Outside my comfort zone

As previously reported, I have now started training to become a football coach. I spent two solid days alternating between being run ragged by young whippersnappers who turned out to be Real Football Players and being bombarded with information by a Real Football Coach.

I drove to the sports centre where we were due to be trained feeling vaguely sick as the anxiety ramped up inside. I'd managed one slice of toast for breakfast. (Note to self: one slice of toast is not adequate to fuel a middle-aged woman through two hours of classroom education plus two hours running around an astroturf pitch). I did know one person on the course, and despite the fact that we don't know each other well, it was a relief to find a friendly face as I walked into an unknown classroom to see ranks of strangers before me.

From then on I was left with mercifully little time to dwell on any of my own fears and anxieties, because we launched straight in. And it was extraordinary.

It sounds trite to say that it was inspiring, but that's the closest word I can find.

I realised that it has been a very, very long time since I've formally learnt anything completely new. My professional life has allowed me to incrementally expand my knowledge of the rarefied field in which I work. At home I've taught myself to make and do various things, from icing cakes to calligraphy and from making cuddly toys to drawing dinosaurs. But I haven't sat in a classroom and been taught something for nearly quarter of a century.

My brain was filled with a boggling array of new terminology and new ideas; a new way of looking at football and of breaking it down into its constituent parts. I was challenged to think about why I was becoming a coach and what my core values are. I had to consider different ways of coaching ranging from issuing commands through to allowing players to learn by trial and error and everything in between. The kind of things that would be obvious to most teachers, but not to those of us not accustomed to such things. And I had to run around trying to put it all into practice and trying not to be too incompetent when facing a Real Football Player*.

It was completely and utterly exhausting. I came home barely able to speak, think or function, but with my head buzzing with ideas. I sat down and made notes to try and get everything straight in my head before I had to throw myself into the next day and risk forgetting the first day. It was genuinely one of the most rewarding things I've set out to do in a long time. I may never be a great coach. I may never even do a huge amount of coaching, but I've taken the first steps towards getting involved and I've loved it. I've loved being challenged. I've loved doing something so enormously different from anything I've done before.

So maybe football coaching should now count as part of my comfort zone. But even if it doesn't, I have had a salutary reminder that learning new things is definitely something I should be doing more of.




* It remains a point of pride that I did, occasionally, manage to get past a young lady who plays for Watford FC.