Payment for Coaching

[Trunkles]

Casual User rate at work is 35.8p per mile up to 100 miles per day;
21.1p per mile plus £14.70 over 100 miles.

Its meant to cover wear and tear as well as fuel plus business insurance cover.

Maximum HMRC(Inland Revenue) approved rate is 40p per mile afaik. Could be liable for tax at 43p.

[grimsby archer]

Originally Posted by Meddler

I suspect it has more to do with being in a club.

If you are a member of a club you are expected to give your services for free at the club.

So as a coach I am expected to give my services for free OK!
One of our members is a lawyer. Can I expect free legal advice?
We have a professional trainer who is a member also. Can I hope for free personal training? Same for the guys who are printers, car mechanics etc.
Incidentally, we have people who make the boss stands and do other jobs "for free" though they do benefit from having boss stands etc to use, but do they deserve payment for their labours?
Personally as a coach I am in favour of payment partly because it shows some committment on the part of the archer. Archers dont pay £25 per hour to sit and drink coffee and chat about the weather and ignore my advice.

[moo-mop]

I think coaches have every right to request payment and not to coach if they don't get it. I also think I have every right to say no sorry, I won't/can't afford to pay you at that rate.

Coaches also have every right to say I don't want your money I give this because I want to. These people should still be valued by the archer.
However, if coaches don't accept money they should give the same value as if they had been paid, and not take it as an excuse to behave unprofessionally and drop those archers when they don't feel like helping any more.

[Thunk]

Iain, I've posted on this before, and I think it's key to a lot of the perceived problems with coaching.

First let me say I have never had a coach - I'm not good enough to need one. But if I played golf instead of archery, I wouldn't get anything without paying!

From what I can see, there are some very outmoded ideas around coaching:

Ordinary club archers expect coaching to be free;

The coaches I have met at club level have this wierd idea that unless someone is actually dangerous, they mustn't interfere unless asked;

And people like me when we actually want help see the club coach shooting and have reservations about walking up to him and saying, 'would you stop shooting your York and come and sort me out'. With some of them I've met that would get you sorted out in a very different way to that you were requesting!

I think that:

- within a club, coaches in that club should have some sort of schedule where they are available for coaching rather than shooting themselves. (Shooting themselves? -oh, you know what I mean!)

- one useful thing that GNAS could do is supply their coaches with a jacket with 'COACH' writted on it. So when you or your colleagues are in coaching mode as opposed to other things, archers can see that you're wearing a coaching jacket and not feel apprehensive about asking for help.

- outside of running courses for one's own club, which are usually on a pro bono basis with the club getting whatever income accrues, of course a coach should be paid, both for his time and his service. I'm willing to bet that you have all expended a considerable amount of money, time and effort to get the qualification so I think it's only right that there should be some sort of return. And if that was the case, there might be a few more good archers who would consider taking up coaching. GNAS could also produce a tarriff of charges, related to the level of coaching qualification and the time required, so that all of us - coaches and coachees - would know where we stand.

As I said earlier, I don't know much about the coaching scene - but looking at the threads about coaching on this forum, there seems to be a fair amount of dissatisfaction with some coaches. If that is a valid perception, then there is every chance that introducing the above might enable GNAS to be a bit more rigorous in ensuring that those awarded a coaching qualification are up to snuff, both because the numbers coming forward would probably improve and because of the expectation of a higher standard in a commercial transaction.

Provocative? Probably. But if we want archery as a sport to move ahead we have to look at being more professional in how we go about it. Now - I'm going to have some lunch.

[Watch_Man]

I wonder how much Nichola Simpson and her husband charge for coaching Oxfordshire - they probably do it for free I would guess. Being coached by Nichola would be the equivalent of having David Beckham teach you football skills and I bet he wouldn't do it for free or just expenses.

As GA and others have pointed out there is a 'value' to coaching and coaches should be 'valued'

Thunk - I had to laugh at your post as it is SO true. However we think we have now got it sorted in our club. We just point the newcomer in the direction of the coaches and say go and ask. Our two club coaches are always happy to help and even if shooting they will put their kit aside. However when I first started I felt exactly as you described

[Meddler]

There's a lot of good stuff coming out here...

@Thunk - I would agree that Coaches need to be identified / identifiable when they are working.

There have been discussions at the NSG about what would a Coaching uniform look like. One year's Conference they gave out a yellow baseball cap - and it was mooted that that would be the official Coaching badge.

Within NSG we now have polo shirts with the Archery GB Coaching logo on them, and this may be made available to Coaches in future (at a reasonable cost). Personally I would wear the polo shirt, sweat shirt and fleece and be branded as a Coach, so people could see what I was.

The last club I was at (Howard Bowmen in WGC) would have a Coaching night when everybody knew they could be coached. Other times were at agreed times sorted out directly with the Coaches.

[John (OSF)]

Thunk. agree with you on that, at the start of any session we make it perfectly clear which coaches are going to be 'shooting only'(if any) and who's available for coaching.We never had more that 28 archers turning up and only 'feed in' 6 beginners at a time so it's quite easy as they soon pass the word

I think we're lucky that we can shoot anytime so if an archer's having problems we don't feel any time pressure on our own shooting, and since we only coach at indoor sessions (all year) ,when we go to our own ground outside we get peace to shoot, our club has only 4 members (all coaches)

Our primary purpose is to coach beginners and improvers at a local leisure centre and thereby supply archers for other clubs

Saying that, like most coaches at my level (pre L2) 75% of it is very much the 'try not wave the bow like a flag' etc. kind of coaching

2 of our guys work as sports coaches for the centre so they get paid, and the other 2 (Me +1) take no money but have free shooting access to the hall anytime.

I've been asked by archers to coach outside these times but always turn it down as I don't have the time to spare

This arrangement seems to work well for all concerned

[not dead yet]

this threads better more acceptable....

getting back to one of the posts and MONEY.

if people couldn't afford the coach on a one to one basis.....then if a group of 4 or five clubbed together.... they'd still get the same coaching but not quite intense...

i was in work not long back and got down to a club meeting as it finished, only to be told that a certain person had said ....if we nail peter's feet to floor maybe he'll coach, words to that effect.

i DO NOT profess to be a good coach, but i like to think been there done that.

from my point of view a little commitment on an archers part would go along way for me to coach them.

i shoot competitively, but if i had another decent archer other than the one i have got i'd coach alot more

by the way pain is weakness leaving the body

[kato]

for me, it makes economic sense

when I got measured up for my first comound bow, I was told my DL was 30inches
couldn't get the bow to hold still to save my life
spent hundreds of pounds trying to find a stabiliser combination that would let me aim...
turns out my DL is actually 28.5".(took the better part of a year to work that out..I'm not very bright)..a good coach would have put me out of my misery hundreds of £££ ago

£25 to find a proper bowhand position
£25 to find a correct repeatable anchor
£25 to discover proper alignment
£25 to learn what a proper release looks/feels like

bargain, no?

I'm all for practicing lots on your own but sooo much better if you can be sure you're pacticing/aiming for the correct things

[cestria]

Can I just add as someone who has paid for coaching, that I think that it is worth every penny.
As a club, we have twice employed the services of a profesional 'performance' coach. He has helped in total 9 club members improve thier shooting (some by a remarkable degree). His fee for a three hour session is about the same as a good set of stabilisers, but as he is able to take up to 8 at a time, the cost/head is very reasonable for the improvements in the shooting.
Nothing in this world comes completely free but good value for money is worth looking out for.