Training is testing and testing is training!

Dear Swimmers

Well, the 10 Week CSS Development program is complete, all that is left now is to re-test and see how everyone did!

If you recall, I hypothetically stated that a good goal for improvement would be 5% over 10 weeks, albeit knowing that some of you would see more than this, and some of you less. The big thing is that it's given us some great structure and something to work towards and that in itself has been very worthwhile.

I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts (good, bad, indifferent) about the program (even if brief) and equally how you found having the goal times to still focus on in my absence this month from the squad. I know the coaches found it useful to have a point of reference for each lane and every swimmer which I hope you could feel whilst in the water.

So we will re-test at the following sessions this week:

Wednesday 9.30am
Friday 5.30am
Friday 6.30am
- within various sessions next week via "appointment" (i.e. for those who can't make it this week but would like to be re-tested).

The test will be exactly the same as before - a 400m time trial and a 200m time trial (separated by ~10 mins of easy swimming / active recovery) - and we shall run waves within the squad if numbers are large to ensure a 10s gap between swimmers as per last time.

I will collate everyone's results and work out your new CSS pace. I'll then be able to work this back and say (for example) if you had a 3s improvement, this would mean that you made it to Week 6 in the program and had ~3% improvement over the 10 weeks. Everyone will be different no doubt - this is not a name or shame exercise, just chance to see how well you did and more globally how effective the whole exercise has been.

If possible have a day off or easy day of training the day before and come set with the view of knocking out a good performance but in a controlled, well paced way. Enjoy!

When I take down your times it'd also be really useful for me to know how many of the 10 weeks you've been able to attend in this last block for my reference against improvement.

Going forwards we'll still be doing a lot of this type of training at these sessions but will probably add in a bit of speed work for something slightly different for the next couple of weeks and certainly won't be asking you to do the monotonous 10 x 100 at the start of every week for a while!

Thanks everyone, see you on the pool deck.

P.S don't panic - just come and do your best, enjoy, and pace yourself out well...if nothing else the 100s at the start of each week should have really shown you how to pace yourself properly!!

Cheers

Paul

Back to business, Easter and a Ladies Cycle Clinic!

Dear Swimmers

Hope you are well. First proper day back on the pool deck today and what a beautiful morning it was!

9.30am sessions this week and next:

I ran my first proper open water session of 2012 down at Cottesloe Beach this morning for the 9.30am session and despite an early sea breeze it all went very well indeed. Just as a reminder, this Friday at 9.30am and next Monday at 9.30am will also both be down at Cottesloe Beach - please pop along if you can, it's a lot of fun! All other sessions are down at Claremont Pool.

Easter:

For the Easter Weekend, there will be no official sessions on Friday 6th April, Saturday 7th April, Sunday 8th April and Monday 9th April. 

All will be back to normal from Tuesday 10th April for our lead-up to the Busselton Half Ironman event. I personally love this time of year for swim coaching - the weather's a bit cooler but still very fine and the volume of swimmers in the pool (including the public and carnivals, school programs etc) is always a bit lower than earlier on in the year. For those waiting for a spot to join the squad, we anticipate space becoming available in all but the 5.30am sessions on Tuesday and Friday. If interested, please reply to this email.

Please note that the 5.30am Wednesday morning session will remain as a feature over the winter at this stage, so anyone keen on getting in a really challenging and satisfying longer swim session in the week, please pop along to this!

Ladies Cycle Clinic:

Short notice this one, but may appeal to quite a few of the ladies in the group:

Garland Cycleworks is in South Perth on the corner of Albany Hwy and Berwick st (parking located behind the store next to Bunnings) is holding a Ladies Cycle Clinic tonight and Saturday. See:

http://www.garlandcycleworks.com/

Session #1 Tonight 6:30pm - 8:00pm, Womens Clinic Night, features:

• Learn how to maintain your bike, change a tyre and get tips from experts for the road or trail.

• Talk to the energy experts from Endura, about using energy products to improve performance and recovery.

• Learn about the Specialized women specific bikes, accessories and clothing that are available and how you can benefit from them.

• Check which size or type of saddle or what foot bed insert you should be using with our free BG saddle and shoe fits.

• Chat to like minded people about all things cycling over a glass of wine and some nibbles at this fun and free women only event!

Session #2 Saturday 6:30am - 9:00am, Womens Group Ride (test our bikes and equipment or bring your own. *limited supply), features:

As a follow up from our clinic night we will be holding a women only group to go out out with our regular Saturday morning group rides. The group will leave last and will be a friendly and social no drop(fast as the slowest rider) ride of around 30km. There will be bikes available to test, saddles to demo and and maybe even a few pairs of shoes to try.We should be back between 8.30 and 9.00 in time for fresh coffee and muffins!

