Whether you’re new to swimming, new to the club, or you’re looking for ways to improve your performance, you’ll find information on this page that will help you.
Click on the menu list below for more information.
Diet & Nutrition ^
If you’re serious about competing to the best of your abilities, then the old adage of “you are what you eat” is very apt.
To ensure your body recovers from training, stays in good shape and so enables you to compete at your very best; then what you eat and when you eat it is extremely important for you to think about.
Perhaps two easy areas to start thinking about are:
- Drinking enough fluid during training
- Eating an appropriate snack immediately after training
As always, if you’re in any doubt or would like to understand more about the importance of eating and drinking correctly, please discuss this with your coach.
The following links provide very useful information on diet & nutrition, directly from Scottish Swimming & Sport Scotland:
| Eating for Competing |
| Fuelling for Swim Training |
| Handy Hints for Healthy Lunches |
| The Performance & Nutrition Guide for Althletes |
Stretches & Complementary Exercises ^
Swimming is an activity that works just about every muscle in the body, with particular emphasis on the core muscles, as well as the muscles of the arms, shoulders and upper back.
In freestyle, the main muscles used are the large muscles of the thigh, and the chest and shoulder muscles. In the butterfly stroke, the abdominals, the lower back and the shoulder muscles are used. In breaststroke, the gluteal muscles, thighs and chest are used. While in backstroke, the leg muscles, chest and triceps are used.
Having an effective swimming stretching routine as part of your swim training is crucial, as it goes a long way in improving your overall performance. Here are some of the benefits:
- Stretching before swimming will help to increase the flexibility of your body so that you get maximum muscle contraction. It also helps to improve your overall performance.
- When you stretch properly, the length of the muscle increases, leading to reduced muscle tension and increased range of motion. Due to the increased range, you can increase the distance the limbs move before damage to the tendons and muscles can occurs. This means that you will be able to move your limbs more freely while swimming.
- A regular swimming stretching routine can help prevent injuries like:
º Rotator cuff tendinitis, a condition that causes acute irritation in the shoulder tendons and muscles.
º Knee tendinitis, a condition that causes irritation in the knee tendons and muscles.
º Musculotendinous overuse injuries, generally of the shoulder and elbow. - Finally, even the most basic swimming stretching routine can just make you feel better. Glossing over it in your regular swimming training, however, could cost you dearly.
Despite numerous benefits of stretching, it’s important to remember that stretching can have detrimental effects when done incorrectly. Stretches not done properly over time can cause permanent damage to ligaments and joint. When performing the stretching routine below or any stretches for that matter, be sure to warm up first and if any of the exercises cause pain or severe discomfort, discontinue immediately.
Some additional documents from Sport Scotland’s Institute of Sport for land based exercises that will help you with flexibility and strength can be found below.
Remember, your coach can only help you so far – if you really want to perform to your very best, it’s up to you to build these stretches and exercises into your regular routine.
| Mobility for Swimming |
| Upper Body, Lower Body & Core Exercises |
| Physical Competence & Developing Robustness |
A Parent’s Guide – Developing Talented Swimmers ^
Parents and guardians play a huge role in the their children’s swimming career, but knowing the best way to support your child in their swimming career can be difficult; to say the least. Knowing when to be supportive, when to challenge and generally taking the right approach can sometimes seem like a mine-field.
A central theme is to be aligned with your child’s coach. If a child is receiving one set of advice from their coach and something different from their parents – then you can only imagine how confusing and difficult this would be for them. Do also remember that the coach’s experience will allow them to see things that maybe you don’t immediately appreciate.
Like anything to do with raising children, there is no manual, but you may find the following document useful to read:
| A Parent's Guide - Developing Talent in Swimmers |
If you’re in any doubt, speak to your child’s coach.
Open Water Swimming ^
Fauldhouse Penguins has always run a programme that encourages its swimmers to take part in open water swimming events.
If you’re interested in this side of competitive swimming the links below will provide you with useful information.
2017 sees some significant rule changes brought in by FINA. In particular the use of wetsuits in water at temperatures of <18°C – and as you might imagine that definitely applies to most open water events in Scotland!
| Scottish Swimming – Open Water |
| Open Water Swimming – Important Changes for 2017 |
Keep your eyes on our events calendar or Scottish Swimming web-page on open water swimming (above) for this year’s open water competitions.
Unlike indoors swimming competitions it is up to the parent(s) to enter their child for open water competitions on line.
Weekly Work-Load Planner ^
It’s fair to say that most of us lead busy lives and when we become more involved in swimming competitively our lives can become somewhat busier!
One conundrum often encountered is how to fit things like homework in around the commitments of attending school and attending swimming training. Alternatively,you might be looking for time to do additional forms of training like land training or stretching. This challenge becomes all the greater if you have other clubs and activities to juggle, on top of swimming.
A well practiced technique for trying to identify time in a busy schedule for things like homework or study is to place all the big rocks in a planner first e.g. things that are pretty immovable, like attending school and attending your swimming training; and once you’ve done this see where the gaps fall out.
To allow you to do this we’ve added a work-load planner that allows you to visually do just that. Visualising your week in blocks of activity can identify free time or shall we say available time that you might want to allocate to things like homework or other aspects of your child’s life that you’re finding hard to find space for.
The hyperlink below will allow you to download a document that will help you map out all your big activities (rocks) in your week and identify where the smaller activities (sand) can fit in.
- Start by filling in the time that’s taken up by school
- Add the times of your swimming training sessions
- Add other extra curricular activities
- Anticipate competitions at the weekend
- Look to see where you have potentially unused time and think how you might use this effectively
We hope you find this useful…
| Weekly Work-Load Planner |
Swimming Club Kit ^
Our Club kit items can be purchased from Castings. Castings offers a range of Fauldhouse Penguins branded goods that can be worn at training and at Galas. To visit the site click here or follow the link on the menu bar on our website.
Coaches will update swimmers as they move into each squad as to what additional pool kit is required and where this can be purchased.