Sand, Sun and Swimming - Another Succesful Warm Weather Camp Wraps up in Fuerteventura

Oasis Papagayo, Feurteventura - February 2019

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Thirty four swimmers aged 11 - 18, four coaches and two team managers left Exeter at 01:30am on Monday 18th February to make their way to Gatwick for the flight onward to Fuerteventura for a week long warm weather training camp.

The key objectives of the training camp were to:

• Have a quality week of long course (50m) pool training;

• Prepare for British Championships;

• Prepare for British and National Summer Championship qualification meets;

• Prepare for Regional Championships;

• Provide additional education through pool, land training and bespoke education sessions;

• Provide an environment, outdoors in the sun, in which swimmers would feel motivated and work towards specific training targets.

The schedule included eleven, two-hour swim sessions and six one-hour land training sessions with 20 minutes of pre and post pool before and after every session as well as education sessions covering timelines for competitions; race preparation including psychology and best practice post race; nutrition; technical aspects of turns; and generally working ‘SMART’ and hard.

The swim pool sessions were varied across the week to provide technical work on all strokes, with drill progression on starts and turns and emphasis on both. There were also some ‘big’ endurance sets where the swimmers were covering longer distances with little rest and high intensity sets where they were working at race pace with more rest as well as working on endurance kick and sprint kick.

The land training facilities were very good with swimmers having access to various equipment which allowed us to provide individual programmes relevant to maturity and ability. There was also a well-equipped gym where our older swimmers did three strength and conditioning sessions whilst the younger swimmers were concentrating on skills and small circuits and both groups undertook two Pilates sessions. We had access to a large tractor tyre; battle ropes; kettle bells; medicine balls; stretch bands; TRX and all of this was carried out under the sun!

We also found time to take a group to the sand dunes for a power run session, and the sand volley ball court gave an opportunity for a competitive game of volley ball. Twenty two hours obviously was not enough time in the water for the swimmers as a visit to the beach saw them having fun in the water and again other competitive games such as bat and ball ensued.

All the amenities including the accommodation were in the same locality with the only exit through the reception area providing a ‘safe’ environment for the swimmers to be able to walk between all the facilities.

The camp was very successful, fully achieving all the objectives with swimmers working well in all areas, getting the most they could from all aspects whilst also having an enjoyable experience. Hopefully we will see the benefits of this training at our next competition in Liverpool on the 23rd and 24th March, followed by the British Championships in Glasgow in mid April.

Following the success and feedback from this training camp Exeter City Swimming Club are already pencilling bookings with Sports Abroad to revisit Oasis Papagayo in February 2020.

Exeter City Swimming Club would like to thank our sponsors for the camp.

OTB Eveling, Blue Wave Construction and Challenge Alarm Services