Marcia Bailey is the Technical Lead & Senior Performance Lifestyle Coach at the UK Sports Institute. She is also the Vice Chair of the PPF’s Education & Training Committee which meets in person three times a year. She talks us through her role and the important collaboration between personal development practitioners across the PPF network of associations.
I was an athlete myself competing as a sprinter at both the Atlanta and Sydney Olympic Games. In Athletics you achieve a lot at a younger age and have to make big decisions when you’re in need of a critical friend who can help guide you when making important career decisions and not just be interested in their own personal gain. I saw a job come up at the English Institute of Sport and I saw it as a way of giving back to the wider sports community. I could empathise and give an unbiased opinion and provide holistic support. That was twenty years ago and since then I have gone from a Performance Lifestyle (PL) Practitioner to a Senior Practitioner and now Technical lead.
I support a team of at least 15 PL practitioners helping them develop both technical and non-technical skillset in the high performance athlete system. I’m lucky as I still do practitioner work with athletes at different levels of experience which keeps me grounded on an athlete level, but I also help the Head of Performance Lifestyle Joanne Harrison with developing the overall service and strategy which is so interesting. We look after around 1200 athletes on the world class programme across 38 sports with an aim of having one practitioner for every 60 athletes working as part of the sports science sports medicine teams. It’s all about marginal gains because if an athlete’s life outside sport is not together then that can have a massive impact on performance.
Despite doing my role for over twenty years it’s still a challenge to make athletes aware of what we do. We are an important part of the high performance team, but athletes don’t always embrace what we offer but then they often wish they had further down the line. We understand that when you’re in a sport, you think that’s all you need to do but there’s nothing wrong with thinking about life alongside sport and what the future may look like and understanding that building foundations can only enhance what you’re doing now. It won’t necessarily make the transition easier but it can be smoother.
I love still working face to face with the athletes but also the fact I get to develop practitioners with different levels of ability and see them grow, using my experiences and knowledge and skillset to make them be the best they can be. I also get to contribute strategically on the future of the Performance Lifestyle discipline.
It’s one of the bigger Committees the PPF runs as it brings together practitioners from other sports not represented by player associations. We find them really beneficial as in the past as a personal development industry we used to get together but over the years we’d lost contact so this Committee is a great way of bringing together people who are all passionate about supporting athletes, working towards the same goal but in different ways. Personally, I learn so much whether it’s about specific contacts working in the industry who you know are credible and it connects us with our peers, sharing best practice and making us stronger when we’re more aligned. Obviously, everyone has different funding, but we can all help each other and be willing to share our knowledge and expertise whether it’s on how to set up a Personal Development grant or sharing good reviews of CPD events for practitioners or what did or didn’t work at Rookie Camps. It’s all beneficial.
I think offering specific support for female athletes in particular relating to female health is going to be key. Also understanding more about how to connect athletes to online learning through learning and development platforms. We’ll also be continuing our work to create some formal industry standards for practitioners and developing a form of accreditation. The main thing however will be to continue with this forum supporting each other and sharing best practice.