Eira Parry on how to help young athletes to thrive

Ep.12 What a joy it was to have Eira Parry on the podcast! A former GB Rowing coach, teacher, founder of High Performance Parenting and stepmother to an Olympic athlete, Eira has seen the life of young athletes from all sides and has so much wisdom to share with anyone involved in the lives of young athletes, whether as coaches or as parents. She has also, excitingly, just been appointed as one of GB Rowing's seven new selectors, a role for which she will be brilliantly suited.

Eira and I had a wonderful chat about:

• Lockdown life and why it's suited her
• Her own early rowing history and how failing to achieve what she wanted has shaped her career
• How the best athletes have come through adversity
• Eira's career history as teacher, rowing coach and coach at the GB Start Programme as a Talent ID coach
• How she came to found High Performance Parenting, supporting parents of young athletes
• How young people benefit from sport - the benefits beyond just the physical and how that can carry through to later life
• What schools can do to engage those children not interested in sport
• Concerns about levels of physical inactivity in lockdown (and the positives in the increase in walking)
• How to make the most of lockdown and turn it into something positive, even if you can't row or do your usual sport

Eira also answered questions from listeners about:

• Coping with the daily demands of being the parent of a young athlete
• Helping your young athlete build resilience and cope with disappointment (and the value of asking the coach for feedback)
• How to help your young athlete build their confidence and deal with competition nerves
• How to get the balance right as a parent between communicating too much and too little with the coach (and how coaches can help with this)
• What to do if your child isn't selected for a crew or team
• What to do if your child wants to give up sport and you think they may live to regret it
• How to help your child juggle all the different demands on their time
• Helping your young athlete to have a healthy attitude towards food and nutrition and body image
• Advice for coaches on helping young athletes to develop a healthy attitude towards winning and goal-setting

RESOURCES
You can find out all about High Performance Parenting and what Eira does here.
You can buy Frances' Houghton's book here. It gets a mention in so many of my interviews - and rightly so - it's brilliant!
The Women's Sport Network Mojo manuals that Eira referred to can be found here.
And looking ahead to next week, you can read all about Race the Thames here.

Transcript

Patricia Carswell: 0:08

This is Girl on the River, the Podcast. Whole crew, come forward to row. Hello and welcome back to Girl on the River the Podcast for Episode 12. Before I introduce you to this week's guest, I just want to say a massive congratulations to everyone who participated in the Endurow Challenge this weekend. Whether you completed the full four hours, or were part of a team, we had everyone from Dame Katherine Grainger herself to ordinary club rowers all rowing on ergs at the same time. And lots of us, myself included, to my amazement, completed our first rowing marathon. It really was "everyone, everywhere, pulling together". It was absolutely brilliant. If you want to know more about it, and what inspired it, check out my podcast interview with Steven Dowd, who was the founder. Though I should warn you one of my friends said it made her cry, so have some tissues standing by first, and I'll put a fundraising link in the show notes as well. Now, let me introduce you to this week's guest. Eira Parry is a former teacher and rowing coach. She has been a coach with the GB Start programme, coaching some of our finest athletes on their way to Olympic success, and is the founder of High Performance Parenting where she now works with parents and young athletes to fulfil their potential through sport. She's married to Olympian Pete Beaumont, and is stepmother to Olympian Jack Beaumont, so there's been a lot of lycra in her life over the years. Excitingly, since we recorded the interview, she was also named as one of British Rowing's seven new selectors for the GB Rowing Team, an absolutely brilliant choice. It was fantastic that she was able to take time out of her day to chat to me and to answer a whole lot of your questions about parenting young athletes. Well, Eira, welcome to the podcast.

Eira Parry: 2:14

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's my absolute pleasure and honour. I've, I've looked at your list of guests, and I'm amongst legends and champions. So it's a real honour. Thank you.

Patricia Carswell: 2:28

Well, I'm delighted to meet you after all these years because we have corresponded on Twitter for quite a long time. So it's lovely to put a face to the name. So I thought it... I'd love to know how you're coping with lockdown because your work by definition involves spending time with people and doing workshops and all that kind of thing. So how have you coped with the transition to lockdown life?

Eira Parry: 2:54

Well, I suppose in terms of the way I personally have coped, it is confirmed to me that I am in fact a complete hermit. I am just sailing on through I, I really have always enjoyed my own company. And I do like, you know, I, I feel that I need a bit of time alone every day, and I'm rarely lonely. So for me, it's almost felt like pressing pause in quite a nourishing way, which I know is not the case for everybody. And I know people have found it really difficult, but I actually felt like it was hibernation, and it was quite nice.

Patricia Carswell: 3:39

That's nice to hear someone still saying that, because I know a lot of people... at the beginning there was this tremendous novelty. And we were, you know, a lot of people were saying I'm loving this, and by now most people, the novelty has worn off and they're just weary. So it's nice to hear a sort of positive account of it.

Eira Parry: 3:57

Yeah, and I suppose I've always associated winter with kind of battening down the hatches and just, you know, being cosy and enduring until spring, and so it sort of doesn't feel that much different. And also, I have really got into my running. And I, I've suffered with a back injury for years. And running was a bit of a problem for me, and I tried to do Couch to 5K back in 2015. And it went horribly wrong and I ended up on my back for 10 weeks and having to have lots of injections. It was all really awful. And I've kind of been careful with myself this time and I've taken it steady and I've gone from only being able to run you know for like five minutes to now, I did I did 16 k the other day. So like for me that's been really nice that I've kind of just chipped away at it slowly since March. And now it's fine, I can do it. So from that point of view, yeah, it's all good. Work wise, it's been difficult because (a) I can't be in a room with people. And it's great to be in a room with a group of parents and working together on the stuff that I do, but I've switched over to webinar format. And, you know, I always say to parents at the start of the webinar, you know, the best thing to do is just, let's look on the bright side. We'd love to be in a room together. But equally, we're at home, we haven't had to travel, we're all wearing our slippers, you know, there are positives to be taken from the situation. The other difficulty for me is, and I totally get this, the people that I work with are clubs and schools and governing bodies. And parent engagement is probably quite a long way down their priority list at the moment. And so I'm doing work, I am working, but I'm not doing as much work at all, as I would normally do at this time of year. So that's been a bit tricky.

