Training is all as usual up to and including Saturday 21st December.

On Monday 23rd at Abingdon School there is a fun session for the whole club starting at 8.30am. You should have received an email with a link in it to sign up your swimmers for this sessions.

There is training for all academy squads on:

Saturday 28th December at Radley

Saturday 4th January at Radley

Normal training resumes on Monday 6th January

We are back to the normal timetable today Monday 2nd September with Rio and Beijng at Radley 7.00-8.30(ish) pm.

The last session before our annual summer break will be Friday 2nd August and we will come back to pre-season training for 2 weeks . on Monday 19th August.
The timetable for those weeks hasn't yet been published but there are typically 3 or 4 sessions a week to which all academy swimmers are invited. 
We return to our normal timetable on Monday 2nd September

Beijing and Rio will train together on a Monday evening, from 7.00-8.30pm to increase the training time for both squads and so that I can introduce a couple of new areas of focus. 
The session will start with about 15 minutes land work to enable the swimmers to learn more about pre-pool exercises and how to do them properly .We will then have about one hour in the pool to train and then the remainder of the session will be spent working on turns.

Saturdays 9th and 16th February
As these are County Championship weekends some of our coaches and swimmers will not be training so all training will be at Abingdon School 7.45-8.30am

Training is normal this week 17th December

Saturday 22nd December there is NO training at Radley but instead the whole club will come together at Abingdon School from 7.30am. As we are putting everybody into teams do please let me know (if you haven't already done so) whether your swimmer can come or not.

Then all academy squads together at Abingdon 9-10am

Friday 28th December
Wednesday 2nd January
Friday 4th January

And then at Radley as normal Saturday 5th January

Have a lovely Christmas and a restful holiday

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I will attempt to capture the main points from the meeting.
My philosophy for the academy is that it’s all about laying foundations; good strokes and skills are the building blocks for speed in the future. The academy is about building these and that needs to be done with focus and not speed. Listening and attempting to implement the coaching points given, and retaining them through subsequent sessions is key. There is a lot for the children to learn! Stroke improvement, streamlining, starts and turns for all the strokes and those needed for individual medleys, pacing  and use of the clock, lane discipline, avoiding disqualifications (which is mostly about applying the knowledge that they have), and much more.
 The pre-pool exercises that we encourage the children to do before they start their sessions is another area that they need to learn for the future. It is really helpful if the swimmers can be on poolside early enough to allow this to happen. On a Saturday this can be done around the diving pit from 7.50am. Midweek is harder as we don’t have access to the pool early. We understand that coming late to a session may be occasionally unavoidable but it is quite disruptive. All the coaches start the sessions by explaining to the children what they will be doing and why do missing this is not helpful to the swimmers.
Attendance. It is helpful to know if a child is going to be away for a week or so (so we don’t wonder where they are) and especially if they are away due to illness or injury as return then may need monitoring. I tried to explain the balance – that missing a session for a social events, or a school event is fine, and actually healthy. Some children participate in several sports and at this stage that is a good thing (when they are older they may need to choose their sport but not yet!). Equally the more sessions the children can attend the more progress they will make.
We are trying to foster increasing amounts of independence in the children. Encourage them to become responsible for their own equipment – goggles, bringing a drink to training, being aware of what they are doing. Part of this process is developing a dialogue with their coaches. Please encourage the children to talk to their coach themselves rather than via their parents. The main job of parents is to support their children – to encourage, to listen,, to support unconditionally, but not to coach their children which can lead to misunderstandings and confusion – please trust us to do the right thing for your child (but also give us the information that we need to do this).
Competitions. I attempt to email to the squads when there is a competition that is suitable and desirable for the swimmers to enter. I try to be clear about the process that needs to be followed. The discussion between the swimmer and the coach is really important and will continue to be so throughout their swimming lives. Please support us with this process and don’t enter the children without this dialogue taking place.
 

For the next 2 weeks (i.e until our summer break) there will be no training on Monday nights (23rd and 30th July) at Radley. Instead swimmers from both squads may train on Wednesday 6.30-7.30 and Thursday 6.00-7.00 at Abingdon School.