91훑괵 Wales - Colin Jackson's Raise Your Game - Training ground

Cathy Brown

The European Flyweight Champion, personal trainer and ex-events manager on getting on with your team mates.

What's your role?
It's important that everyone in the team has their role and it's quite clear what that is. When the planning process for a job, project or event starts, people get really into it. Someone will want to do everything and someone else won't want to do anything. So it's very important that you decide at the beginning who's doing what and stick to that the whole time. If you've got a clear role it should go smoothly.

Follow the leader.
Some people might try to get out of line so you should have a team leader, and it's their responsibility to talk to the person getting out of line and remind them what they should be doing. The team leader should also give people confidence and compliment the things they've done and set tasks for the week for everyone.

Accept praise.
Sometimes you do need help and compliments from an outside source. You need to be reminded how good you are and your strengths. I think sometimes we're too hard on ourselves so we should sit down and think about what our strengths are be told what we're really good at. I don't think people know how to give compliments in this day and age, they just want to put others down. We're just too negative all the time.

Work on taking negative things and turning them into positive.
In boxing or kickboxing I'd never tell someone that they're rubbish at something. I'd point out what aspect they're good at, but suggest we improve something else. It's about communication and learning to put it across to people without putting them down. Everyone's got their weaknesses and things they're not very good at, but it's about making them feel good about themselves.

Share what's on your mind.
I used to encourage a weekly meeting so if anyone had views you'd sit down in a group and air those and talk about what you are and aren't happy about, what's gone well and what hasn't - and just talk about it as a team. Rather than keeping it pent up you have a group discussion about it and then it's all laid to rest so you can start a new week afresh.

People don't communicate enough. It might be something small and you might feel like an idiot talking about it but if it's on your chest it's on your chest and you've got to get it off. You'll respect each other more as a team and work together harder.

Talk it out.
Now and again I'll sit down with my trainer and I'll say what I'm not happy about or what I'm worried about. As strong as a person might be, if they're feeling a bit low or lacking in confidence then they need to have someone to talk to. That's really important.

Get to know people and learn to speak their language.
It's a good attribute to have to be able to communicate on all levels to kids, adults, men, women and people from different social classes. Some people can only communicate on one level to one type of person. Everybody is different and I actually train people quite differently.
There are certain people I can push until they're nearly crying, but you've got to judge what sort of mood they're in when they turn up because they could be having a really bad day. Some days you might really push them but others it's better to work them hard but give them a feel good session and do stuff you know they enjoy doing so they come out feeling really good and confident.