Patricia Carswell: 6:12

So you're a runner now but you started out your sporting life as a rower. Is that right?

Eira Parry: 6:19

Yes, I Well, I came from a rowing family, I suppose you would call it. My parents met at Thames Valley Skiff Club. My dad was a member of Walton Rowing Club and Molesey Boat Club, he won Henley. He was chairman of the Olympic Selection Board. He was a steward of the Regatta, he was a finish judge, all of that stuff. So it was kind of unavoidable, really - we all rowed. I probably didn't really properly get into it until I was 15. I'd messed about in boats with dad, but actually properly rowing in crews from the age of 15. And I loved it. And so it just carried on from there really. I was, I was tall. So - I am tall - I so I'm suited to it. I'm completely uncoordinated. So sports at school had not been a great success story. And suddenly finding something where I didn't have to catch a ball, my hands and feet kind of just had to be in one place, I didn't have to talk to people, I didn't have to do that whole team thing, which I'm really not very good at. Suddenly, it was like a revelation that perhaps I could be sporty. And so yeah, from the age of 15, I sort of stuck with it. I played a bit of rugby at university, but came back to rowing.

Patricia Carswell: 7:52

And did you have ambitions to take your rowing to the highest level? Or were you contend to be a kind of club rower?

Eira Parry: 8:01

No, I desperately wanted to be better than I was, I desperately, you know, I had visions of being an Olympian and going to the Olympics. But I, I didn't really put two and two together in terms of the quality of my training and my lifestyle and how that fitted in with being in any way high performance. And probably, if you're going to be really good at any sport, you will have a degree of natural talent. I know lots of athletes say oh, I just did it on my hard work alone. But I think you do have a degree of natural talent. And I didn't have a great physiology. I trained quite hard when I was in my kind of mid to late 20s. And yeah, I just... I was a club rower. But I learned a massive amount from that feeling of not making it as far as I wanted to go. And, you know, it makes you question, it makes you think it makes you evaluate what you did compared to what other people did. And that's taught me so much when it came to coaching. So it's been a useful and rewarding experience, even if I didn't get to where I wanted to.

Patricia Carswell: 9:28

I'm sure, because thinking back over the people that I've interviewed so far, I've never heard any athlete say, 'Oh, I learnt so much from winning that gold medal'. What they learn from the... the situations where they really learn and develop as people, and perhaps as athletes as well, is when they have those disappointments and they don't quite get what they wanted.

Eira Parry: 9:54

Oh, totally, totally. I always used to say like when I first started coaching and I was coaching a big group of junior girls, that your best win will come from your worst loss. Because you don't tend to ask the questions. If you come away, you know, you're having a good day, you won, you won a trophy, you won a medal, you just go, yay - you don't really evaluate it and pick it apart. Whereas if something disastrous has happened, and you've had a really difficult day at the office, you are kind of like, why did that happen? What did we do? What could we have done differently? And you're you do learn much more from the difficult days than you do from just sailing through it all. And it's no mistake or no no accident, that the highest performing athletes across Olympic sports - so the ones who are on the podiums at Olympics, they are not the ones that won everything through their teenage years. They're the ones that struggled and had setbacks and had to be tenacious and had to develop grit to get through, they're far more likely to be the ones that are going to prevail at the very highest level in their sport.

Patricia Carswell: 11:05

So they're kind of refined in the fire.

Eira Parry: 11:08

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And that is, when I work with parents that is a real revelation to parents, you know, they they get stressed about them, their young people not winning all the time, and why aren't they winning? And I'm like, 'No, just embrace it, you want that. It's fine. Just learn from it and just say, never mind, let's move on. What did you learn? What can we change and on to the next thing'. And I think sometimes, when I work with parents, is quite a relief when you tell them that, that that it, it's okay, if they lose, it's fine. It doesn't matter.

Patricia Carswell: 11:45

So you started out as a teacher and a rowing coach. So tell me a little bit about your kind of progression as a teacher and a coach.

Eira Parry: 11:57

So I was a primary school teacher. So I very first started at a school in Surbiton and I was doing a little bit of coaching there. But it was very much with primary age kids. So they were 10 year olds, and it was, it was more about introducing them to the sport and developing skills in a boat, there was no racing at that age group. And we were just kind of having, they were just having fun. And I used to run like Easter and summer holiday courses as an introduction to rowing. And then I moved to a school in Kingston. And it was a secondary school that had a primary bit on the bottom. So I had an opportunity to coach older athletes. So I then was coaching 15 to 18 year olds, so it became a little bit more serious, you know, it was a bit more competitive. And I was there for four years. And I suppose I became ambitious. I wanted these girls to achieve the fortunes of the Boat Club. At that time at that school had not been great and I just wanted to turn it around. And I wanted them to feel like they were good. And partly, it was my own ambition but partly it was about wanting something for them. And I worked myself to the bone. Actually, it was a bit ridiculous, I mean, I because I was teaching full time. And I was really driving this programme forward. I mean, I would go weeks without a day off- weeks and weeks and weeks - because the day off from rowing was a Friday. And obviously the day off from school was Saturday and Sunday, but I was just coaching all the way through. And you know, they did well, these girls, you know, we went from being not much into, in the map of girls' school rowing, to winning the Schools' Head and winning Championships at National Schools. And they were an amazing group. There was something about the dynamics of that group, that they were driving it forward. I mean, one of the girls who was in that group was Sophie Hosking who then went on to win in the lightweight double at the London Olympics. And I think it was absolutely no accident that the group did what they did not just because she was a talented athlete, but because she took everybody with her. And it was... they were great times, they, you know, I loved it. And towards the end of my time there, I really realised that as much as I love the teaching side of things, I was doing a teaching job so that I could coach rowing. And I was regularly working over 70 hours a week. And it was just a bit too much,

Patricia Carswell: 15:18

I should say.

