400m swim in a pool , for London it is usually after the run. Replicates the demands of tri really well! Swimmers did well as they could perform decent turns and UW’s taking 10 - 15 seconds out the usual tri swimmer crowd who never swam as well as they did in race situations (one of the reasons I coach the performance lane more as swimmers now and do a lot of work on turns/UW’s)
I did after lessons with Hammerer and stuck with them for around six months, but I can’t fit my life around other peoples schedules. It doubled my costs to swim with them and art LAQ so I had to make a call, and without Hammerer on their staff it was a much more difficult decision.
I’ve signed up to Swim England and NUEL will let me swim with once a month them at LAQ for £15, plus my LAQ/everyoneactive £40 gives me £55 a month halfway house. I’ve been given free membership to Form, so that’s a massive win for me I can just follow their plan and get NUEL’s eye on my technique…
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one of the reasons the top lane doesn’t push off the wall…
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you had to go to Masters to sort it out???
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I complained after he told me to “…do 12k a week or get the fuck outta here!”
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you mean at your club? I often do things like deep water starts and tri related stuff like that to help with OW, but typically in season as our main focus is up to march super series qualification weekend, then season with OW specific stuff, then after august holiday I go back to “swim mode” for academy trials
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Your fly wouldn’t cut the mustard, I needed to cull the dead wood
Seriously, I think big difference is I let people do what they needed within the scope of my session, and if they required help they got it, but the other coaches were very much “swim club, do what we say” and technique help was few and far between (been given this feedback by numerous people I coached at OJ’s). I did a really good masters at Saxon Crown, was OW and tri based for one lane (still did all strokes but with a focus on FC) and Masters comp in other but it all changed after I left and became all swim focused. Beckenham dont really have coached sessions, it’s usually someone who is poolside as they cant swim, or a guy writes sessions and swims himself. You are swimming with others so naturally push bit harder, but you wont get any of the coaching benefits. Tri clubs are better in that regard, but a lot of the coaches are not swim coaches and have limited knowledge past the half a day on a course and reading the Swimsmooth website.
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that figures…
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depends on where i am coaching…
every turn is an opportunity to reset body position and every uw is time not swimming…both these factors contribute to OW pace not reflecting poolpace.
the ability to feel a balanced and streamlined body in OW is a real skill…
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yes…the superb series…
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unfortunately its the place you have to be as a youth/junior athlete in the UK but as ever theres some easy wins that could be made and making qualification based on an 800m short course pool swim with the rest of the race the next day “handicapped” seems odd at best.
That was a discounted mates rate a well
yep, and not enough coaching is done in OW, particularly the kids.
On that note, and the same issue in swimming, I’ve been approached to potentially run an OW camp for Swim England in June as they don’t have coaches to cover the regional performance squad for South East and London . There’s one swim head coach with OW add on and he’s not available but SE accept BTF quals to coach OW for swimming and as I have a foot in both camps and someone involved knows me…could be a new string in my bow and a good learning opportunity if I’m free.
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Oh absolutely, my point was more that part of why my (& I guess others) swim volume is pretty low isn’t because I don’t want to get better. But the number and length of available sessions is pretty low.
The early morning session at JCCS used to start at 6:45 so I could do 65 mins and get to work without a rush. Now it starts at 7 so it is 50mins. The evening swims used to all be 90 mins now the only one that is, is the Friday night one.
Can do long swim when OWS is back but realistically that is once a week.
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Infrastructure! And my favourite soap box to jump on just goes to show how well we actually perform as a nation considering we are starting with both arms tied behind our backs! I just dont get why pools would create a training pool and 25m pool when they could do 50m and have a boom for instance. Sunderland showed the country it can be done, and on a fairly modest budget. It cost about 20mill for their centre, they want 50mill just to get one pool at CPNSC reopened and it would still be a “monstrous carbuncle” after all that money. anyway enough excuses, if you wanted it enough you’d find time 
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Yeah sure, Eastenders isn’t going to watch itself will it? 
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sounds good…
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i guessed that…no Wardie surcharge either…
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The swimming club paid me £15 an hour at that time to deal with @joex , I said add two zeros to that or off him
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New 2km PB today, 31:06.
Looks like not much improvement but after being on a roll up to Christmas where I was setting faster times each swim, I had a week off with the cold & never found the same form again. I’ve not been able to get close to this through Jan & Feb, so hopefully back on it now 
.
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