Local track and field coaches have been encouraged to push themselves to new heights to ensure athletes reach their full potential.Part of Bermuda National Athletics Association’s (BNAA) broad mandate is to raise the level of local coaching. And to help the association achieve their objectives, IAAF Senior Lecturer Peter Thompson was invited to the Island to share his expertise with the Island’s coaches.During his brief stay the former coach of Olympic decathlon gold medallist Daley Thompson held two lectures at Fairmont Hamilton as well as two practical sessions at the National Sports Centre to bring local coaches up to par with modern coaching methods.“It’s important that coaches keep current and up to date,” Thompson said. “Change is happening at a faster and faster rate so it’s not sufficient for a coach to be sitting back with knowledge they’ve had from 10-15 years ago because things are moving on constantly.”Thompson said the IAAF, who he has worked with for two decades, has “shifted” from a position of looking at coaching as being knowledge-based to competence-based.“Competence-based means what can you do with what you know because we had a lot of very knowledgeable coaches around the world but actually they couldn’t coach,” the Englishman added. “They didn’t have the basic skills of coaching and couldn’t relate to the athletes, so it’s trying to develop a better partnership between the coach and athletes.“Modern coaching is a lot more about relating to the athlete, getting the athlete to motivate themselves from inside and trying to find out a true communication. What I find in many cultures is the children have one way of speaking to teachers and respected people and another way of talking and behaving among themselves. That’s the true kid you see and not the superficial one that doesn’t tell you anything about the kid so as coaches we have to find the true individual.”Thompson urged coaches to strive for higher standards.“Everyday they (coaches) go to the track they can ask themselves ‘how can I develop, not only my athlete, but my coaching today or how am I going to be a better coach today than I was yesterday’?That’s something that coaches in the past haven’t really done. We go to the track, blow a whistle and shout out times from a watch and that’s not what coaching is about.”Thompson also urged coaches to share their knowledge more openly for the betterment of Bermuda’s athletics as a whole rather than keeping it within their respective clubs.“I think the thing we need to do in Bermuda is to look beyond the clubs,” he said. “The clubs are important but it’s very easy for clubs to be inward looking.“For the benefit of Bermuda’s athletics as a whole it would be more effective if coaches spoke to each other more openly and shared information and that’s something we had an opportunity to do.“The coaches are just not used to sitting down and talking to each other so that’s what’s nice in a course like this: there’s no competition to separate them so I can split people up from their normal comfort zones and sit them around a table with people they don’t normally work with and have them work very effectively together.”National track and field coach and former Olympian Troy Douglas also wants to see coaches openly exchanging information.“I really want to create a coaching culture,” he said. “I want our coaches to be colleagues because we are colleagues who go out there to prepare athletes to win.“From my personal experience from living 20 years in the Netherlands and 15 years as a coach I learned from my colleagues. And the more colleagues we are the more respect we have for our craft and easier for us to work.”Douglas said the coaches that attended Thompson’s lectures and practical sessions were “impressed and motivated”.“Our coaches were rejuvenated and felt like they were reborn and it was good to see,” he added. “I had fun watching the coaches challenge themselves and come together as a team.”