Eira Parry: 15:19

So I got a job with British Rowing. And I worked on the Start programme. So I was a Talent ID coach and I worked on the Start programme. And I did that for nine years.

Patricia Carswell: 15:36

So that was taking people who had potential because of their sort of physiological set up their, you know - tall people, essentially- and starting them from scratch. Is that right?

Eira Parry: 15:49

Yeah. So when I first started, we would have schools that were in within a 10 mile radius of the centre that we were working in, and we would go out and test in the schools. And we would ask the PE department to give us their 20 tallest girls and boys. But yeah, what we were looking for was raw talent, ie, young people that had never considered rowing, but had the physical attributes to row and then you would teach them. So that in its most basic sense, my job description was to find new Olympians.

Patricia Carswell: 16:33

And you did!

Eira Parry: 16:34

Well, yeah, we did. We did. Yeah, we did. Later on in my time, we tended to select athletes more on these kind of big national Talent ID programmes where we advertised in national and local newspaper that we were running, you know, a new Talent ID programme, and it would be massive sports halls, and, you know, you'd get hundreds of people coming along to be tested. So it was slightly different latterly. I mean, it was an amazing experience. It was an amazing privilege to have worked with lots of athletes at the beginning of their journey towards becoming a Olympians, Olympic champions, World Champions, you know, whatever they went on to do, it was an amazing privilege. And I am in touch with many of the athletes that I work with during that time and still see them regularly. So yeah, it's been wonderful, really wonderful.

Patricia Carswell: 17:43

And since then, you've been running, or you founded High Performance Parenting, so you're working with parents of young athletes who are on that performance pathway. So what was the need that you saw that that led you to set that up?

Eira Parry: 18:03

Well, I actually work with parents of athletes of any sport at any level. So I think, with the benefit of hindsight, I perhaps wouldn't have called it High Performance Parenting because everyone thinks it is just performance athletes. But really, what I'm trying to do is to support parents, to support children to fulfil their potential in sport, whatever that might be, if their potential in sport is making it onto the hockey team, or being an Olympic champion doesn't really matter, because I just work towards kind of best practice and basic principles. And that applies to everybody. And I set it up... so when I, when I stopped working for British Rowing, it was in 2013. And I had a sort of notion that I was going to be a property developer. And I sort of did this small project for a year. And it went well, and I made some money, which was the purpose of it. But it became clear to me that a lot of property developing, if you're actually doing it yourself, involves you being in a cold, dusty house, either on your own or with a load of builders for most of the time, and it wasn't quite what it, what I thought it was going to be. So I did one project and I thought, No, I don't, I don't think this is for me. And then I just, I just didn't know what I was going to do. And I had a drink with an old colleague of mine, who had worked on the Start scheme, but then moved to work for the EIS. And she was talking about the fact that lots of sports needed to develop parent engagement and were interested in developing parent engagement and had I thought about that? And I went home and I did a bit of research. And I thought, actually, you know, this could work. For me, this is something that I understand because I'd worked as a high performance coach. And I'd worked with lots of families, lots of parents. And also, because my stepson was a rower, I had an experience of kind of both sides of the story. So I could put it all together to do something that would be useful for parents. And actually, as it turned out, I don't do that much work with governing bodies, I do a little bit, I do more work with clubs and schools that just want to offer something for parents and give them a bit of support around various challenges that they have in the whole sporting journey. And that's the core work that I do.

Patricia Carswell: 20:59

So I know that you're very keen to promote sports and physical activity amongst young people, what of whatever level of of talents and ability, what would you say, are the main benefits of sport beyond the purely physical health benefits?

Eira Parry: 21:19

Well, I think lots of the elements of kind of teamwork. As I said, I was never very good in a team. And I never really questioned that or explored that. And that would have been so useful for me in the workplace, if I'd had a better understanding of team and how it worked, and how I could influence it and fit into a team. So things like that are really useful, but all the, all the kind of lessons that you learn through the challenges that sports can offer. So the challenges of adversity or being tenacious or just sticking at something, when it gets difficult or not being picked for the team and having to kind of regroup and start again and question yourself, all of those things. They are life lessons. They're not for sport alone, they are lessons in life. I did this this workshop for Nottingham University a couple of years back, and I asked the students to tell me what they thought a great athlete was. And so they beavered away and they did this little exercise, and they came up with this whole list of attributes. And, you know, it was things like teamwork, tenacity, humility, celebrates others' achievements, you know, it was a whole list of things. And I looked at it, and I said to them at the end, there's nothing here about skill. There's nothing here about athleticism. And they were like, Oh, no, we didn't think of that. And I thought, you know, when you looked at that list, if on the day that your child gave up sport that was who they had become, then that's a success story in itself. It doesn't matter what they've won, or what they've done, or what event they've been to, if they become that person, that's the success in itself. So what I say to parents is, think about who you want your child to become, think about the attributes that you want to develop in your child and just use sports to develop those things. Full stop.

Patricia Carswell: 23:44

So huge life lessons there.

Eira Parry: 23:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Patricia Carswell: 23:49

I was talking to a director of sports at a school recently, a girls' school. And I was a very, very non sporty person at school. So she said to me, what should we as teachers be doing to engage people like you, people who are not sporty, not interested, not engaged? Because we want them to learn those lessons. We want them to do sport and physical activity for all of those reasons and for their health. So I found that quite hard to answer. I think my main answer was to have a little bit more diversity in terms of what they offer because, for me, I was, like you I couldn't do ball sports. I had no hand eye coordination. I wasn't particularly good at running. In fact, that's an exaggeration. I was terrible runner. And I just didn't find my thing. And I think there'd been more variety. I might have found it. But I wonder if you have any thoughts- you must have engaged on this subject?

