sit with them for a while, let them get all that out of their system, and then they’ll be more ready to play.

There are, of course, girls who are more sporty and more direct with the game. It’s important, for the growth of any successful club, not to keep these two groups apart. Get the polar opposites stuck in together – allow them to clash if that’s what happens – then help them get over their differences. That whole process will make them more confident, and engaged, and before long the early chat will stop and they’ll be demanding to get on with the game!

Do we need to get more female involvement in the sport?

How did you get to where you are?

Should we attract girls in a different way to boys?

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FURTHER INFORMATION

port should be like cleaning your teeth; something you do every day without even thinking about it.’

This gem of a quote struck a chord with the audience at Sports Coach UK’s Coaching Awards. It came from Penny Rother, a volunteer triathlon

coach from Edinburgh, on receiving her Community Coach of the Year award.

It’s a philosophy that’s formed the bedrock of her career as a world-class triathlete. Despite juggling family commitments and 12-hour days as a GP, she resolutely refuses to let training and competing be squeezed off her daily schedule.

The 57-year-old has applied this same attitude to her tight-knit group at the Edinburgh Road Club ever since she started coaching them in 2009.

Most of them are middle-aged working mothers; a demographic especially vulnerable to ‘drop-off’ as work and family tend to knock exercise off their ‘to do’ lists, sometimes indefinitely.

Rother, however, has not allowed that to happen to her participants. By being extremely flexible, using empathy and a dash of ingenuity, she gets them out and active, however imploringly husbands, children or bosses are begging for their attention.

‘I’m a great believer that if you really, really want to do something you’ll make time to do it,’ she states, before recounting two stories from her club that illustrate the point.

‘One lady has four children, the youngest of whom was about three at the time. I asked her, “What time does she go to nursery?” She said 8.45am until 11.30am. I said, “Right, we’re meeting at your house at 9am, we’ll go out for a ride and be back at 11.”’

‘S

IN FOR A PENNYPenny Rother is a world-class triathlete and full-time GP. Now that her own children have flown the nest, she’s made it her mission to keep working mums active – with considerable success.

7MUMS ON THE RUN

Penny Rother (centre) with fellow triathletes Oonagh O’Brien and Ann Johnstone

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On another occasion, one of her women was due to compete in a race but phoned her the night before in a panic as her husband had made apparently unalterable plans and couldn’t look after their children. Rother came to her rescue.

‘I asked my 21-year-old daughter, “How do you fancy some babysitting money?” She came to the race and looked after her two daughters. They had a whale of a time! You have to be resourceful and not let these barriers stop you,’ Rother states.

Rother admits she is ‘an organisation freak’ who loves nothing better than receiving her weekly training schedule from her coach Linda McLean and poring over it, mapping out how she’ll fit it all in.

Rother was named Female Age Group British Triathlete of the Year in 2005, won the national title in 2009 and has seven ITU World Triathlon Series age-group medals to her name, including a gold in the USA.

It’s not surprising, then, that when she gets her training schedule she does ‘at least 95%’ of it. ‘That’s just the kind of person I am,’ she says. ‘But as a coach you have to accept that not everyone is like that.

‘The first thing you’ve got to do is find out what they want. What are their goals? You need to adapt what you do to help them achieve those. Do they want to do an event? Do they want to cycle 100 miles? Do they want to do a sprint triathlon? Do they want to just get a bit fitter?

‘If they want a structured programme you have to allow for the fact that family life doesn’t always run smoothly and it has to be adaptable. If it’s possible they’ll only do 60% of what you set, so make sure you tell them which are the most important bits.

‘If you understand what their working life and family life involve you have a better idea of their capacity. There’s no point in them going at it too hard, hating training and getting ill because they’re always knackered. It’s always best to have done a little too little, than a little too much.

‘It’s about planning and prioritising but, equally importantly, keeping sessions fun, interesting, challenging and varied, to encourage people who drop in to do so on a regular basis.

‘Ideally you want to make sure people are upset if they’ve missed the session, as opposed to thinking, “Oh God, it’s Thursday tomorrow, do I really have to go?” That’s all about the enthusiasm that the coach brings to it.’

The Scot credits her success with what could be termed ‘the busy sector’ to Fiona Lothian, her former coach for eight years who is now Head of Performance at Triathlon Scotland. ‘She was great at fitting my training plan around my work rota and family commitments,’ she recalls. ‘I learned a great deal from her.’

Now a UKCC Level 3 coach herself, Rother’s dedication to her group of working mums was recognised in 2015 not only at Sports Coach UK’s awards ceremony, but also by sportscotland (she won Community Coach of the Year) and British Triathlon (Coach of the Year).