To  Register call Garland Cycleworks on 94701990.

Homeward Bound!

The team behind the new range of HUUB wetsuits - (L-R): Huub Toussaint, Dean Jackson, Adam Young, Paul Newsome

Dear Swimmers,

I'm just on my way to the airport for the flight back to sunny Perth. It's been a great trip and really worthwhile - sincere thanks for supporting the squad in my absence and making the coaches feel welcome. I look forward to receiving any feedback that you may have (from what I've heard so far, everything has gone very smoothly indeed!). I'll be on the pool deck at 1pm for the Saturday squad session this week and then back to normal next week. 

Please note that the 9.30am Monday Time-4-Me session will be held at Cottesloe Beach this Monday (26th March) due to a carnival at the pool - please pop along - it'll be a really fun session!

Here's Olympic Gold Medallist (Moscow, 1980) and British celebrity Duncan Goodhew with Swim Smooth Coach Julian Nagi at the London Olympic Pool prior to delivering a unique one-off coached swim session to nearly 50 British Gas employees (they sponsor British Swimming):

Duncan Goodhew (left) and Julian Nagi (right)

Access all areas: Julian Nagi coaching the British Gas employees in Swim Smooth techniques

Catching up with coach Steve Casson (right) at one of his three swim training facilities, this being his Endless Pool flume tank

Cheers! See you all soon,

Paul

3 more days to go then homeward bound!

Dear Swimmers

I hope all's going well for you over in Perth - just 3 days now until I step back on the plane and head back there to sunny old Perth (I think my 'moon' tan needs some work!).

Since I last wrote we've completed two 3-day Coach Education Courses - one in Stirling, Scotland and the other in Loughborough, England. They each had 12 coaches whom had travelled from as far afield as Israel, Germany, South Africa and Belgium to attend. These 3-day courses are a chance for coaches to learn our video analysis and stroke correction skills for use in their own coaching businesses or within their club environment. Given that the coaches all went through a selection / screening process and were selected from over 120 candidates from around the world, we were optimistic that we'd see some great coaching talent - and we certainly did, in droves!

Loughborough, England 16-18 March 2012

Stirling, Scotland 9-11 March 2012

N.B notice how the pool backgrounds almost look identical - these two pools are carbon copies of each other, save for Stirling being a slightly narrower 6-lane 50m pool and Loughborough an 8-lane 50m pool. Both are brilliant facilities (for the UK!).

On the third day of each course we ran a full 1-day Swim Smooth Clinic where 12 swimmers joined us and the coaches had chance to then utilise their new skills by shadowing the work and direction that myself and Adam were delivering with their own 1-2-1 coach:swimmer. The coaches stated that they all really enjoyed this pragmatic experience.

Coach Lucy with swimmer Clare in Loughborough, England.

Coaches observe 1-2-1 instruction on pool deck at Loughborough University, England.

On the second day in Loughborough we were paid a surprise visit by legendary sports scientist Huub Toussaint (see: http://web.mac.com/htoussaint/SwimSite/Propelling_Efficiency.html ) who is part of our 3-way partnership in the new range of HUUB wetsuits. Having Huub on pool deck with us and seeing what we do and how we translate his (and other biomechanist's) groundbreaking research on propulsive efficiency into easily understandable coaching tidbits for the swimmers and coaches was truly great. Having studied this great man's work at university 12 years ago and to now be part of the same partnership that is bringing high-end sports science into the real world is something really special for me - I have to keep pinching myself! ;-)

Here is Huub (centre) with one of our recently certified Swim Smooth Coaches, Martin Hill (left) and owner Dean Jackson (right) testing the new Archimedes suit:

On day two of the Loughborough course we also invited Harry Wilshire, GB International Triathlete and Olympic hopeful to come and demonstrate his stroke for the coaches. Together with HUUB we are helping Harry with some financial assistance to be able to race in the events around the world that he needs to do to try and secure his chance of being selected for the British team. He's still got a long way to go though and then selection itself can go one of two ways depending upon how the British team decides to support their two young superstars, the Brownlee Brothers. Anything we can do to support Harry in this venture though will be beneficial hopefully and help keep this little sparkle of chance alive. Harry will be racing in Sydney all being well next weekend as one of those qualifiers.

Here's Harry testing the new HUUB wetsuit, immediately after swimming 100m very comfortably in under 58 seconds - not bad for a triathlete!

