Birmingham Newman University backs rugby in the Midlands
Birmingham Newman University are providing superb support to ensure rugby players in the North Midlands and beyond get the very best experience across all age groups and sections of the game. Their aim of developing this ‘community of practice’ is to engage and provide members with education opportunities and continuing professional development for rugby coaches.
Academics and husband and wife, Drs Alex and Emma Powell’s PhD research is positively impacting coaching and player enjoyment. Birmingham Newman University is providing facilities, alongside the expertise and leadership, to help rugby coaches maximise their knowledge and potential.
Recent free to attend sessions at Birmingham Newman University have focused on helping coaches understand mental toughness and resilience, based on the extensive research of Dr Alex Powell, who is also an RFU coach educator. Feedback from coaches on how much these evenings have helped their time with players has been excellent.
Coping with challenges
Alex and Emma met at their university in 2009 when he was director of sport and she was senior lecturer in initial teacher education, specialising in PE. They now have five-year-old Eve and two-year-old Jonah, named after Jonah Lomu.
“Having children, you become more aware of individual feelings and shared experiences,” says Alex, who is now programme leader and senior lecturer in coaching sciences.
Working with coaches, including at Bath and Sale, Alex’s mental toughness programme covers pressure situations and coping strategies. He played rugby until a shoulder injury and operation took him into coaching 22 years ago. His academic studies in mental toughness have seen him research elite rugby players and coaches including international and British Lions coaches as well as Paralympic athletes, who “overcame trauma and developed their own coping skills without any elite athlete preparation.”
What Alex is trying to create is an awareness of rugby specific mental toughness and promoting the ways in which coaches can provide players with suitable skills and strategies when facing unavoidable challenges. As part of his research, when assessing the development of mental toughness, he has asked RFU Academy players to measure their own mental toughness across a number of demanding situations, and all rated themselves ten out of ten. Talking to them of Richie McCaw’s comments about still working on competing under pressure after winning the Rugby World Cup, “was a point of useful reference for them.”
“The important thing is understanding and supporting players who will inevitably encounter difficult situations. They need challenging experiences, and I’m not talking old school beasting, and they need to develop coping mechanisms to deal with them. Some players get injured and think it’s the end of their rugby career and they need awareness, understanding and support.”
Bristol Bears junior academy manager, Gary Townsend, has provided additional support and guidance, contributing to everyone’s understanding of player development and the pressures faced by young players.
“What I really like about Birmingham Newman University and North Midlands coaching work is that it is research based, themed and linked up. It goes beyond coaching rugby and is about psychology but with a practical application. I don’t know of any other university or CB with coaching delivery at this level, which is why I keep driving up there and why we are looking at engaging from a junior academy perspective. North Midlands are the coaching flag bearers, supporting their coaches at all levels. They have embraced this, it’s funded, and it’s great.”
Youngsters inactive for 60% of sessions
Emma Powell’s PhD research led to the development of the SHARP project which has been proven to be the most effective teaching strategy internationally to increase ‘active learning time’ in PE and sports sessions. This has also been shared with North Midlands clubs with remarkable results. Her research highlighted the fact that the vast majority of PE and coaching sessions involve physically active participation by the children less than 40% of the time, leaving them disengaged rather than active and enjoying playing.
Her academically researched methodology gives objective measurement of young players’ activity levels, and easy ways to vastly improve their activity, engagement, and resultant improved behaviour during sessions. When coaches and PE teachers discover that 60% of the time youngsters are inactive and disengaged, they are keen to create change and improve physical involvement.
University sessions have not only increased player retention in clubs, but have also given coaches strategies to maintain their own enthusiasm and motivation when the going gets tough.
Research led progress at Stourbridge
Stourbridge RFC’s age grade section are among those reporting much improved coaching delivery after the SHARP training and players’ parents and coaches are now working together to improve the amount of productive, life enhancing activity taking place in training sessions.
Michael Dyson, their age grade vice chair explains: “We have had coaches across every age group from the youngest to U13s involved with this course which is fantastic and is basically free and effective education for them all.”
Gareth Simpson, Stourbridge RFC’s U11s head coach, is very enthusiastic about SHARP and the way it has educated both coaches and parents.
“It has been really enlightening,” he says. “We did ten minutes sessions which were measured and showed we were keeping the kids active for 47% of the time. This research has shown us what we’re doing, and from it, we have rewritten how we deliver training using what Alex and Emma have shown us.”
“We presented this to parents and will now use what we have learned to make sessions better with more physical activity, enjoyment and learning in a shorter time. That works for young players, parents and coaches. We have kept this group together since they were four or five years old and grown numbers to 44 at U11s. For us the important thing is keeping players on board and enjoying the game.”
Gareth was also one of a group of 15 rugby coaches from the North Midlands Community of practice that were invited by Matt Ferguson and Northampton Saints to watch a coaching session before the team played the BaaBaas at Franklin’s Gardens, when they could also discuss techniques and ask questions.
“This opportunity is quite remarkable,” he adds. “It’s learning from the best in a way that is far from usual for grassroots coaches as you wouldn’t normally have access to that elite level of coaching.”
North Midlands RFU Council representative, Charlie Hemmings, a major driving force behind this innovative collaboration, says: “We are very grateful to Birmingham Newman University. The programme's progress has been very evident, and we are encouraging everyone to get involved because it is aiding coaches across the CB to deliver an improved and better quality of coaching. It provides a wider understanding of inherent player psychology and delivery of improved activity levels where player needs can be readily recognised and more adequately met.”
