FMR Coaching Courses relevance

[AndyA]

UKA and England Athletics have confirmed that all coaches with pre existing coaching qualifications at L2 or Coach ie. FMR, CiRF can access the new modules for free EXCEPT those who did the L2 Children In Athletics.

I've got the FMR qualification and the uka website won't let me access the modules.

I've emailed uka, I'll let you know how/if it progresses.

Incidentally my Coach Licence says 'Level 2 Group Event Coach' on the front. The phrase 'FMR' isn't used, although the back says 'Fell & Hill plus athletics conditioning......lead groups of adults in endurance sessions'

[Witton Park]

I received my new license having been re-CRBd and it changed from Level 2 Endurance coach to FMR!!

I had to contact them to let them know, they ackowledged an internal error and re-issued my license.

[AndyA]

I received my new license having been re-CRBd and it changed from Level 2 Endurance coach to FMR!!

I had to contact them to let them know, they ackowledged an internal error and re-issued my license.

Have you been able to access the eLearn stuff then, Richard?

[Witton Park]

I haven't had time to try yet.

[AndyA]

I've got the FMR qualification and the uka website won't let me access the modules.

I've emailed uka, I'll let you know how/if it progresses.

Incidentally my Coach Licence says 'Level 2 Group Event Coach' on the front. The phrase 'FMR' isn't used, although the back says 'Fell & Hill plus athletics conditioning......lead groups of adults in endurance sessions'

I got an email back from UKA, here it is

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your enquiry.

I see from your My Athletics Portal account that you are a level 2
coach in Fell & Mountain Running. Is that correct? I'm afraid that
this qualification does not make you eligible to access LEARN. A full
list of eligible and non-eligible qualifications
is available halfway down the page here:

http://coaching.uka.org.uk/qualifica...award/egc-faq/

Regards,

Elizabeth

This confirms that UKA are not interested in the Fellrunning qualification or in helping fell coaches in developing their skills.

[Mike T]

I got an email back from UKA, here it is



This confirms that UKA are not interested in the Fellrunning qualification or in helping fell coaches in developing their skills.

Doesn't this contradict #27?

[AndyA]

Doesn't this contradict #27?

Yes it does, can't say I'm surprised though.

[Tom Crick]

This confirms that UKA are not interested in the Fellrunning qualification or in helping fell coaches in developing their skills.

I thought I would post to clarify a few of the issues raised in this thread and also provide FRA coaches with a little more information on UKA’s plans for FMR qualifications in the future.

For those who just want the facts:

1. Having reviewed the situation the 46 individuals already holding only a “Level 2 Fell and Mountain Running Coach” award can now access LEARN and the UKA Event Group Qualifications – just like other coaches holding a legacy Level 2 award (except Level 2 CIA).
2. The Level 2 Fell and Mountain Running Coach award will soon be replaced with a new ‘Coach in Running Fitness: Fell and Mountain Running’ or CiRF FRM award for short. Please note: Like all CiRF award holders, individuals taking this new course will NOT be eligible for to the UKA Event Group qualifications unless they hold an eligible legacy coaching award or first take the Athletics Coach qualification.
3. The FRA are currently working with UKA to develop further specialist FRM related awards that meet the needs of the FMR community. These more detailed awards will be all Fell and Mountain specific.
4. UKA provide free access to over 50 hours of endurance specific related coaching material via uCoach http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/event_specific/ as well as over 200 hours of material on other topics related to endurance coaching. The information in the Event Group and Event Specialist Endurance awards is simply a concise more thoroughly structured version of this information. So if you never want to take another coaching award in your life you can still gain access to the information contained in them, all be it through a less structured route, by staying up to date with what is published on uCoach.

For those who want the detail:

The new UKA Coaching Qualifications Structure was created in 2009 to try and better meet the needs of all the coaches volunteering in athletics. One of our main concerns was to specifically address the needs of volunteers working in a off track environment typically with adult athletes. For a long time these individuals had no choice but to attend coaching courses that focused on coaching young athletes in an environment (the athletics track) that they would never again visit.

This resulted in UKA splitting their offing of courses into essentially two pathways: Track and Field and Off Track Endurance. The courses on the track and field side of things initially have a large focus on athlete development and running, jumping and throwing skills – because the majority of coaches working in Track and Field Clubs deal with young developing athletes and these skills are essential to all event groups either directly or as an element of supplemental conditioning and skill development.

The UKA Event Group qualifications (which is what this thread is about) are positioned on the Track and Field side and are designed for coaches working with track and field athletes typically aged 14-18 who are competing at a range of events within an event group (800+, Steeplechase, Cross Country etc for the Endurance version). They build on the content on the Athletics Coach qualification – which unlike the previous Level 1 and Level 2 have a real focus on developing the technical skills of running, jumping and throwing skills in all young athletes.

