CBEs- why all Excelsior athletes get them in the New Year.

CBEs- Character building exercises.

I am not a believer in beasting people, rather in getting them to beast themselves.

Sport and life require you to deal with adversity. Training in situations which are challenging and demanding will help the young person deal with pressure when the time comes that they need it.

As a coach you can help by creating an environment that seeks out challenge and guides the young people into working harder than they are accustomed to, or indeed believe they can.

Jonah Barrington (a squash coach I work with) calls this CBEs.

Sets, reps, time limits are well and good, but sometimes you just have to get the people training where they don’t know what the time is, or when its going to end.

This does not mean mindlessly flogging people, or breaking them.

Mixing up people from different sports helps, as they won’t be able to pace themselves or get into a comfort zone of familiar faces and territory. In the right environment they will push themselves further and gain an intrinsic confidence that they can draw on as required.