Swim school - A Weekend in Loughborough! 🏊

It’s the 24^th October and the weekend has finally arrived I was travelling up to Loughborough ready for the Swim for Tri technical weekend and I was very excited. Although I have been told that whatever I was doing in the water was working, I still want to improve, I know my technique was and still is very unique and I didn’t have a clue how to improve it! Next year I don’t what to be up there as I’m exiting the swim; I want to be first out the swim, set myself up to smash the bike! So having returned from Canada and with the advice of Simon I booked on to the Technique course. Meeting up with some of the equally crazy guys that I had met in Canada I knew it was going to be a good weekend.

Arriving at the pool, with maybe not quite as much sleep as what I should have had! I instantly saw that it was an amazing venue, 50m pool (although the wall was up in the middle at first!!) With many elite swimmers training there, it was the perfect place to be to allow myself to zone into swimming and spend the weekend learning as much as possible. I didn’t have a clue what to expect, but I was hoping that my stroke would be pulled to pieces and that many areas of improvement would be found. Wanting to take 75 seconds off my swim, I needed as much as possible to take away and work with.

Sitting in the weights room, it became clear very quickly that Dan had what seemed like an endless amount of knowledge and he spoke with such passion. At that point I knew that I would be able to get a lot out of this weekend. He started to explain the stroke in such depth, yet broke it down so it was very easy to understand. I had never thought about the stroke in this way before and now I was ready to get into the water and get going – but first a load of pool side exercises to get warmed up for a swim??!! I can only imagine the sort of looks I will be getting completing these on pool side at Nuffield of an evening. I’m sure it will give many a great laugh! But if it helps make me better and therefor faster I’m up for it!

Standing on pool side ready to get in there was a sea of brilliant multi coloured swimsuits/jammers, the award for most awesome jammers has to go to Paul though, those puzzles ones are brilliant!!

Jumping in the pool the first session was spent on body position and the kick. I did not realise just how much of a difference what feels like a slight movement can make to the whole stroke. Completing exercises where you watched someone else swim and perform kick was really interesting and gave me the chance to give feedback. Which was excellent as it meant I was learning how it should actually look. We finished the session with some filming; swimming along for my lengths I thought ‘I’m already better than an hour ago!’

Grabbing a Starbucks on route we were ready to watch our videos back. Everyone swam so different, some much more elegant than others. I would have to put myself in the not so elegant category as I watched my arms spin round, which would later lead to the new nickname – The windmill. I was glad to see how all over the place my stroke was, this will give me a lot to improve upon. But still I could not believe just how different I was swimming compared to what my head was saying I looked like! I really was a swinger, with my arms practically taking up the whole lane as I swam – almost a single armed butterfly!

With Becky taking us through some exercises to help with stability and movement in the water, we learned an exercise with what can only be described as having the best name ever! The bird dog, hoping that we would find out it was something different online later that night lead to a few good laughs!

Heading back into the water for the second swim, knowing what I now looked like and what it should be really helped. I was spending my whole time focusing on rotation and the kick, mixing up the drills really helped too, it was already starting to come together and I could see how it would fit into the full stroke.

Chill out time! It’s amazing how much swimming takes out of you even if you’re not going full pace and after a day in the pool, using different muscles I was tired! Yet following a couple of relaxing hours back at the hotel it was time to head out for dinner with a few of the equally crazy/like minded guys! We ended up in a Loughborough style Nandos. It was not the fastest service but did give me chance to make full use of the unlimited diet coke! And the chilli chips were amazing!! Only to be out done but the warm cookie dough with ice cream, something which I may need to re produce at home one evening! It was good to spend dinner talking to people with the same interests and share experiences from over the past year (while researching bird dog!). After dinner we found a bar with a really nice/quirky upstairs. Great place to continue chatting and share experiences over a cocktail (or manly beer!!), it is the off season after all time to enjoy the things I will give up in the new year to help me achieve my goals. Plus I think I bit of bad is good for you in moderation!

Day 2 came and with an extra hour in bed I thought there would be no issues making the 10.30 start, but munching my way through the fruit and yogurt at breakfast at 10.15 I was glad that the hotel was only a couple of minutes’ drive away!

Watching the video analysis back from the afternoon before I could already see such an improvement in my stroke. I gave me great confidence and a massive boost to keep pushing forward. If I can see that much of a difference in a few hours, imagine the difference over weeks/months.

I spent the rest of the day, trying to gain as much knowledge as possible. With new drills being introduced all the time, I knew there would be a lot to work on when I got home, but this was something that excited me and was the exact reason I had booked onto the course in the first place. We spent some time looking at the catch too, and didn’t even use a pull buoy?! Yet it all made perfect sense and I could now see what it was that I needed to aim for to create a more efficient stroke.

Having finished the course and been given my own individual drills to work on it was time to head home. It had been a brilliant weekend learning new skills, gaining a lot of knowledge and spending time with amazing determined likeminded people. Driving home I was so excited to keep practicing what I had learnt so much so I could not resist as short pool session (with drills!) Monday night! I would recommend this course to everyone! The amount of knowledge I have gained in such a short space of time is amazing, it has given me the tools I needed to improve my swimming.

I am now more determined than ever to keep practicing/training/working hard towards my goals. I am a strong believer that you get out what you put in and now is the perfect time to get the winter training in (which I didn’t have for last season!) and improve my technique. Next year is achievable but the hard works starts now to get there. I am very focused and will always look to keep pushing those limits……………….

Next stop, learn to run!!!