The recent club championships provided much excitement for our swimmers and considering the number of club records broken one can easily see why. I do sense a stronger sense of purpose within our club certainly amongst our swimmers and slowly (perhaps) from parents to. The road to improvement and gaining the recognition the club deserves will certainly not be easy, but I hope that you saw from the club championships just how many people the club has helping it along that road. So thank you once again to everyone who helped on the evening and who came along to support the swimmers.

 

 

Session times

You will have noticed the recent amendment to session times and over time these will be further improved to give swimmers more water time. Before we begin to look at how this can be achieved, we do need to encourage swimmers to come along and fill all the time slots currently available. The late sessions on Sunday and Thursday evening still have lots of capacity to take older swimmers and the Saturday morning session (8.15 am – 9.15 am) don’t groan, has capacity for both older and younger swimmers.

 

So if you want to keep improving on those PB’s come along and pile in those metres.

 

 

Web Site

We are aiming to make the web site an active centre for information about club events, race times, PB’s and general club information. The web site will become an invaluable source of information for both parents and swimmers and will ‘fill in the information gaps’ between bulletins such as this. The timing for these improvements will be advised over the month.

 

 

Parental feedback

As you know a committee member is available on the balcony Monday evening to receive any comments you may have regarding the club, I would also welcome any comments you may have which can be emailed to me at Andrew@cumberlandplace.co.uk

 

Andrew Moss

 

  

Report on Club Championships – Fiona Wood

The club championships which were held over the last weekend in April were a huge success. Nearly every swimmer achieved personal best times in all their swims! This is a great achievement and shows how all the hard work of training is paying off. The swimmers really enjoyed themselves and got a chance to show off their improving skills to all their families.

 

The medals and ribbons were given out on the Monday and anyone who did not get their award should contact Lesley Gray.

 

We had 14 club records broken which I will list

 

Rachael Stevens got the B girls 50m Free,

Tim Wood got the A boys 50m Free, 100m Breast and 100m Back,

Chris Ghosh got the E boys 50m Free, 100m IM, 50m Fly and 100m back,

Harrison Stevens got the A boys 100m Breast, 100m IM, 50m Fly and 100m Back,

Marcus Goldsmith got the X boys 50m Fly,

Katie Allen got the A girls 50m Fly.

 

 

The championships take a lot of organisation before and during the event and I would like to thank on behalf of the club, Lesley Gray for taking this job on. I would also like to thank all the officials that helped, without whom we cannot run the event.

 

 

Future Training

Beacon is hoping to run a club timekeepers course and a club judge’s course in the future and anyone who is interested can contact me, Fiona Wood for more details.

 

Fiona Wood 

 

Coaches Corner - Andrew Hamerton

 

Today I am going to be tackling a question I am frequently asked: How do I stop Cramp?

 

The question 'what is cramp?' is easily answered; cramp is an involuntary spasm of the muscle. The question ‘What causes Cramp?’ is a bit more complicated, there are quite a few theories as to the cause; Dehydration is thought to be the main cause, also low blood salts and/or calcium, hyper-flexion, rapid temperature change and ... wait for it ... inadequate oxygenation.

 

 

As some of you may know I work in a physiotherapy department and do a lot of work in Hydrotherapy, as part of the Hydro training I have done some theory work on the physiology of immersion. 

 

During HOWI (Head Out of Water Immersion) when the body is immersed to the sternal notch (that bobbly bit at the top of the rib cage) there is a massive shift of blood from the legs to the chest, the left ventricle distends and the stroke rate of the heart increases, as a result urine production is increased by 700%, which explains why swimmers get so dehydrated during training. In addition to this sodium and potassium excretion are increased.

 

To answer the original question, to stop the cramps you should:

 

1.      Keep hydrated - drink plenty of water with squash if you like but avoid 'energy' drinks, many contain nasty chemicals and proven carcinogens.

 

2.      I have heard a Sports Nutritionist recommend a pinch of salt in your training drink to prevent cramp. I would not recommend the same (unless you like being sick) but be sure to consume enough. The government loves to scare people and salt is their latest mission. Simple fact - salt is essential to human survival.

 

3.      Work on hypoxic sets to increase your tolerance to O2 debt. But always follow hypoxic sets with a sufficient 'purge' swim - preferably on B/C.

 

4.      Eat bananas – It may sound crazy but trust me, while most of us who eat properly are meeting the daily requirements for nutrients, including electrolytes, it is possible that our meeting the daily requirements for nutrients, including electrolytes, it is possible that our intake is not sufficient for the amount and type of exercise we perform. The most commonly implicated electrolytes are potassium, calcium, and magnesium.

 

If however you do get a Cramp there is only one cure, as a Cramp is a spasm, you need to break the spasm, this is done by stretching the muscle concerned and a gentle massage (rubbing) in the direction of the heart.

 

I promised in the last piece that this one would be shorter… and it is - by a whole 23 words! Keep your eyes peeled for next months ‘Coaches Corner’ which may or may not be shorter and may or may not be a particularly exciting article about side stitch!

 

Andrew Hamerton