DROITWICH DOLPHINS NEWSLETTER
OCTOBER 2005
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Reminder, this is due to take place on Sunday, 13 November 2005 in the meeting room at Droitwich Leisure Centre.
All welcome.
OFFICIALS
More volunteers are required to help on poolside as timekeepers in forthcoming house galas.
ASA LEVELS
Lynne West is available on Friday evenings to explain what is expected of swimmers to achieve levels 9-12.
BREASTSTROKE CLINIC
To held on Saturday, 29 October.
Please see notice board for squad times.
SPONSORSHIP APPEAL
Nick Houlston and Nick Rimmington are looking for support and sponsorship to raise money for Malaria causes.
They are organising a sponsored swim on Sunday, 4 December 2005 between 1 and 2pm.
If any swimmer is interested in taking part, a donation of £5 is suggested.
For further details please see either of the Nick’s
A message from the Director of Coaching
Firstly well done to all the swimmers who took part in the recent Speedo League round one and the Redditch Girls gala, both at Droitwich. All the swimmers swam very well and either achieved PB’s or were just out side of their PB.
Although we swam well, there are areas all the swimmers can improve on. One of these, the warm up was much improved for the Redditch girl’s gala. A proper warm up takes a long time and over 1200m (48 lengths) of swimming. When you warm up you are opening up the blood capillaries in the muscles, by doing a short warm up 3 –5 minutes means that you do not open up all the capillaries in the muscles and means that the muscles do not work efficiently when you need them to be in a race. In addition doing 1 length sprints during a warm up can also slow you down for your first few races if you can not swim down or have 50 – 60 minutes plus to rest before your first race. If you are racing with a short time span of doing sprints in the warm up there will still be a build up lactate acid in your muscles which physically slows you down. I know what I want the swimmers to do in a gala and that is to swim as fast as they possibly could, and doing a short warm up or sprints in warm up will automatically guarantee that you will not swim as fast as you could. So in the future when warming up make sure that you are ready to go and get in as soon as possible and swim easy a mixture of Front crawl and backstroke for as far as you possibly can.
At the end of the Speedo League gala I was disappointed that no swimmers were on the poolside to shout for the team when the final results was read out, when we do well it is nice to have the team together for the final result, as after all it is a team effort.
At the end of the Redditch girl’s gala I was very pleased to see a number of swimmers on the poolside for the final result, thank you to those who stayed. What I was disappointed by at the end though was the amount of rubbish left where the team had been. Please make sure that you put your rubbish either in your bag and take it home or find a bin.
Most of you will now be aware that we have set up a specially selected squad of swimmers ahead of the 2006 Nuneaton Junior League. These swimmers were invited to time trials on Sunday 16th October and will be invited to other special events over the coming months. Swimmers selected for squad who are not training, taking part in the club championships or team galas will have their place in the squad reviewed and will be replaced where necessary. This also goes for all swimmers, we are competitive swimming club and where swimmers are not attending all of the training sessions available to them or not swimming in galas on a regular basis when selected they will be spoken to and given an opportunity to improve the situation. Failure to improve will lead to the swimmers being moved into the club squad.
I have started to give out log books to all the gold squad swimmers to record down what they do each week, also included in the log book is a comprehensive information pack covering the many different aspects of swimming. These log books will be given out to the Silver and then the Bronze groups in time. Please watch the notice board for more information. In the mean time if any swimmer in the Gold squad does not have a log book yet please come and see me.
Simon Hillson
Director of Coaching