This article is co-written with Rachel Smith. Rachel has been one of the Olympic Torch Bearers and has won medals for Great Britain. Rachel also recently completed our Coach and Mentor Practitioner Diploma programme.

From the Canaries to the Caribbean

Just over 4 years ago, two women, Lin Diaby and Rachel Smith, arrived in English Harbour, Antigua after spending 76 days at sea in a 24-foot rowing boat. With no sails and no engine, they’d completed a 3,000 mile row, land to land across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canaries to the Caribbean raising £65,000 for Breast Cancer Care and picking up a Guinness World Record in the process.

Coaching for Dragon racers

Both were experienced sports coaches and having won medals for Great Britain in Dragon Boat Racing, the pair knew the value of coaching. They had attended a Performance Coaching course for the Dragon Boat coaches in 2002; this programme was run by David Hemery (400m hurdles Olympic Gold medallist) and assisted by Ned Skelton, Quiver Management. They have continued to be friends ever since.

When Rachel brought up the topic of the Atlantic Row, Ned, like a number of other key people, immediately offered his support.

Motivation for challenge

The first coaching session started off looking at what was motivating Lin & Rachel to take on a life-risking challenge like this. Rachel laughingly said: It’s because of our dysfunctional childhoods. As an indirect result of the coaching, it became apparent that there were some significant incidents in their growing up days that instilled some of their necessary resources of determination and single mindedness. The coaching itself gave them much more ¦

Pain, confinement, adversity, fears and phobias

With the motto of leave no stone unturned the rowing team used coaching throughout to help them prepare for any number of potential scenarios. For example:

• Managing pain: These pain-feelings provide high quality information but sometimes need to be temporarily over-ridden when dealing with higher priority issues (a skill of emotional intelligence). An exercise of holding an ice cube in the palm of their hands was used to explore two different strategies for intelligently managing pain.
• Living in a confined space without getting on each others nerves: Lin & Rachel are still the best of friends but they were likely to be highly stressed at times and the wrong things can then be said. It was useful to have some rehearsed coping mechanisms for when they started to have a falling-out.
• Staying resourceful in the face of adversity: Ned facilitated both very personal metaphors and sensory visions of the finish that captured the essence of their motivation for the whole project. Something they could refer back to easily when the going got tough

• Water phobia: Lin also needed to overcome a genuine fear of the water, something that had plagued her since a near-drowning experience as a child. Ned used a simple NLP Application (Phobia Fix) to disconnect the traumatic feeling and allow a more resourceful feeling of respect for the dangers of water to come in its place
• Fear: Not used to experiencing real fear in everyday life, Rachel wanted to explore her reaction under extreme pressure. Taking her back to visualize a time when she’d been genuinely frightened, Ned walked her through what exactly happened to find out the exact point at which she knew she could take control again. By understanding these different behaviours and emotional states, Rachel knew what needed to happen in order to remain able to cope.

Land Ahoy

Both women firmly believe that this eclectic style of coaching, adapted to suit their needs, made a difference to their success as a team and certainly in achieving their goal of stepping off the boat still as best friends.

Rachel has since achieved the Coach Mentor Practitioner Diploma with Quiver Management which has helped her to further develop her coaching skills as a professional coach.

Rachel’s book about the adventure, Antigua or Bust is available on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1926635639

You can also see more about Rachel and follow her on the following addresses:

Websites: www.bigblueprojects.com and www.atlanticrowingchallenge.co.uk

Twitter: @RachelQSmith