Hi everyone, my name’s David McNulty and I’m the head coach of this British Swimming ITC.
My name’s Julian Nagi, I’m the British Gas head coach. Hello everyone, my name’s Ben Hollis I’m a Performance Scientist at the British Swimming ITC in Bath. I’m Steve Parry!
I’m Duncan Goodhew! I’m Becky Adlington and I’ve got some great tips for anyone taking part in the British Gas SwimBritain challenge
Dave Mcnulty
We should all have motivation and goals. I’m lucky enough to be at this British Swimming Centre. We’ve got seven Olympic athletes in our group. Michael Jamieson in the summer got a great silver medal in London and we set our stall out early on in the year about what goals we wanted to achieve so my advice to you is whatever level you are, set yourself some goals, just like we did with Michael, whether it be to keep fit, get into shape or really do well for this challenge. That will motivate you and help you enjoy yourself along the way.
Becky
Ultimately you will have to swim 250m without stopping but do not worry! Your training will allow you to do that you’ll be absolutely fine, just build up gradually and I’m sure you will get there.
Julian
Motivation is hugely important for any swimmer. One of the main reasons people give up exercise is because they have no goal to work towards, they come in, they do the same thing but they aren’t being inspired to test themselves, as soon as you give them that big challenge, training becomes a lot easier.
Steve
I’ll ask you a quick question, when you get in your car, do you know where you are going before you start driving? Same thing for SwimBritain, know what time you want to do while you’re putting in all this training, get that goal in place and you give yourself every chance of achieving it if you know what time you want to do.
Ben Hollis
Swimming by its nature can be quite a lonely type of sport if you don’t have people around you, so you need to surround yourself with your team mates, your friends and people you’re doing this challenge with. Get in contact with them, let them know how you’re doing, plan to come down to the pool, meet them here so you’ve got someone to do the session with.
Dave McNulty
For motivation, get yourself a team, get yourself together, set a goal, train four times a week and we’ll get somewhere much quicker than you going in to the pool by yourself. Strength of the team.
Becky Adlington
They’ll encourage you on and you’ll all support each other and on the day your adrenaline will be going and I’m sure you’ll be absolutely fine, you’ll actually surprise yourself.
A good way of making your training interesting is to time your lengths when you’re doing your swim sessions, most pools will have a pace clock that you can just push off and see how fast you’re going and try to improve that speed and work on it week in and week out and see how fast you can get down to. You’ll feel yourself improving too and I think it will give you that extra confidence boost knowing that you’re bringing your time down.
Dave McNulty
So I’ve given you some good tips there for your swimming, now use these in conjunction with the British Gas cards, they’ll give you little work outs along the way and I’m sure that they’ll help you get everything you want out of your swimming.
Duncan Goodhew
When you get out, take a little moment, congratulate yourself on the great workout you’ve done and how much better you feel, look back at the water and how nice it looks, how quiet it is, after it’s been thrashed by you hard! When you look back think, I feel really good, I’m really pleased I had that swim, I’ll be back soon.
Steve Parry
Gang, SwimBritain I’m loving it! I’m looking forward to it, I hope you are too, let’s get the training done and most of all good luck, and enjoy!
Becky Adlington
I want to wish everyone a huge good luck who are taking part in the British Gas SwimBritain challenge, have fun, enjoy it and keep swimming.
Dave McNulty
All the very best for your British Gas SwimBritain challenge, motivate yourself, get healthy along the way, get toned up and enjoy yourselves
Recap of the tips:
- Use targets to motivate yourself
- Train as a team
- Make use of training cards