Eira Parry: 24:49

Well, I think you're right. Like when I talk to parents, I'm actually doing a webinar in a few weeks time about developing a love of sport with your children. And I think one of the difficulties of school sport is this kind of quite samey team ball sports. And so as a parent, you know, I encourage people to think outside the box, you know, and also to investigate with your child, what sort of a person they are, because it is a very specific type of person that slots into that kind of team sport environment. And that wasn't me. And so yes, diversity is really important. But how schools achieve that? I mean, it's difficult because they haven't got endless budgets, and they haven't got endless facilities and equipment, I suppose. Allowing sort of taster sessions. I mean, there are lots of organisations that will run taster sessions for free for, for people to try different stuff. And I mean, there's no reason why schools can't allow stuff like, I don't know, skateboarding, roller skating, you know, why can't, why can't you do stuff like that on the netball court? Yeah. So I think that's really important. When I

Patricia Carswell: 26:14

Yeah. used to go into schools, when I was working for British Rowing, and doing the Talent ID testing, sometimes they would ask me to come in and do an assembly or something like that, to to present the idea to the pupils, which actually, for me, was a great opportunity, because then I was directly able to present what it was that I was offering. And when I did that, I would make a real point of not looking sporty in any way, shape, or form. I never go wearing my British Rowing tracksuit, I kind of dressed up to do it. Because I always felt at school, that there was a kind of sporty clique, and I wasn't part of it. And the girls will look the same and dress the same. And I just didn't feel part of that. So I wanted to present to these school kids that I was asking to put themselves toward for testing that it can be anybody. It's not about being one of the sporty ones, it can be anybody. And I think it was quite successful when I had an opportunity to do that, because I would get a real mixture. And often, it was frustrating. But sometimes you would get PE staff going, 'Ooh, I'm a bit surprised she's turned up' - you know, as if, as if, like, are you, they don't fit the sporty mould. And I think we have to be careful around that. Because sport's for everybody, I passionately believe that there is a sport or activity for everybody. It can be fun. Yeah. Well, it took me till my 40s to find it. But I got there in the end.

Eira Parry: 28:11

Yeah. But that's the thing isn't is. And I suppose in this day and age, when we have more exposure via social media, we're more likely to come across something that may be appealing. But I think schools and parents need to be thinking outside the box all the time, and not kind of going down the same old routes, just because that's what's always happened.

Patricia Carswell: 28:38

And I think schools... they they're so rule bound now, there's so many restrictions on how they do things and what they do that they can't, perhaps have the same flexibility. I know my grandmother was a primary school teacher, she she ran the village primary school, and - it's sort of heartstopping now to think about it, but she used to take the children down, it was on the shores of a lough, and she's to take them down to the lough and, and take them swimming, you know, the whole school she'd take, and she would get them all in. And you know, it was all... I don't think they sort of went out of their depth or anything like that. But you know, she was a really keen swimmer. She swam in the sea until she was in her 80s. And it was just something that she really wanted to share with the children. And so these were children, who probably wouldn't have learned to swim otherwise, you know, there weren't formal lessons, but there was Granny taking them down. And I think perhaps schools have a lot of rules about you know, if you, if you start this sport, then you need this equipment, and you need these rules, and you need this risk assessment. So perhaps that makes it more challenging for them now.

Eira Parry: 29:49

I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. I mean, they're so bound by risk assessments and rules, you know, it's getting to the point where it's difficult to do anything. Actually one thing which we used to do, and I don't know if schools still do it because I came out of teaching 15 years ago. But once they got to kind of 16, they could choose to opt out of traditional sports for their sports afternoon. And they could do, there was stuff available, like aerobics or, you know, all sorts of activities. And that's a great thing to do. Because there is a really big issue with particularly girls dropping out of school sports around about the age of 14, 15, 16. Because, well, there are lots of reasons for it. But offering more is only going to help, I would say.

Patricia Carswell: 30:45

So how worried are you about the reports that are just coming in now about the levels of inactivity for children during lockdown?

Eira Parry: 30:56

It's terrifying. Yeah, I looked at the statistics in the last week, because I've got this webinar coming up. And the saddest thing, the thing that just really hit home for me is that there is an absolute direct correlation between happiness and activity, I mean, that, if you go to the data that's just come out, the graph just shows the most active kids are the happiest, and then it drops down to less active and then to inactive, where they're the least happy. And, you know, that's just so terribly sad. The one thing which I took from it, which sort of gladdens my heart was that the levels of walking have gone up massively. And, you know, one of the things which I talk to parents about in terms of activity, is that if your kids really don't engage with sport, then activity has to be built into your lifestyle in some other way. So, you know, don't drive to the school gates, or even if you can't get them to walk all the way, get them to walk half the way, you know, that kind of thing. And it looks like the first part of lockdown that actually had an effect and the fact that it means that people actually did it. Hopefully, it's proved to people that they can do it, and they can keep the levels of walking up. But I suppose the real problem was the shutting down of organised sports. I mean, that's where the drop off has come that kids couldn't go to their football club, and they couldn't go to the rugby club. And it's, there's only so much walking and running around the park. And, you know, that kind of thing that you can do with children, and they're motivated to do and so I would hope that once the vaccination kicks in, and things start to get a little bit more back to normal that it I really hope the figures next year just going to go through the roof because everyone's so excited about being able to go back and do sport and realises what a privilege it is to be part of a club and to have a coach turn up and and deliver a session to you and I just hope that it's a blip. And that it's going to have a positive effect because people realise how much they they love it.

Patricia Carswell: 33:37

Yeah, yeah. I know our coaches that our junior coaches at my club are quite concerned because our juniors for the most part don't row with any school. They just row at our clubs, so they haven't had the benefit of the school rowing that continued through a lot of lockdown. And because we're in in Wales, we were closed for longer than the English clubs and we didn't have crew rowing when the English clubs had crew rowing. And I think they've they worry about the disparity. There's a bit of a postcode lottery and then club rowers are disadvantaged compared with school ones. And I think that's really tough for our our young people.

