Day 83 (Swim clinic day with Strokerite! 27/3/22)

A fantastic day.

After a fairly early start we arrived at the event in Pocklington just after 9am for a 9:30 start. the day consisted of four training sessions with two different groups of swimmers (a younger and older age group), both having two sessions each.

The clinic focused on butterfly in the mornings, and the drills were simple but extremely useful if done correctly. It was very rewarding watching swimmers make changes that better their techniques, and improving on the finer things.

The main focus was on stroke efficiency. The swimmers were 10-15 years old, and, particularly at a young age, it is more important being able to swim efficiently than swim fast. It was very interesting that a swimmer came up to me halfway through the session asking about how I experienced swimming as a junior, as he was struggling with being very small compared to the rest of his age group.

I'll do a full post on this in the near future, however... in short my opinion is to focus on yourself and be patient. When you are a junior, everyone grows up at their own pace. There are kids who are way ahead of the curve, and kids who are behind, but the important thing about this, is you cannot CONTROL it. The 'controllables' are something that come into play here. You CAN control your work ethic, your technique, your attitude with the sport. As you get older, the playing field gets more level, and that's when the fundamentals like patience and 'the controllables' are far more important

My role was to demonstrate the drills and technique, whilst giving feedback regularly about how each swimmer was getting on, and offering coaching points.

The afternoon was more focused on developing the race skills, focusing on the starts and turns with many interesting drills and skills for them to pick up along the way.

I was really impressed by both groups and how much they learnt throughout the sessions, with some of the swimmers' strokes being almost unrecognisably better from the morning session.

After the day and many photo opportunities with myself and a medal that I had brought along, it was time for me and abs to head home. To which we received some rather disappointing news...

ISL Season 4 has been postponed for a year.

This was stressful as the ISL has brought so much to the sport. It's bought me so close to teammates from around the world, given experiences that I would not have been able to have otherwise, but most importantly in my situation, it brings funding to my swimming career. So this is information that I am going to process over the next few days.

Apart from this, a lovely evening was spent with Abs (she's my biggest supporter) going to pizza express and having a major relax.

That's all I have the energy for for today! it's now time for bed... and a relaxing day tomorrow!