Monday 25 March 2013

Next Term

Hi everyone,

It's been awhile since any update to the blog and despite my earlier enthusiasm, I don't think that'll change much. But today I've been doing a bit of admin stuff for the group and thought I would write one about next term.

The group started small in Michaelmas, but we persevered and we got to a nicer size in Hilary. Despite needing to train in the snow and the rain, we still had an average of 6 people per session, double the previous term. The people who've been around since the start have really improved and that's really nice to see. The sessions were hopefully enjoyable - I tried to keep the normal ones to a decent standard of variation and fun (as well as hard work!) but we also had a couple of jam sessions, a trip to london, and a games session.

Next term it's going to be more of the same, but increased to 3 sessions a week. I'll try and do a poll closer to the time to decide when they are but it should be a variety of times - weekend and weekday, morning, afternoon and evening, and may change each time. Also, hopefully nicer weather and longer light will improve this. I've also been thinking about what the sessions will be and with 3 sessions there's more scope for improvement and variation.

There will be more conditioning - and this isn't a bad thing! I've been reading a couple of blogs which reminded me of the importance of this, and a phrase often heard is "to be and to last"; also on the London trip, the guys who came remarked that the session run for us by Steve, one of the PKGen coaches in London, was much tougher than our usual ones and that we needed to step up!
Given that we are throwing our bodies into and off hard things in movements they may not be used to we need to make sure they're up to the challenge. It also helps to strengthen our minds to deal with pain and fatigue and give us more resolve. Whether I designate a certain session to have lots of conditioning or just add in bits to each session, I'll try and make sure there's more.

I'll also try and involve more games in our sessions. We had a games session towards the end of last term where we played tag, capture the flag, chase and last man standing. I've used some of the group funds to buy some bandanas which we can use as tags (like tag rugby) or to designate teams for games, so we'll be putting these to good use!

The other minor things is that there's now a membership form which I'll be pushing next term; I'll try and actually get us a committee sorted to help with the admin stuff and prepare to continue the group next year when I'm not around; website update hopefully to be done in the next few weeks; and I'm trying a publicity drive through some newspapers (again) and I'll hit the email newsletters when term starts.

Hope you're all managing to keep moving over the vacation!
Alex