Swim club goes online
Adapting to the ‘new normal’ is just a way of life at the moment as the coronavirus continues to force sporting clubs to change the way they interact, and it’s been no different at the Warragul Swimming Club.
With sessions currently suspended, director and coach of the club Paul Myers enlisted the help of personal trainer Dan O’Shea from Voyage Fitness in implementing the clubs first ever online classes, which have become a huge hit among the swimmers.
Strength and conditioning classes are usually held by Dan at 4pm on Monday nights, but now, they are noticing that more swimmers have embraced the opportunity to continue to work on their fitness, from the comfort of their own home while the team members continue to isolate.
“When coronavirus hit, we had to quickly wrap our head around Zoom and Facetime,” said Dan. “So far, we’ve run five sessions, with only 10 kids joining in the first one.
Last week though, we had a total of 54 kids participating from the swimming club. Then we also saw their brothers and sisters also getting involved,” he added.The strength and conditioning session is run by Dan from his home in front of his computer, taking the swimmers through various exercises including push up variations, lunges and many others. He has developed programs to suit the current conditions, leaning on body weight exercises that everyone can participate in, without needing equipment or a large space.
He said that the positive effects of the strength and conditioning training sessions being undertaken by the swimmers prior to the pandemic were already starting to show in the pool.
“We’ve seen they are being able to control their body a lot more in the water, keeping good form, which these sessions help with,” he said.
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