Celebrating the success of the programme in the South West region.
At British cycling we offer ignite bursaries and ignite courses we know that we’ve got a low number of women coaches and there’s various barriers to women getting to coaching maybe that they don’t think coaching’s for them they don’t quite know what Avenue to go down in coaching it’s not just
Performance coaching you can coach women you can coach children whatever you want to do it was a bit of a hard start for me actually I was always put with the younger groups and it really like really what I wanted to do was sort of Coach the right way through the different ages
So I started to look at who I could find as Role Models I found some really amazing women out there and yeah that really helped me to evolve my coaching when I actually could find the role model that was for me when I first got into coaching myself I was working in
Isolation and there were not very many female coaches that I could turn to for support so it would be nice to be part of a change to make more women visible in coaching we need more women coaches because there’s then role models for people coming through in in schools in clubs
Someone to look up to I know when I was younger I would have loved to have had female coaches to Aspire to and just find someone that I can relate to as well there’s a different camaraderie when you’re in a group of women together I think that’s probably why that’s why it
Was important for me and why I think it’s also important for us as a club to grow that female coaching leadership so in the South Region we’ve tried to get more women into coaching what we’ve done is offer some support sessions around a generic cycling coaching course
Just to make sure that they can understand why they might want to go onto that course so they’re supported before the course but then also supported after to actually get some coaching sessions started up I felt like it was a safe space being a women’s only course like you weren’t around guys that
Had probably been on their bikes for years going off doing races trying to almost compete with each other like with it only being women you you know if you got it wrong it didn’t really matter if you forgot what a technical term is I think what’s really interesting around
The ignite programs it is quite an empowering space I feel very privileged to hold that space for those women but also making sure that they grow in confidence and to know that actually they are not just there to teach those younger groups in the clubs they absolutely have a space where they can
Empower other female Riders of any ability and of any age no no day is ever the same no person is ever the same they could be two different people at the same session but that is the beauty of that person and that’s the beauty of coaching as well is that you adapt yourself
Better that person in that moment today was about getting women together just to talk about coaching talk about their experiences talk about the barriers that they’ve gone through we hope that by having more women coaches that will have a more diverse range of opportunities for women for girls for
Kids to get involved but also more Role Models so that cycling as a sport becomes more diverse thank you