Eira Parry: 34:19

Yeah, I do get that. I think it's important that we don't get hung up on this though. Because one thing which I always say to parents is that you can be stronger from adversity. You don't have to be weaker from adversity, you write the script. And one of the things which my stepson Jack definitely found with the first lockdown when there was no you know, he couldn't go training - everything had to be done at home - is you need to have the mindset to look for the positives, so to look for the ways that you can make it work for you. So for him, he normally does three sessions a day on kind of four days a week, but they would all normally done, be done, so you'd be arriving at seven o'clock, doing a session, having a second breakfast, doing another session, having lunch doing another session. And he finds that quite difficult. He would rather spread the sessions out and do one in the evening. But that's not an option when you're you're training at the training centre. So in lockdown, he spread them right out, he had an extra hour in bed. So he would start his first session about 830, then he'd eat, then he might do another session at kind of two o'clock. And then he do another session at five or six o'clock in the evening. And he feels that he went back to Caversham in better shape than he left, in far better shape than he left, because he made it work for him. And for all those juniors who are feeling kind of hard done by because they've got less training in, what I would say is ask yourself the question, what, what was your weakness when the lockdown happened, when the pandemic hit? What was your weakness? Did you have poor core strength? Did you have short hamstrings? You know, whatever it was, was it was there a technical thing which you were not very good at? And then absolutely, just be ruthless about fixing that. So do everything you can to come back when you get back in a boat, to have better core strength, or better glute strength, or longer hamstrings or whatever it might be. And yes, you might be thinking, hang on a minute, how can you improve your technique, but you can improve your technique just by watching endless videos of people doing what you want to do well. Like if you can go back to the river, having a really clear vision in your head of what you want to achieve, that can make a huge difference. So I would say don't write your own script by saying or it's awful, it's not fair, we won't be as good as the others - just refuse and just make it work for you. That's

Patricia Carswell: 37:21

I think that's fantastic advice really, what I would say. really valuable. I mean, I know, from my own point of view, our club lent out ergs to anyone who who wanted one. And a lot of us have been finding that we don't actually hate the erg after all, you know, that was my, that was my weak spot. And I'm never going to be competitive on the erg. But I've discovered that my technique has improved, and I've got fitter. And I've actually discovered that since there's not been rowing for months and months and months for us, I've had to go on the erg. There isn't any other form of rowing. And actually, I kind of look forward to it now, which is... my husband sort of wonders what they've done with Patricia.

Eira Parry: 38:05

It's brilliant, isn't it? There's There's nothing like taking away something to make you kind of realise how important it is. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love that idea that picture you painted of a sort of resurgence afterwards where everybody comes out and they're just so delighted to be there with a coach and and you know, all the things that perhaps were annoying or off putting before - we just put them to one side, because we'll be so grateful to be there. I think that's a really nice idea. Yeah, I hope so. There's no reason why we can't just all come back better.

Patricia Carswell: 38:45

Now looking at your work in High Performance Parenting, I'm aware that you have really seen the world from both sides, because you're stepmother to Jack Beaumont, who's based at Caversham. He's an elite, high performance Olympian. And you've also got experience on the other side as a coach. So you've kind of seen, you understand both perspectives. And I think that's really useful. And so I've got a bunch of questions from listeners who all want the benefit of your wisdom. So the first one is really about that grind as a parent of you know, taking your this is in normal times, taking your children to practice, perhaps having to get up very early in the morning, feed them look after them do all the you know, all the sort of muddy laundry and all that kind of stuff. But I know you're really keen for parenting athletes to be fun. So how do you how do you cope with with all those demands on you as a parent?

Eira Parry: 39:52

Yes, that's a very good question. And I totally sympathise and empathise with parents as well. especially parents that maybe have like three or four children or doing different sports and having to juggle everything, it's very hard. So the first thing I would say, is, it's very easy as a parent, to kind of get into this mindset that because they're so busy, and they've got so much on that you have to do everything for them. And I would say it's really, really important that you don't. So I'm not suggesting that you suddenly ask your 15 year old to cook all the meals or do all the washing, but they absolutely should be doing at least a load of washing a week - you know, if they can work a smartphone, they can work a washing machine. And it won't be long before they're heading off to university or leaving home or whatever it is they choose to do. That comes really really quickly. And having worked with athletes who were first year of university, when I coached out of Reading University, there were some that arrived knowing what to do and knowing how to look after themselves. And there were some who had absolutely no idea. And it was not a nice experience for them, it was a horrible experience for them trying to juggle a whole new life with not knowing really how to look after themselves. So I would say, of course, you're still going to be the bank of mum and dad and the taxi service and the laundry service, but really start to engage them in cooking a meal a week, cooking themselves some recovery snacks that go into the freezer, putting a load of washing in, etc, so that they're just a appreciating you a bit more and be learning these really important life skills that are going to make the transition to being a competent adult so much easier. One thing which some sports do better than others, is connecting parent groups and connecting parents in a club or a school situation together. Because if you've got a good network of other parents around you, things like lifts to training, lifts to competition can be shared out much better if you've got the whatsapp group or the parents-supporters association or whatever it might be. So if you're in a situation where you don't have that resource, then maybe start one up and try and get parents more helping each other out and lightening the load of things like the taxi service.

Patricia Carswell: 42:51

Yeah, that sounds like a really smart idea. Now, you referred earlier to the resilience that children learn through sport when they go through disappointments, not winning, not being picked, and one parent has asked what the best way of helping them to build that resilience through those difficult times is, and obviously parents of teenagers, that's a challenge all of its own. So how do you help them along with that?