The intention behind this approach is to encourage the next generation of athletes to all develop these skills at an early age so they can then be used as the basis for the specific training programmes they will undertake as adults. In the future this will hopefully result in those athletes who reach elite world class level not having to spend years relearning these skills when physios and S&C coaches start to encourage them to include such work in their programmes.

Because it builds directly on Athletics Coach, the Event Group Endurance course includes quite a lot of content related to the use of jumping and throwing within conditioning programmes for endurance runners. In addition it also includes a lot of the information on athlete development and encourages the development of sprinting skills for young track endurance runners.

Because of the emphasis on sprinting on track, jumping and throwing it was originally decided that the gap between the content of a Level 2 Fell and Mountain Running course must be too big without first including some kind of bridging module and so the Level 2 FMR was provisionally excluded from the list of eligible prerequisites.

However, when Richard contacted us about access he pointed out that unlike the other Level 2 awards in Speed, Jumps, Throws and Endurance the Level 2 FMR was actually based on the more in depth UKCC specifications. This prompted a review of the UKCC material and indeed the FRM course was far more in depth than originally perceived and so a decision was reversed. Now anyone who only holds the “Level 2 Fell and Mountain Running Coach” award can gain access to the material. I would like to thank Richard for bringing this issue to our attention.

In terms of the future of FRM qualifications, as I explained earlier, a key aim of the updated qualifications structure is to provide more tailored courses than UKA offered in the past. The majority of individuals who attend FRM courses do so because they do not have access to a track and their athletes are not engaged in ‘Track and Field’ athletics. Therefore, moving forwards we are working with the FRA to develop a new set of courses specifically for the needs of these individuals. The first of these will be the Coach in Running Fitness FMR course (CiRF FMR for short). This replaces the Level 2 FMR and has the distinct advantage of applicants being able to undertake this course without first having to do any kind of track based course. Instead new coaches can go straight to this having completed a Leader in Running Fitness (LiRF) award, which is only 1 day long and is entirely off track focused.

Having completed the CiRF FMR, candidates will be insured to coach off track endurance activities. Following on from this we are currently designing further more specialised courses specifically for FMR coaches in conjunction with the FRA. More details of these will be announced by the FRA once everything has been decided. I think you will also be glad to know that all the more in depth courses will also be significantly more affordable than then previous in depth qualification offerings by UKA (Level 3 and 4). In fact over the long term we will be restructuring all courses to reduce prices and take more and more advantage of online learning.

One important point to note here is that the new CiRF FRM is specifically designed for coaches who want to coach OFF TRACK as an alternative to doing the on track route via Assistant Coach and Athletics Coach. Therefore it falls on the ‘off track’ side of the coaching qualifications structure and so WILL NOT automatically qualify individuals to access the Track and Field based Event Group and Event Specialist qualifications. This is because the Track and Field based Event Group and Event Specialist courses are designed to follow on from Athletics Coach and now the pathways are explicit, new individuals starting out will need to follow this route.

So if someone suddenly wants to switch and take an on track qualification after qualifying as a CiRF they will need to take Athletics Coach first to bridge the knowledge and insurance gap in the qualifications before moving onto other awards. This has been made explicit since 2009 when the off track endurance pathway was first introduced with the CiRF course, which is aimed mainly at road runners as opposed to fell and hill.

Finally I would like to raise awareness of the fact that all the information available in any UKA coaching qualification is usually freely available on uCoach prior to being packaged into a structured qualification. Indeed in the ‘additional resources’ section of each module of the Event Group qualifications there are links to the resources that inspired it.

While uCoach does not have any specific FMR material at present (although I’m hoping that will change in the future) there is a lot of material on endurance http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/event_specific/, athlete development http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/...e_development/, sports science http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/...mance-science/ and planning http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/...-and-strategy/, freely available.

Before Christmas 2012 we will also be launching a new feature called uCoach:SHARE which allows Licensed coaches to upload their own material and share it with the wider coaching community. Hopefully some of the members of the FRA will upload info on things like navigation and their favourite fell running sessions.

I am not a regular reader of this forum so if you have any further questions it’s probably best to address them to Graeme who can pass them onto UKA and hopefully provide you with answers.

I hope this has helped clarify this issue and I wish you all well during winter training.

Best regards,

Tom Crick
UKA CPD Manager and uCoach Administrator

[manothemoors]

This kind of thing brings UKA into disrepute.

[Eleanor]

Having completed the CiRF FMR, candidates will be insured to coach off track endurance activities to over 12s. Tom Crick
UKA CPD Manager and uCoach Administrator

Those of us who completed this course last year (the FMR course) - are we also only insured to work with over 12s?