The nerve centre

The office, home to plotting and motivational athlete chats..

What does a coach do when he isn't on the water? I get asked this frequently, maybe in not quite such a direct fashion but certainly it is the implied question.

I'm contracted to work 39 hours per week. 10 of those hours are used up on the water or between sessions with the seniors at the weekend and a further 6 are usually then taken up with the novices leaving me with 23 hours for weekdays. There is however an hour required to set-up ergs on  Sunday evening as they are kept in a store cupboard of a studio that is used first thing Monday. 

22 hours.

Monday morning ergs 0700-0900. 

20 hours.

Tuesday morning for the last 6 weeks has been a pilates course, I've been doing it myself so perhaps this isn't work but then again I will be taking the exercises learned and putting them into sessions in the future so perhaps it is? If I wasn't at pilates I'd be at the novice women's erg session. 

18 hours. 

Wednesday evening is novice circuits followed by senior circuits. 

16 hours. 

Tuesday and Thursday evening has the seniors in the squad gym doing weights, I don't need to be there as there is a strength and conditioning coach but I go because two sets of eyes are better than one and I learn more about my athletes in these sessions. 

13 hours. 

Thursday morning is novice men's ergs.

11 hours. 

We have introduced technical sessions on Thursday for women and Friday for men, they are 3 hours each. 

5 hours.
5 hours to prepare sessions, update data, manage individual athletes, update training programmes, oh and work on developing the club- that one sounds like my job title...

I seem to spend rather more than 5 hours in the space photographed above.
NB: I enjoy all of the above and am happy that I've made the choice to do what I do. Just wanted to answer that question.