Eira Parry: 43:20

Yeah, so the first thing I would say is when you're a teenager, I mean, we, as parents of teenagers know, their brains are wired differently. And and that's biological, you know, they feel emotions much more keenly. They make decisions based on emotion, they're very worried about peer pressure, all of those things. So being in a sporting situation where something has gone wrong. I mean, it can really feel almost like a bereavement to a teenager. You know, if you've lost a race, you thought you were going to win or you haven't made the team that you've kind of staked your whole year on, that is a huge deal. So as a parent, it's really important that we empathise with that. Sometimes a parent's gut reaction to maybe like a selection decision that hasn't gone your child's way is rage. And as I'm getting angry with the coach and wanting to find out why it's happened and that sort of thing, and I would really guard against that as a reaction. Although, you know, you feel like you've got your child's back and it can be your kind of gut instinct, (a) it can be even more distressing for your teenager to see that your parent's angry about it, and (b) in the long run that isn't going to help the situation so I would guard against any sort of rage or trying to get involved on your child's behalf. The next thing I would say, is to try and normalise the situation. Because if you look across any sport, and you take the the people in the sport, at the pinnacle of that sport, every single one of them will have a story to tell about a similar situation, every single one will have not made this team or lost a match that they, or race, that they really thought that they were going to. So it is a normal, it's a normal course of events, so normalise it as well. And then my advice would be to really, really encourage your young person, your young athlete to ask for feedback from the coach. And I would go as far with some young people, you know, your teenager, you know what they're like, if they're the sort of person that is going to find that very difficult, then almost give them a script. In some of my workshops, I have actually given scripts and said, this is what they need to say. Because if they say that to any coach, the coach is not going to turn them away, the coach is going to work with them, and help them to see what they could have done to have made a difference. Because as a life skill, being in a situation where you're disappointed by something, you then take the initiative to ask for feedback. And then you take that feedback on board. I mean, that's pretty much what life is all about.

Patricia Carswell: 46:41

Yeah, well, I can see in the workplace, that's absolutely a key element of being successful. You know, if you miss out on a job or a promotion, saying, Okay, what could I do better next, you know, is there is there some skill that I'm missing? Or is there something on my CV that I need to work on?

Eira Parry: 47:00

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's an amazing skill to empower a young person with. And then, like, out of this difficult situation of adversity, they have a plan, they have a plan of action, and it's so much better to have a plan and have something to do with yourself rather than kind of wallowing in the, in the horror of the situation, you've kind of got a plan to work your way out of it, and make it better.

Patricia Carswell: 47:31

And what about boosting their confidence because the, you know, when when people are in their teens, it's a challenging time, they become really self conscious, and they, a lot of them doubt their own abilities. Do you have any advice for kind of bolstering that confidence if they're lacking it?

Eira Parry: 47:50

That's a really difficult question. Because it's so pertinent to the individual, I suppose when I worked with athletes, and I tried to develop self confidence in athletes, I would always ask them to go back to the data or go back to, like, what is it that they're nervous about? What is it that they think they can't do? Why do they think they can't do that? Have they done it before? Go back and look at what they're capable of and what they've done in the past. And why can't you do it again, looking at what they're capable of, looking at what they've done in the past, and sort of building on that. And also, looking at the training they've done between the last time say, it's about racing, what training have you done between the last race you did, and now, so what can we realistically expect to have gained by doing that training, you know, that's going to give you confidence? And the idea of nerves, being nervous before a competition and feeling nervous and worrying about whether you're going to be good enough, how the race is going to go, whatever it might be, I would turn to advice that Francis Houghton gave in her book, which is absolutely brilliant, by the way, for anybody that hasn't got it - it's amazing. And she says about nerves, stop worrying about what's going to happen and worry about what you are going to do. And just have a plan about what you are going to do. What happens is dependent on lots of other people, and you have no control over that. So let's just worry about what we're going to do between now and the end of the race. And that gives you a framework to kind of be a bit more in control of nerves and lack of confidence and whatever.

Patricia Carswell: 49:48

Yeah, I can see that that would be particularly useful - you always see it every regatta, someone who at some point caught a crab in a race, and they're haunted by it and I I can see that would be really helpful for that. Because it's such a crushing thing, you know, you, you just feel for them when they, you know, made a mistake, whatever that mistake is, and they're haunted by that fear. But I can see that you're really thinking about what am I going to do, not what might happen to me, but what am I going to do? I think that's brilliant.

Eira Parry: 50:18

Yeah. But also, in that instance, people catch crabs, like, every single rower that I have ever worked with has caught a crab, like consider that, you know, consider that that might happen to you, and then think, what am I going to do? Like, what am I going to do, if that does happen to me, because if you've got a little plan of action, then you can actually get out of that situation really quickly, catching a crowd will give you a massive boost of adrenaline because it will be shocking, use the flipping adrenaline and get back on the race. You know, if you, if you've thought of that as a scenario, and you've got a plan of action, it kind of doesn't matter.

Patricia Carswell: 50:59

And asking for feedback could come in again, because you can say to your coach, can we make a plan so that we all know what we do if someone catches a crab?

Eira Parry: 51:09

Yeah, absolutely. And then it and then it's almost just like, one of the things that might happen, and we know what the plan is. And so it just makes it easier, doesn't it?

Patricia Carswell: 51:19

Yeah, absolutely. Now one parent has asked, I think with feeling, how do you avoid becoming over involved? It's that balance of that communication with the coach - when do you have to pull back and when can you sort of step forwards?

Eira Parry: 51:36

Okay, so I would say that there are a couple of areas where you need very clear information from a coach, and as a parent, you should expect it. So (a) you should understand what the protocol is for contacting the coach. So you should have a very clear directive from the coach or the club or the school about how you make contact. Do they prefer to get an email? Is there an emergency mobile number, if you're going to be late to something, you know, ask for the protocol for contact to be very clear, because the likelihood is, you're going to need to contact them when you're in a big stressy situation. So how does that work? And what should you as a parent be doing? And the second thing is you need to know, clearly, what is the plan for the year? Like, what is your child's group going to be doing? What are the main events? Is there a training camp? What's the weekly schedule? What are the main regattas of the year, and I always say to parents, you do have to accept the fact that it's a team sport, and people get ill and people get injured, and there will be last minute changes. But as a parent, you should have an idea of the framework of the year and what's likely to unfold, because you might have two other kids doing two different sports, and you've got to juggle everything. So you need to know that stuff. And if you don't, then you're absolutely within your rights to say, look, I need this information, you know, please let me have it.

