Feature Team of the Week: Swimming

Team Hallam Strength and Conditioning

Feature Team of the Week

Swimming

S&C Coach: Matthew Croyle

When are your competitions?

BUCS Short Course 9^th-11^th Nov

BUCS Long Course 15^th-17^th Feb

BUCS Teams 23^rd-24^th March

What is your training schedule?

Monday – Swim 1 hour

Tuesday – Swim 1.5 hours

Wednesday – Swim 1.5 hours & S&C 1.5 hours

Friday – Swim 1 hour & S&C 1.5 hours

Sunday – Swim 1 hour & Optional S&C

Comments from Matt Croyle - S&C Coach

Swimming have already shown great commitment to S&C every week with many training in the gym three times a week alongside 4-5 pool sessions a week. We regularly have 15-25 swimmers in each session, they are a team I always look forward to coaching as they want to get better and improve every session.

There are only three competitions I am trying to peak the swimmers for which gives me lots of time to prepare them as best I can. This BUCS Short Course competition in November has meant we have only had a short preparation time, effectively 8 weeks. These 8 weeks were split into two 4 week blocks, the first with a big GPP emphasis on movement patterns, work capacity and shoulder health. This allowed the first year students to accustom to our way of training and build good training and movement habits. We are currently in the second block as we lead up to BUCS Short Course in November, it has an emphasis on strength and power with a taper to optimise performance. The first two weeks of the programme can be seen below.

Training towards the BUCS Short Course we are trying to improve strength and power, specifically to influence power off the blocks and during turns. These are two specific points of a race that I believe I can influence as a S&C coach. In the programme we use exercises that are reactive in nature, utilising the stretch shortening cycle, requiring rapid acceleration and triple extension through the hip, knee and ankle. These exercises are programmed early on in the session – in the EXT (Extended warm up aimed at priming the nervous system) and first supersets - with long recovery times to ensure that athletes are not performing them fatigued and leaving adequate recovery between sets to attain high velocity each set. Following these exercises athletes complete primary strength exercises and then accessory work.