Growing up, both her brothers were marathon runners (one once clocked 2:19 and trained with 1972 Olympian Donald Magregor) and she loved hockey, swimming and running at school. Living in St Andrews also helped. ‘Everyone cycled everywhere,’ she says.

She didn’t do her first triathlon, however, until she was 38. Now, 19 years on, there’s no sign of her stopping. ‘I’d love to do an Ironman, but while I’m working even I can’t fit that in! It’s not that I wouldn’t have time to train, I wouldn’t have time to rest!’

9

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She ‘fell into’ coaching after a conversation on the way back from the Great Scottish Swim in Strathclyde. She asked her friends whether they’d like to do a triathlon. ‘They looked at me aghast! It was riding a bike on the road that frightened them, so I set up a group at the club to go out riding every Thursday, and it just started from there.’

Since then, several of her protégés have competed in World Age Group Championship events, some have done seven-hour Half Ironman competitions, whereas others just swim, run or cycle for the fun of it.

She modestly claims she’s ‘lucky to have such an easy bunch of ladies to coach’ but that ignores her important role in sustaining their enthusiasm and helping them achieve their potential.

One story is revealing: ‘I suggested to three ladies we should try to qualify for the World Championships. One of them later told me, “I didn’t think you meant me when you said that!” But you know what, she qualified.’

Her group (nicknamed ‘the Porty Ladies’ as most of them hail from the Portobello area of Edinburgh) has become so proficient that they often train by themselves when Rother isn’t available.

‘They’ve almost become self-sufficient. That really ties in with my coaching philosophy of coaching people to be able to manage themselves, be self-motivating and self-determined.

‘You really shouldn’t coach people to be reliant on you. As a GP, I’m well aware that’s the last thing you want!’

When reminded of her ‘Sport should be like cleaning your teeth’ comment, Rother reflects: ‘I’d actually widen that to sport and exercise, as competitive sport is not something all my ladies are into. Nevertheless, it’s a phrase that I think applies to absolutely everybody.’

Feeling inspired? Let us help you Reach into coachingReach is our national campaign created to raise awareness and inspire more women to get into coaching. We also want to make sure that once coaching, women are fully supported by the people they coach for, so they stay motivated to coach.

As well as getting into coaching, Reach is about supporting current women coaches who want to develop within their coaching journey. It’s about making sure they know about the right opportunities; that they feel fully supported in what they want to do; and that they have the tools and resources to help them continue with the great work they do.

Find out more about the campaign on the reach website

MUMS ON THE RUN

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WHAT WE KNOW

FOR PARTICIPANTS

A more diverse coaching workforce will provide participants with more choice of who they can be coached by.

51% General Public 17% Qualified Coaches

40% Sports Participation 12% Level 3 Qualified Coaches

30% Coach Population 10% Team GB Coaches

WOMEN AND COACHINGIt’s not just about gender equality. Recruiting and retaining more female coaches will give participants better value and more choice.

THE FACTS

11WOMEN AND COACHING

FOR CLUBS

FOR SOCIETY AT LARGE

DO WOMEN WANT TO COACH?

TARGETS

30% of clubs can’t find enough coaches to fulfil demand. More female coaches means more coaches full stop.

To have greater gender equality in our coaching workforce (40% female) would bring the equivalent of £190million coaching value each year into sport. That’s the equivalent of 230 3G pitches or 15 private jets!

Of those who coach in community centres, leisure centres and private clubs, 40% are women.

This figure drops to 24% in ‘traditional’ governing body of sport clubs.

That depends on environmental reasons.

The proposed EU objectives for gender equality in coaching are that, by 2020, women should make up 40% of the coaching workforce and 30% of all national team coaches.

£190M = x15 x230

40% 30%

40%

24%

This feature was previously published in magazine. Edited for publication in The Winning Edge by Craig Smith.

All statistics are taken from a 2015 survey.

13LEVEL UP

MOVING UP A LEVELCoaches are always learning and developing, and those in our sport are no different. Two experienced coaches explain how completing their Level 4 qualification has left them in a better position to train our next generation.

An England international from junior level, Shutt got into coaching when her daughter started playing in 1997. She has had a full coaching career, from grass roots through to senior international level, including taking the junior girls to five European Youth Championships.

With the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games under her belt as a team manager, Shutt has seen most of what the sport has to give, but still found plenty to take from her Level 4 qualification.

‘It attracts a really good mixture of ages and my group included hockey, basketball, squash, rugby league and motorsport coaches. There is, however, still a male bias at this level of coaching, with only myself and one other female student compared to 20 males. Most of the coaches are working at national level or with access to national or regional programmes, as this is required for the practical elements of the course.

‘Each candidate is also assigned a mentor who visits a couple of times to observe delivery. Much of the learning is through access to research on the online library, which informs content for the 10 assignments.’

