Havant & Waterlooville Swimming Club at Crystal Palace 2014 Training Camp

The Havant & Waterlooville Swimming Club squad held a training camp at the prestigious Crystal Palace long course training facility over the weekend 24 – 25 January. The youngsters used the opportunity as part of their long term development training and crucial preparation for the county championships in March. The county championships this year will be held over three weekends. The initial weekend, for relay and long distance events, will be on the 1/2 March at the Mountbatten Centre in Portsmouth in the full sized 50 metre long course pool. The following weekend, 8/9 March, the Championships move to the Havant & Waterlooville Leisure Centre Pool in Waterberry Drive, Waterlooville, for the age group events. The third weekend, 15/16 March, back at the Mountbatten Centre, is for the County Youth County Championships, age 14 years and over.

The two-day Crystal Palace training camp provided the Havant & Waterlooville squad with14 hours of pool and dry side training sessions, an educational classroom session and on Saturday evening after training a fun but serious team building session . The training camp was a major opportunity for the squad to work intensively with Senior Club Coach Graham Pople on many aspects of their swimming techniques. For many of the younger swimmers it was a first opportunity to train independently away from their parents and families.

The swimmers completed 10k each day in the long course pool and hundreds of exhausting sit ups, squat thrusts and pressups in the gym. Classroom sessions featured revealing footage from the Club’s new underwater camera, of the swimmers pool training sessions. Many key technical issues were highlighted and a DVD of world class swimmers a comparison of techniques!

The prime goal for the weekends training was to help fast swimming and for some, hopefully, winning medals at the forthcoming county championships and qualifying for regional and national championships later the year. It gave swimmers the opportunity in different waters, in a long course pool to see where they were on key qualifying and medalling times.

Crystal Palace has always provided superb support, balanced meals and almost exclusive use of the quality facilities.

After comfort food for the journey home with birthday cake supplied by the Huggins family (happy birthday Rory) the exhausted team boarded the coach supplied so generously by the Emsworth Coach Company - in conjunction with Postcode Publications - sore but better athletes for the experience. Needless to say the journey home was infinitely quieter than the outward journey to the 2014 Crystal Palace training camp.

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