TOUCH FACTOR MASSAGE & BODYWORK
We will also be training/coaching Massage Competition Judges and Coordinators at this event. These people are the foundation for all of the competitions. The more consistent and prepared judges and coordinators are at every single event, the more the massage community and the public at large will understand how professional and important these events are. How we judge and why we coordinate these events are probably the two biggest objections disguised as questions that come up over and over again in online conversations.
Coaching For Judges
We will be training/coaching other massage therapists on how to effectively and fairly judge massage competitions nationally and internationally. It is actually more difficult than most therapists think to be a judge at these competitions. Most first-time judges are not prepared for how fast things are happening at these competitions. There is little to no time during or between rounds to do much more than count your scores and submit them.
It is important that all of the judges are well-trained and know what they are looking for in each specific category. It is important that all of the judges in each category know specifically what things they are scoring as positive and negative. So we will be using the same exact store scoring sheets that you will use at both the American Massage Championship and the World Massage Championship and we will go through all of the scorings together. This is not done at the championships, so this is one of the only ways to get insights into how the other judges are scoring.
We will also have some pre-event judging training where all of the judges will watch and judge some video submissions from actual participants and then submit their scores to us. We will then go through all of the scores and share them with everyone on a Zoom call where we can point out the variances and talk about them. This is an enormously insightful activity and also one that we hope will help standardize the judging of all massage competitions.
Coaching For Coordinators
Coordinating and running a massage championship event is extremely challenging, and that is when things go perfectly, which we have never seen happen at any of the competitions that we've been at. There is always something, several things actually, that come up the event coordinators have not prepared for.
We are going to coach the coordinators for the day of their event. we're going to talk about several things that have gone awry at the massage Championship events we have attended or that we have learned about how many leadership calls we have been on with participants, judges, and coordinators of other events.
Maybe more importantly, you will get to see from the inside how an event is actually run because you will be involved in running this event. We are going to run it just like any of the other competitions. So it will be fast, hectic, and probably a little bit confusing for everyone involved. Doesn't that sound like fun? It actually can be, but it also can turn into a nightmare.
We feel that the judge and event coordinator training is the most important aspect of our private massage coaching. The more professional, coordinated, and consistent that we can be in managing the competitions and judging them, the quicker our industry will understand and eventually embrace them.
Sincerely,
Joe, Tracey, and Wassa