Those topics form the backbone of the Level 4 and they range from talent identification and analysis to performance development issues, before culminating in a final portfolio.

‘That formed a large part of the work-based learning module along with a final presentation to an audience of peers analysing significant aspects of the course and how this has impacted on one’s development.’

Despite Shutt’s vast experience she found herself ending the course as a different kind of coach, notably when it comes to planning ahead.

‘It encouraged me to explore new methodology, in particular how we structure sessions and design practices. It also gave me the confidence to try new

ideas and experiment. It’s important as a coach to continuously challenge personal assumptions and beliefs in order to improve future performance.

‘The course definitely improved me as a coach, as I now realise the importance of self-reflection and using past performance to inform my planning for future sessions. I really enjoyed learning about new theories, concepts and principles of generic coaching – then applying them to table tennis.

‘I now ensure that all practices are designed to reflect the key sport-specific requirements of table tennis. This includes introducing key fundamental movement skills (agility, balance and co-ordination) early in the learning programme and making sure players work equally on anticipation, adaptability and gameplay skills as well as technical skills.

‘I would encourage all coaches to continuously question and reflect on their coaching practice and be keen to seek opportunities to gain knowledge. Also, be brave and experiment with new ideas – some work and some don’t, but learning always takes place.’

Shutt was clear that the Level 4 is an indispensible tool for all coaches looking to take the next step in their table tennis careers.

‘It was fascinating to have insight into other sports and be able to experiment in applying some of the concepts into my own sport. Also, I think it was really important for me to be challenged as a coach and a person.’

SALLY SHUTT

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Towards the end of her career, England international Lower decided she wanted to give something back to the sport. She has since coached from grass roots through to junior international level.

Lower told The Winning Edge all about her experience of completing the Level 4 qualification.

‘There was a great mix of students, mentors and ways to learn, including 10 residential weekends to attend for lectures over the two-year period, plus some sports-specific days with the national coaches. Ten assignments were completed and our mentor John Trower visited to observe and challenge our delivery.

‘A final portfolio outlined our journey of learning throughout the course and changes we had made to delivery. A presentation to an audience of peers followed, where we analysed specific changes to our coaching journey over the course of the two-year programme.

‘The Level 4 changed the way I coach because it challenged my assumptions on how we should construct sessions and practices, and improved my overall session delivery. Having the theoretical understanding behind the new concepts has given me the confidence to experiment and continually challenge myself with new ideas, and to look for ways to improve outside of a table tennis environment.’

A course is only effective if skills can be transferred to a coaching environment, something Lower felt more than

able to do after completing her Level 4. ‘I tried to design training sessions/practices to be more match-related while making sure they are hitting the sport’s specific requirements. I look to incorporate the key fundamental movement skills into activities and try to ensure players are working equally on all aspects of their development.

‘I would advise other coaches to continually seek self-improvement and question themselves and their beliefs. Look to learn and gain knowledge from other areas and sports. Don’t be afraid to try out new ideas and concepts but be prepared to make mistakes and to learn from them.

‘Even though it took me out of my comfort zone it gave me the self-confidence to challenge my own thinking and not to be afraid to look outside of the box. The biggest benefit of doing the course was having the opportunity to learn from other sports and then putting some of their insight into my own coaching practice.’

HELEN LOWER The course made me more aware of my delivery, its content and the importance of relating the training environment to match situations. It’s given me the confidence to try new ideas and not worry if they don’t work, as with self-reflection I can learn and adapt the ideas for the future.

“

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Helen Lower (right) priming one of her many charges

15COACHING GRANT

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The success of initiatives like This Girl Can, which inspired 2.8 million women to be more active in the year following its launch, prove that ladies and girls are looking for new ways of getting fit.

If female participation in table tennis has one quick fix it’s in the development of a fresh layer of women taking to the sports halls as coaches.

It isn’t hard to understand why females are more likely to take up the sport if their coach is of the same sex. The problem is, there currently aren’t enough women coaches to satisfy demand.

WOMEN NET COACHING GRANTKeen to become a qualified coach? Our scholarship programme for budding female coaches is now open for applications.

As a result we are launching our Female Coach Scholarships, a new initiative to help the next generation of women coaches get off the ground.

Table Tennis England is creating 10 scholarships where up to 50% of the cost of a Level 1 or Level 2 course will be covered.

Help the growth of our sport among women by promoting this groundbreaking scheme, details of which can be found on our website.

Liam Pitchford - England’s No1.

Westerby Road, Middlesbrough, TS3 8TD

FREEPHONE 0800 4584141 or standard 01642 217844

FREEFAX 0800 4587171

Email: tabletennis@teessport.com Website: www.teessport.com

Liam Pitchford uses a Butterfly Viscaria blade

with Tenergy 05 rubber on both sides

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