Patricia Carswell: 53:22

And that's a good note for coaches as well that at the beginning of the year, it's really helpful if they can set the parameters, particularly with new parents, particularly with parents who aren't familiar with any sporting environment, and tell them what's Okay, what's not Okay, all of those things that you just listed.

Eira Parry: 53:41

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's also worth remembering, and kind of doing the maths in your head as a parent, if the coach, if your child's coach has 20 people in their group. and every parent sends an email after every training session to ask how their kid is going, that coach is not going to be doing any coaching. So it's important to make sure that your contact with them is absolutely necessary. You know, you don't need to have an update on your child every five minutes - you need to be able to contact the coach when there's a problem, or when you've got something which you need to tell them rather than trying to have daily dialogue with them. And the one area where the biggest conflict arises between coaches and parents across all sports is around selection, and parents wanting to know why their child hasn't been selected for a crew or an event. And I would, I would just refer back to the idea that if you take that on board for your child, then you're missing an opportunity for them to learn how to ask for feedback and how to work in collaboration with the coach, even when they're in a situation where they haven't been selected for something, you don't want your child to feel like the coach is against them, the coach is just doing their job. And they can still work with your child, even though they haven't necessarily made the crew that they wanted to.

Patricia Carswell: 55:24

Yeah. What is your advice if your child just isn't enjoying it anymore? Or, or if they want to give up and you think they might regret that?

Eira Parry: 55:39

Yeah, it's a really difficult situation. Because, you know, as they get older, in their teens, we want them to make decisions for themselves. But, you know, we do have a certain amount of wisdom as adults, so we can look at it, you know, through that wisdom, and sometimes the angle that we know it's going to be okay, if they stick at it for a bit longer. So my advice is that, ultimately, sport needs to be enjoyable. It's not... rowing is not enjoyable, 100% of the time, like an ergo test is no fun whatsoever. But the overriding experience needs to be enjoyment. And so we have to sort of consider as parents, whether our child is still enjoying it, and is going to enjoy it into the future, or whether we just want them to do it because we're loving the whole rowing parent vibe. And you know, you have to ask yourself that question, honestly. I, my advice to parents would be to say, firstly, ask your child, if they gave up today and then they went to National Schools or Henley in the summer and watched their friends racing, how would they feel? Would they feel regret? Or would they not care? I would encourage the young athlete to say, collaborate with them to set a timeframe say to them, okay, I, I can see that you're not enjoying it at the moment. You know, there are always ups and downs in sport, why don't we give it until the end of term? Or why don't we give it a month, whatever it is that you agree with your child, and actually stick at that, say, you know, let's not let the team down just by giving up just like that, let's commit to a certain period of time. And then at that point, if you are still really hating it, then it's definitely time to give up. And that way, you're going to avoid the kind of snap decision making, sometimes with teenagers that can be based on just having one bad day or having an argument with the person who you normally train with, you know, that kind of thing. So you're avoiding it being a decision based on a short term emotion. But if they really don't like it, time to find something else time to sit and do something different.

Patricia Carswell: 58:20

I think it can be really difficult for particularly schoolchildren, because my experience is that the various departments within the school, the music, the academics, the drama, the sport, they're all... not quite tribal, but they all have their own interests to push. And sometimes children can feel under huge pressure, because they're made to feel guilty by one teacher that they've over-committed to another. And that's a really difficult line to tread for them.

Eira Parry: 58:54

Yeah, hugely. And I mean, having worked in a big secondary school, departments don't tend to talk to each other that much. I mean, information will be out there if you look for it. But that history teacher isn't going to know when the rowing training camp is. And the rowing coach isn't going to know when the history coursework is due in, you know, it just doesn't. It doesn't work like that. And so it's your child that has to be responsible for their own schedule, but then that also means that they have to be responsible for holding their hands up and saying, I have a week where I've got resits and seat racing, and you know, whatever else is in there. And one thing which I encourage parents to do is to put together either half termly or termly a schedule. And ideally, the young athlete does this for themselves, but when they're younger, it would need some input from parents and actually It sounds, you know, it's not rocket science, it sounds very straightforward, but actually putting every single element of their life onto one spreadsheet or into one diary, and it doesn't always happen. And that way, you see the flashpoints, you know, you see the week from hell, which is towards the end of the autumn term when they're knackered anyway, and you know, all of this stuff, and then encouraging your young person to communicate that to somebody. And in my experience of working with schools, now, I think they're getting much better at

Patricia Carswell: 1:00:32

Now, can we talk briefly about nutrition and giving children the opportunity to say, I've over committed, and I, I'm in trouble. And I think there do seem to be avenues an people that they can talk to an people that they know, they ca talk to you and flag this ki d of stuff a little bit be ter than maybe 15, 20 years ago as the case. young athletes? I was talking to one friend whose daughter was a very successful tennis player. And she said that the problem she came up against was, first of all, in the school, they would only give tiny portions, particularly to the girls. And so she just wasn't getting enough to eat. But also, she was really self conscious. Being with other girls who weren't doing that level of sports, she was really self conscious about the amount that she ate. So how do you go about making sure that they are getting enough to eat and that they have a really positive attitude to that and don't get hung up on worrying about dieting and all that kind of thing?