All smiles after a very quick 100m in the Archimedes 4:4 wetsuit

In between the coaches courses we've also run a 1-day swimmer's clinic in Edinburgh, had dinner with the founder of Finis Inc. (the company that makes most of the pool toys that we use in the squad) who flew in from California to meet us, observed the world's top 2 triathletes (the Brownlee Brothers) in action in Leeds, worked more on the book, and are just ramping up for two more 1-day clinics in Corby, England tomorrow and Wednesday before flying straight back to Perth on Thursday. I will literally be hitting the ground running at about 3am on Saturday and on pool deck by 10am Saturday - phew! Hopefully I'll get a nice easy day on Sunday with Mish and the kids before seeing you all down at the pool next week.

Swim Smooth Coach Steve Casson (left), John Mix (CEO of Finis Inc), Paul & Adam

Until then, a-bientot!

Paul

Dear Swimmers

Hope all is well with you. All still crazy busy over here in the UK, but all going exceedingly well which is great! We're going to be meeting the UK's top two triathletes set for Olympic podium places in London tomorrow morning which is very exciting!

Here we are at the British swimming trials:

Finally, here's a note from one of our swimmer's sons about a charity running event at Scotch College soon - hope you can attend / donate for this good cause.

Cheers

Paul

P.S I hope you're still getting Fresh & Fruity on a Wednesday and Friday morning! ;-)

Dear Family and Friends

I am organizing a fun run for my year 10 personal project. It is a 5km event on the 29th of April 2012 at Scotch college playing fields. I hope that you can come down on the day and support the worthy cause. All the profits from the race are going to ICEA, feel free to invite others to come down to the event.

For more information on the event please check out the website:  http://iceafunrun.weebly.com/.  Please register on-line before the race day.

Thanks

Kyle

VIP access to Olympic Park! Wahoo!

Dear Swimmers

Hope all is well over there in Perth - it's bloomin' freezing over here in the UK right now!

Well we had a real treat yesterday, courtesy of Colin Hill, Swim Smooth fan and event director of the 10km Open Water Swimming Event at the London 2012 Olympics in Hyde Park - VIP access and tour of Olympic Park and the new 50m Olympic Pool! It was sensational!

We attended as Colin's guests for the morning heats of the Olympic Trials and watched some of the Brits knock out some seriously quick 100m freestyle times - Aussies, watch out!

The facility is amazing with polished concrete diving platforms (here's Adam with Colin):

...and here's Adam trying to gain a sense of what it will be like for Michael Phelps / Becky Addlington et al. to be waiting in the Final Call room immediately before heading out onto the pool deck to rapturous applause - we got goose bumps just being in this off-limits room!

...I couldn't contain my excitement, so here's a video clip showing you the pool from the stands:

If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvTKr9K-u8k

And if you're keen to see two short video clips on the HUUB wetsuits that we've helped design and test, check out:



If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://youtu.be/KHAUxJk2nYI

And the female suit at:



If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://youtu.be/YPHfukQGq4w

We're now up in bonny Scotland and it's just started snowing - lovely!

See you soon!

Paul

Aloha from the UK!

Dear Swimmers

Hope you're all doing well and everything is going smoothly with the new coaches whilst I am away (I'm sure it is and that you're loving having a change from me! LOL!).

So, all is going great over here. I flew in late on Thursday night and was immediately whisked away by Adam to Chessington where we have been staying for the last 3 nights. I've been coping well with the jetlag, but then again I have been up to 3am every night working on our presentations for the Triathlon Show!!

We've had a stand at the show shared with Huub wetsuits (see above) and have delivered two fully booked out seminars to over 300 people each time, making them the most popular technical seminars of the entire show by a good margin. This has been great for us and really exciting to see so many keen people in what we are doing with Swim Smooth and of course Huub wetsuits.

Tomorrow we're meeting up with the London Olympics director for the 10km open water swim and then delivering a mini Swim Smooth Clinic to a private club in central London in the evening. We then need to high-tail it up to Scotland for Thursday where we'll then deliver a 3-day Coaches Education course in Stirling followed by a 1-day swimmer's course in Edinburgh. It's then down to Loughborough University to repeat this same schedule plus another two swimmer's courses in the one of the new satellite Olympic pools in Corby. I can't wait!

It's going to be a crazily busy 3 weeks but then again we wouldn't want it any other way!

Speak soon and please enjoy the hot weather for me - it's pretty chilly over here right now!

Cheers

Paul

P.S that's me with 4 times World Ironman Champion Chrissie Wellington at the show - amazing athlete and the nicest person you're ever likely to meet!