This past week I’ve been on a 4 day ‘core paddle coaching’ course in Leamington Spa.

It won’t surprise you to learn that I LOVED learning about sports coaching on this course.  It’s a human focused, empathetic and fun way of getting people to learn a sport.  And bonus, it’s bloody effective too.

A phrase that particularly lit me up was ‘the ugly zone’. The ugly zone is the playful zone at the edge of our ability, where we are curious and explore where pushing our limits takes us. This is where loads of growth happens. 

I experienced some ‘ugly’ growth myself on the course. There’s a fancy paddleboarding turn called a step back turn.  You stand at the very end of your paddleboard so that the nose of your board is out of the water and you use your paddle to turn the board.  Because of the position you’re in, the board spins fast.  It feels unstable and scary, but it’s a brilliant way of turning. 

Over two days I was coached in doing this turn, but I was given a lot of freedom to experiment with how I developed my technique.  On the first day I was videoed doing the turn and I looked wildly uncomfortable and my movements were clunky, unsteady and slow.

By the end of the second day, my step back turns were smooth and quite fast. I was able to get to that point because:

1) I felt in an encouraging and safe environment to look clumsy while I practised

2) no one tried to correct my technique – which was good for my confidence and avoided any information overload moments

3) I was given a variety of fun games to try and improve my technique which I enjoyed trying again and again. 

I think it’s hard for us to get through the ugly stage of trying something new, especially as adults, as we are less used to looking incompetent than kids. But it’s so rewarding if we embrace it.  I find this with a lot of elements of my business.  At the moment I’m putting together a pdf to send to businesses promoting my team building activities.  It’s been an uncomfortable process trying to create a canva document that, firstly, looks reasonably well designed and that, secondly, feels well written and appropriate to send to businesses.  There’s been a lot of experimenting and making mistakes and getting friends to help me.  I’ve felt vulnerable, frustrated and full of imposter syndrome, but I’m now close to coming up with something I’m proud of. Yay, the ugly zone is so worth it.