Eira Parry: 1:01:49

Yeah, it's a really difficult one. It's particularly pertinent to girls, but you know, it can be the same for boys as well. I suppose. I do a lot of work with young people and with parents around food and nutrition. And I suppose, just constantly revisiting the facts about food, and dispelling some of the myths so that young people understand a little bit better how their bodies are working, and what it means to them to not eat enough carbohydrates or to not eat enough protein. You know, sometimes, when I work with young people around food, they don't consider the fact that they're doing all this training, and training really hard. And they want to whatever it is that their goal is for that year, you know, they're training towards that. But the fact that they're not eating sufficient carbohydrates or protein means it's a total waste of time, that they're just not making the physiological gains. And so they're doing all this training, and wondering why, you know, their two best friends are getting much better ergo scores than they are or they've both PBed this year and I haven't PBed and it's really unfair - well, it's because you're just not eating enough. You know, it's really straightforward. And I think sometimes, they don't necessarily make those links.

Patricia Carswell: 1:03:27

And presumably, the same goes with boys, when they get hung up on protein shakes and supplements and that kind of thing, when they all seem to go through that phase where, you know, they walk around welded to one of those big bottles.

Eira Parry: 1:03:40

I know, I know. And it's totally unnecessary. I mean, it's totally unnecessary. They can get as much protein as they need just from eating a good diet. And this is something that I do I work with athletes on this. And I work with parents on this just understanding the nature of what's a good diet and what is going to make them thrive physically, without buying sports drinks and supplements and everything else. Girls' body image, I would say, it's not something I'm a massive expert on. It's a really difficult area. I've worked with a few parents that have had children who've had, you know, eating disorders and, and problems around food. And it's not something that I feel really qualified to give much advice on. What I would normally do with parents in that instance is refer them on to people or support them to find nutritionists or whatever to work with. One plug I would like to get which is a great great, great resource for parents of teenage girls, are booklets produced by the women's sport network called the Mojo booklets. I don't know if you've come across them.

Patricia Carswell: 1:05:00

No - I'll look them up and I'll put a link in the in the show notes so people can follow that up.

Eira Parry: 1:05:05

They're brilliant. And they're all about sports, developing healthy bodies and body image. And there's a specific rowing Mojo booklet - they do them for specific sports and they haven't covered all sports yet, but they've definitely got a rowing one. And it's, it's really good, really great. It's all around body image and being strong and being healthy and wellbeing around girls' sport. It's great.

Patricia Carswell: 1:05:33

Oh, that sounds fantastic. I'll definitely follow that up. Now, before we finish, I'd like to talk a little bit about life from the coach's point of view, because you've obviously seen that as well. And we've talked already about the best way of communicating with parents and making sure that everyone's clear about how they communicate. What happens when you've got coaches who are under a lot of pressure to get results, because I imagine that there can be a situation where they're under pressure from the school to get certain results, in order to secure the future of, say, for example, the school rowing club, which obviously requires a lot of investment, or pressure from a club to get particular results, because presumably, there comes a point when that can clash with the welfare of the athletes if they're under too much pressure.

Eira Parry: 1:06:25

Yeah, I suppose my ethos as a coach, like if I went back to coaching now, I'd probably coach differently to how I did. And I would very much just work on the basis of getting the most out of each athlete, and then getting the most out of the crew, rather than really trying to pinpoint, we've got to win Nat Schools, or we've got to win Henley, or whatever it might be. Because in my experience, when I look back, yes, course, you had kind of outcomes in your mind. And athletes had outcomes in their mind, like they wanted to do well enough at trials to get selected or whatever it might be. But ultimately, just going back to the processes, you're going to achieve the best you can anyway, and teenagers will have outcome goals. You know, they're human beings. And we all do you know, we all think, Oh, look at that amazing, shiny medal - I want one of those. But as long as you're coming back to the how, all the time, then I don't think that matters. You know, saying I want to go to the Olympics is great. That's a great goal to have. But I'm sure everyone wants to go to the Olympics, but it's the how you're going to get there. That's going to get you there. Do you know what I mean?

Patricia Carswell: 1:08:06

Yeah, well, that's something I talked to Frances Houghton about, because in her book, she recounted how when she was really quite young, she decided that she would like to win gold at the Olympics. But what she did straightaway was instead of just setting herself that goal, she set about making a plan for how she would go about achieving it. And I think that that's the difference, isn't it? in that mindset, it's thinking, Well, what can I actually do to get myself there?

Eira Parry: 1:08:35

Yeah, absolutely. I worked with Olivia Carnegie-Brown, who was in the same eight at Rio with Frances. I worked with her right from the beginning of her rowing. And she went to the Junior Worlds when she was J17. And she was in a four and they won a bronze medal. And they were, I think, four and a half seconds behind gold. And she decided the following year, which was going to be her last year of juniors, she just said, Well, I want to be better than I was last year. She didn't put a... she didn't say I want to win a silver or gold. She just said I just want to be better. And the gap between gold and bronze was four and a half seconds. But it's a crew, so I can't control that. But I want my PB for my 2K to be four and a half seconds better and then I'll feel like I've closed that gap. And that's what she did. Well, actually, it was more like 4.7 seconds. So she had a little window.

Patricia Carswell: 1:09:46

That's a lot as well. That's not...

Eira Parry: 1:09:49

Yeah, it is a lot but she that was kind of the way she rolled. That was kind of the way she worked. It was just like, like, this is what I want to achieve. So this is what I have to do. Now I'm just going to get my head down and I'm going to chip away at it. She just chipped away. And then she did get silver next year.

Patricia Carswell: 1:10:10

Oh, that's a great story. Well, that's a lovely positive story to end on. Thank you so, so much, Eira. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I feel like I've learned so much. And I know all the parents listening will have picked up some fantastic wisdom. So thank you.

Eira Parry: 1:10:28

Yeah, thank you for your time. I've loved it.

Patricia Carswell: 1:10:36

Thank you so much for tuning in again. And I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. Now next week, I am deeply honoured to have none other than triple Olympic champion, Andrew Triggs Hodge, a my guest talking about life a ter rowing and Race the Tha es, which is an amazing fundrai ing challenge taking place in Ma ch, which - guess what? - I've igned up for with seven of my Monmouth crew mates. So I won't e taking a break from the e g anytime soon. We had a brill ant chat, and I can't wait t share it with you. So join e then to hear all about it. And until then, next stroke easy oar.