A bit about my team....

I have 2 Coaches...

Jon Pardoe

*Jon Pardoe

* Darren Mew

The Ellesmere College Titans team swim at Ellesmere College in Shropshire. Here's what the school looks like..

Taken from my mobile phone.

I train 8 and a half hours a week at the moment but in September training will increase to 10 hours pooltime. I also do 1 hour of yoga and 1/2 core stability alongside cross country training when I can.

Here is a photo of me at the pool:

My 1-1 session with Darren Mew........

At our club we are lucky enough to be able have private sessions with olympic swimmer Darren Mew..

                                                          (Below) Darren Mew swimming......

Darren Mew is quite an Olympian:  In 2004 he set the 3rd fastest 100m Breaststroke time in history and 5th fastest 50m ever.

Once a month he comes and trains the Ellesmere team and will offer private sessions. Last Saturday I had a 1:1 session with him. 

At the county championships I had a breathing problem whilst I was swimming so I had to stop the race because I swallowed too much water and felt that I was choking. So Darren thought It would be good if I worked on this with him. To get me to do this properly he made me put my hands by my side and just do breastroke legs so that I did not have to concentrate on my arms and I could now concentrate on my breathing and nothing else.We then brought the arms back in and started doing 1 arm pull to every 2 leg kicks. This makes you concentrate on your leg kick. I then did full lengths breastroke (full stroke) to see how I was getting on and was filmed using an underwater camera!  When Darren viewed this film of me swimming he found out that my toes were not pointing towards the wall they were pointing down to the bottom of the pool this then puts drag onto your body as your feet are being dragged behind you instead of being pointy and streamlined. 

We then took our minds off breastroke and did Butterfly instead.

The problem with my butterfly was my head was coming to high above the water and my legs were not together when I did fly kick which can also put drag on your body coming through the middle of your legs.

To sort my head problem out we did fly but just the kick and my hands by my sides so that I could concentrate on keeping my head down instead of up. I now feel much more confident about those two strokes which is good as I am off to a gala to compete this weekend - wish me luck! x