How unique coaches shape Emersons Green Running Club

Emersons Green Running Club began back in 2012, when Neil moved into the area and discovered that there weren’t any local running clubs for him to join. The club has since grown from 13 members to 220 across three nights per week. To provide the best experience to these members, Neil has recruited a team of Run Leaders and Coaches to support who all bring their own strengths and knowledge.

Everyone plays a unique role in the Run Leader team

The club have different strategies in place to make it as easy as possible for new Run Leaders to qualify. As well as subsidising course costs, they make a conscious effort to share the load between the team with a total of 17 Run Leaders and Coaches and six opportunities to lead each week. They have also realised the importance of playing to the strengths of each individual Run Leader:

“We found that some people want to be Run Leaders,” explained Neil, “but they don't want to stand up in front of people and do the pre-run announcements, instead they're quite happy to lead a small group on a run. So, we've leaned on the individuals that want to take the weight but also allow those that want to do their bit and develop small groups to do their thing too.”

Giving back to the club as a coach

Two members of the club, Josh and Martin, have their own podcast, where they run with others and chat about their running journey. They also recently completed their Coach in Running Fitness courses together. Josh was encouraged by Martin to complete the course and since being a coach he has grown in confidence and found a real passion for coaching the grassroots runners at Emersons Green Running Club:

“I absolutely love being a coach, even if I have been a coach only for two weeks. The people who I really like to coach are the grassroot runners. This is where I can make a bigger difference to my athletes, even if this just means that somebody wants to move from a run-walk group to the main group. The whole sense of giving back and making them the star of the show has been truly amazing for me. I really can’t wait to see what happens for the rest of this year.”

As he learnt more through the course, Josh described how he grew in confidence with his coaching and overcame nerves ahead of the final day to complete his qualification.

“There was a lot of information and I was worried in the early bits that maybe I wasn’t good enough, but as I went through the process, my confidence grew and grew. I was quite nervous for the assessment day, but there was no need because it was a celebration of everything I had been working towards over the last four months. I absolutely loved it and passed with flying colours.

“This is a big boost to my confidence and the whole process was brilliant! Being able to coach some of the members from my running club was very humbling. Also, having the technical knowledge is really paying off and being able to explain to members the correct way to run is something I absolutely love. All this is brilliant for me and Emersons Green Running Club.”

More than just a running club

Neil’s focus, along with his team of Run Leaders, has always been to create a sense of community that stretches far beyond running together every week.

“It’s not just about running, obviously that’s the thing that binds us together, but we do food bank runs, we’ve done efforts in the community where we’ve taken ivy off the cricket club wall, big gang of us, we’ve done litter picks, we’ve painted the local phone box. We’re a group of people and we’re all fit and like-minded, we just want to do a bit more than running.”

If you have been inspired by Josh and his impact at Emersons Green Running Club, then we have upcoming Coach in Running Fitness courses across the country.

Not yet a qualified Run Leader?