Celebrating TTH Female Athlete Success
Coach Alan discusses why it is so important to celebrate female athlete success to help increase the participation and inspiration in female endurance athletes.
Pick up a trophy in your first IRONMAN - huge achievement!
First of all, how do we define success? Is it the usual podium, trophy, medal or time? Does it always have to be this? What is success? It isn’t my aim to water down and dilute success and celebrate smaller things because it is necessary. It is to recognise that there are many simple building blocks of success to get to the more ‘obvious’ outcome-based successes. Between our coaches athletes, it is often the more ‘obvious’ achievements that are celebrated.
Secondly, why does this article specifically title itself ‘female success’? Is there any difference between men and women in terms of success? Short answer, no, no there isn’t any difference but is there a difference in how that success is reached? Perhaps.
Success can come in many forms, and here a few examples of other examples of success from the female athletes we have worked with below;
Descending “like a boss”, passing the other groups and celebrating their individual strengths
Climbing that tough hill to Alte on a 1:1 coach supported ride to complete a new longest ride achievement. Just keep pedalling (JKP!).
Facing up to challenges: the tougher option on a ride instead of taking the easy way home.
Keeping on going after a setback session, returning next week and completing a harder workout, not perfectly, but learning a lot and then improving a little more the following week.
Attending a training camp week in Portugal, achieving many firsts during the week and returning home to completing their first sprint triathlon
All of these different forms of success often come down to an athlete expanding their comfort zone, reaching towards something they doubted that they could do previously and doing it, completing it, achieving it. But how do you get to that point where you can overcome challenges?
This question often centres on working out how to remove doubts and focus on something. Thoughts of ‘I can’t’, ‘I’m not sure’ or ‘this is a lot of effort’ can be barriers to success for all athletes. Athletes either need enough of a push to get over that barrier or lure of the achievement to pull them to “success”. ‘Pull’ is often unsuccessful as female athletes will often beat themselves up about the worthiness of the achievement. When asked about their performance, all too often a female athlete’s response can be “yeh, but...”: “the field was small” or “I’m not as good as them” or sadly, “well it’s not that good is it?” Significantly the athlete is undervaluing and undermining a step forward: progress made, and that is an achievement worth celebrating.
Sea Swim with waves - tick! A huge achievement.
Push tactics can tend to work better, and motivation forms a big part of this. Are you encouraged by others to have a go and give it your best to stretch yourself to quieten those voices that underestimate what you can achieve?
After years of training camps, there is a clear, but gross generalisation: women will underestimate their ability and choose the lower grouping standard and stay there even when their ability warrants further challenge. Male athletes, on the other hand, will go big and refuse to move down whenever they are selecting an ability banded group. Knowledge of this fact alone may encourage athletes to challenge their self-beliefs: start with believing you can, stretch yourself and go for it!
Supporting other athletes can often be beneficial in boosting that motivational push helping yourself as an athlete. Several of the female athletes we work with have become leaders in their own environment supporting family members and friends to become more active and in turn becoming more consistent themselves. It is great to read that some of our coached athletes of all abilities are becoming beacons for success, inspiring and challenging others and perhaps this spread of achievement is the most significant success of all.
Is there a difference between male and female success – no. But it is helpful to celebrate them (in whatever form they are achieved!) as it inspires the next generation and helps evolve the female field from athletes making personal progress to athletes collecting trophies.
How might you be able to inspire somebody else? How might you be able to help someone #believestriveachieve?
We’re here to help
Tri Training Harder are one of the leading Triathlon coaching providers in the UK, using our wealth of experience to unite scientific and technological research with already well-established and successful best practices, to create a formula for triathlon and endurance coaching that works.
The result is an honest, dynamic, yet simple new way of constructing an athlete’s training to allow them to reach their potential.
If you’re planning your next season, just starting out in the sport or are looking for extra guidance at the very top end of the field, we are here to help, and our coaches would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact us via the website, and one of the team will be in touch.