FatimaSheikh

Fatima came from an athletics background and spent four years in a county development squad before moving into coaching properly. Most of her work here is with the sixteen-to-eighteens who come in with a parent, play something at county level, and have been given a “gym programme” by a coach who has never been in a gym.

She is unusually good at talking to teenagers, which is a specific skill and not one that comes with a qualification.

How she coaches

Technically, and with the volume turned down. Adolescents are not small adults and they are also not fragile — the research on this has been clear for twenty years and the myth has outlived it comfortably. What actually matters is supervision, sensible loading, and not running a fourteen year old into the ground because they will not tell you they are tired.

She will talk to a parent for as long as the parent wants, and she has the studies bookmarked.

What she is less good at

She will say it herself: she is still learning the rehab side. Anything that hurts, she hands to Arjun rather than guessing.