John: My first Fit for Purpose staff blog

By John Hampshire on 14th August

John sitting outside a pub in the sunThis is my first personal blog for Fit for Purpose, we decided that details of what staff get up to and how they develop will be of interest and useful background to our development and capabilities.

Christine, Mary and I are pretty flexible about the roles we perform but in general I lead on biomechanics, coaching and sports’ psychology. I originally trained as an engineer and find biomechanics fascinating, particularly how a dynamic assessment such as a treadmill video can reveal restrictions and oddities that are hard to spot using static methods. It has been remarkable how we have been able to use this in combination with relaxation, NLP and soft tissue techniques to restore running biomechanics with improved efficiency of motion. You can read about all this in Mary’s blog, click the link on the right hand side menu.

The last few weeks have been a clear vindication of my decision to reduce my commitment to a well paid job as a structural engineer and join Christine in building our business in Skipton.

Two things in particular have made me very happy:

Mary running in the World Mountain Running Trial 2011Firstly, I have been spending a lot of time working with Mary, helping her get in shape for the World Mountain Running Championships Trial, where she finished 4th on Saturday; hopefully enough to get her into the team. It has been a real pleasure to work with such a committed athlete but also one who is knowledgeable and open minded to what has been a slightly unconventional approach in many ways. I’m looking forward to more of the same in the run up to the World Championships on 11th September and onwards into the future.

Karen racing at the UCI World Cup time trial in Segovia 2011Secondly, I have been coaching the hand cyclist, Karen Darke, for about 18 months (Karen has a blog as well, see the right hand side menu). By taking a plunge and paying her way to a World Cup race in Segovia last year, she managed a podium position and as a consequence was asked to join the British Cycling squad.

After working hard throughout the winter she was able to take the lead in the UCI World Cup after two races but there was still a significant margin between her and the current World Champion, Ursula Schwaller. However, in a recent road race in Germany Ursula and Karen got into a head to head that although Karen didn’t win, she was only beaten by 0.1 seconds in a sprint. It is now clear that Karen has the capability to beat Ursula but the real significance being that she has demonstrated that if things go well, she has the potential to become World and Olympic champion.

As for me, I continue to do a bit of running and cycling, leading an interval session on Tuesday nights - meet at the Craven Swimming Pool at 7pm if you fancy it, the sessions are such that all speeds are catered for.

I hope you found this interesting and please comment if you feel like it. We can only learn from feedback so say what you think, good or bad and I’ll do my best to respond accordingly.

John