Drills and skills

Hi all,

So the European Masters Championship is behind us and now we can focus on getting ready for Helsinki Euro Games and Middlesex county Championship.

This week we will work on doing some endurance based work, skill work, but continue the momentum with speed work as we are working towards competitions.

During this time unless the coach has specified you can choose the stroke you want to swim. It is always good to mix up your strokes.

On another note, remember that we do drills to help improve our strokes, so do not rush through doing drills, think about what you want to achieve from doing a specific drill and don't just do the drill for the sake of doing the drill.

Happy swimming this week!

Michelle
Head Coach

Congratulations!

Wow, is all I can say! Congratulations to all the OTS swimmers who swam last week at the European Master's Championship and did so well. Lots of PB's some very good swims from everyone, with Lizzie winning 2 medals and our men's 4x50 relay team coming 4th in Europe! 

Going forward we will continue to work in competition mode but we will be building up some distance to ensure we don't loose the fast swimming. there are a number of swimmers going to IGLA (if you are going and have not told David yet, please do) The emphasis is to continue to work on feel of water and good technique starts and turns.

Remember that there are a number of sessions a week and you should vary the nights you swim in order to get an overall varsity  of swim sets and energy systems worked.  Just doing fast swimming or slow swimming will not make you a better swimmer! 

Sunday's sets are more about Technique and skill development

Monday's and Thursday's at Oasis are your sets where you will do hard sprinting and fast swimming.

Tuesday will be more focused on building fitness.

Wednesday will be a mixture of technic and fitness.

Thursday LB will be distance work for Triathlons and open water swimming.

Friday is an opportunity to swim longer, get faster and fitter.

Saturday's are a mixture of fast, endurance and challenging swimming!

Next focus now is to get as many of you to Middlesex County Championship on the 24th of July. To enter, contact our competition secretary here.

Michelle Weltman
Head Coach

Race prep, technique and long distance sessions

Coaching aim for this week:

The taper will continue till mid week, when our team of swimmers start to compete at LEN European Masters Aquatics Championship. 

This week we will continue with the theme of good technique, sculling and getting a good feel of the water. The sessions will start to increase meterage towards the end of the week.  

For our open water/ distance swimmers Thursday London Bridge will be a good set and then Friday night will be a good meter eater set (doing some good distance set).

A reminder that no training on May Bank Holiday Monday! 

Well done to our open water team at The Fix Splash in Stoke Newington this weekend! 

Michelle Weltman
Head Coach 

Let the taper begin!

This week, we start to taper. There are 21 swimmers representing the club at the European Masters 25th -29th of May.

We wish them all the very best of luck!

The taper will mean that sessions will still be challenging but focusing on getting all swimmers ready to compete. You will find that there will be a bit more rest during sets and you will be doing more specific work on No.1 and more scull and drill work to get a real feel of the water.

We hope to be able to have Blocks out for start practice on Saturday and Sunday at QM but we can't promise this as we have no control on what the pools will allow. If we can't use blocks we will still do some dive practice.

Sunday swimmers will work on Turns and transitions.

Remember there are 11 pool sessions a week and depending on what lane you swim in you should be mixing up when you attend sessions to get a good overall swim.

Have a good week of swimming.

Michelle
Head Coach

Emphasis for May's training

Hi swimmers, so as we head into the next phase of our cycle and are looking at what events are coming up in June, May becomes an important month of swimming! Our main targets are Middlesex and TIP

Firstly you would have noticed that some sessions are getting more intense and so they should, as we are now starting our completion phase of training.

For May we will be working on getting faster in the water. So what does this mean for you the swimmer:

Well to start there will be more sets of fast swimming, this will include Lactate sets, V02 Max sets and Heart Rate sets as well as work on speed development. Why do we do these sets, I hear you ask? The answer is simple, we spent the winter months doing lots of aerobic and endurance type of work to build up our fitness and our aerobic capacity, as we move into competing more we also now need to speed up! These sets will help improve your speed so that when you do take to the water for a competition you will feel fast.

Some tips for these types of sets:

Warm up as you are asked to by the coach, but do not swim fast in the warm up. Instead as you get the feel of the water, increase your speed just enough to get the heart rate working a little harder.

Most coaches will add some HVO work into the warm up or some build-up work to get you ready for the main set.

Do swim fast when asked to whether that is at max effort or a % of your max. Swim slow during recovery and easy swims.

Do try and maintain good technique through out the set and ensure you get a good feel of the water.

Do ask if you don't understand what the coach has asked you to do!

Finally if you do all these things you should notice improvement as you start to compete.

Remember you will not always get a PB in every race you swim