Team Training with Sammy Berryman

Team Training with Sammy Berryman

Published on August 24, 2020

By: Ceinwen McNeil

CEO | Executive Leader & Advisor | Helping businesses become highly profitable organisations

Last week - before Lockdown was even on the horizon, we had our first BVT team training session for the Mizuno Waterfront Half Marathon. Nine of us trundled along to Playground Fitness, and there we met with our trainer Sammy Berryman.

Sammy is divine! With a Masters in Physical Education and a career as an elite athlete we were in good hands. There was none of the usual quick achilles and hamstring stretches before launching into the real training - instead we took 15 minutes to warm up properly, putting in the right preparation so we would get maximum benefit out of our training. Sammy built the entire session around technique. During the warm-up she pointed out how we could make the smallest of changes to our technique and how this would have a big impact on our ability to perform.

This week training is looking dramatically different due to lockdown, but I’ve held onto the lessons from our session and have been applying them to my home training. I surprised myself on my run on Saturday, I was feeling good and kept going - ending up completing 10km! More than I had planned or expected. Getting the small things right does make the difference.

This got me thinking about transferring this thinking to the world of business, how often do we spend time calibrating for the week ahead? Taking time to complete micro actions that have big impacts - for example do we launch straight into emails or do we build in time to warm up, plan and get ourselves in the right frame of mind? With a small amount of time invested up front, perhaps we could raise our performance through the week. It’s so interesting to look at other fields and industries and apply the best practices to our own.

In the meantime, keep watch for more updates on BVT team training - and how we adapt and cope under lockdown! I think we’ll be needing our mental game as much as our physical one this year. Just like with Covid, it'll be about about putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going.