Clean Run - October 2010 - 61

Pressure Builds Slowly
It is all too easy to underestimate the amount of pressure people put themselves under when they are representing their country. Over a period of time this pressure quietly builds to a point where the event is no longer a normal agility show to the handler. Even experienced handlers, used to high-pressure situations in national finals at home, can find the international competition environment much tougher than expected. The combination of representing your country, a feeling of responsibility to everyone for your performance, a desire to show the world what your dog can do, together with an overwhelming need not to let yourself or your teammates down, creates a unique pressure that can take on a life of its own. This has to be managed carefully to make sure that no one on the team gets overwhelmed by it all. Some individuals flourish in this type of environment, but even these handlers need to be aware of what is coming up so they are able to manage it properly. Over the years our coaching team has become more experienced at handling these unique pressures.

Managing Emotions
One of our key roles at the event is to help individuals manage their pre-event preparation (even if that means staying out of their way for a couple of hours!). For the 2011 championships we are introducing a questionnaire for team members to help them organize themselves better, and to help us understand their needs. The questions cover pre-run warm-up routines, preparation routines, and post-run support. We have managed this from a distance in the past, tending to rely on our experience to tell what handlers need under each circumstance. It is pretty easy to understand what people need after a successful performance. Being so close to them after their run is finished normally means the coach being intimately involved in post-run celebration—like it or not! It is not so easy to deal with handlers when it all goes wrong and this is probably more important than dealing with success. It is a fact of competition that not everyone can win, and so, realistically, the support team is more likely to be dealing with more disappointed handlers than world champions regardless of how good the team’s pre-event preparation. So spare a thought for your country’s coaching team next time you are at an international event; the coaches’ emotions are up and down within a matter of minutes. For example, at the end of last year’s world championships we were dealing with a world champion in one corner of the room and an equally talented but very disappointed handler in another. On these occasions it is too easy to get sucked into the celebrations without taking time to make sure all members of the team are able to share in the same experience. Everyone loves a winner, but the coach needs to be mindful of the state of deflated team members as well.

Preparation, Preparation, Preparation
One of the most difficult problems for the coaching team before the competition is preparing individual team members technically for the types of courses they are likely to face at the event. Unless you are running a fully professional outfit, and by this I mean the coaches and handlers are full-time agility professionals, finding time to prepare together as a squad is one of the most difficult things to schedule. This is even more problematic when squad members live great distances apart.
October 10 | Clean Run 61

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Clean Run - October 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - October 2010