Penny fires up young swimmers for future
Coaches describe swimming clinic as very stimulating.
Coaches described the recent swimming clinic hosted by well-known former South African Olympic swimmer, Penny Heyns as beneficial and stimulating.
From Saturday 28 September to Sunday 29 September from 9am to 4pm a large group of inexperienced, young and older swimmers from three clubs attended an inspirational swimming clinic presented by double Olympic Individual gold medallist, Olympic Individual bronze medallist and 14 time world record holder, Penny Heyns.
Penny who retired from professional swimming in 2001 has since grown into a highly sought-after professional speaker. She believes that success is 20 per cent physical and 80 per cent mental, also mentioning that you grow tomorrow’s champion one stroke at a time.
Her swimming clinic in Roodepoort recently entailed two days of intense concentration, water workouts, mental and physical training.
On day one swimmers were given an in-depth session on two of the four strokes – breaststroke and butterfly – that included stroke mechanics, followed by discussions and also video reviews of the big guns in the swimming world such as Rebecca Soni, Michael Phelps and Kosuke Kitajima in action. Then they headed to the pool for a long and challenging water workout on the body/ head position, how to kick, and turn techniques.
Day two started with training on how the mind and body connects, visualisation and champion mind-sets. Once again, swimmers were drilled in the pool on how to swim the two remaining strokes – backstroke and freestyle – properly, followed by a motivational talk that included questions and answers with swimmers, coaches and also parents.
Head coach of Florida Swimming Club, Tracey Hemphill added, “I think all the coaches at the workshop enjoyed watching the pool sessions. We had several coaches on deck – Anne-Marie Groenewald from Linrand Swimming Club, Pieter de Kock from Heidelberg’s Vistoraquantum, Andy Young, Irene Bussey and then I from Florida – and all of us have been enriched by the experience.
“Penny is incredibly knowledgeable about all the strokes and in fact is on the technical committee for the Fédération Internationale de Natation (Fina) – International Swimming Federation. So she is up to speed on existing rules, rule changes in the pipeline and other controversial issues.
“She also has so much training experience and knowledge, so it was great to be able to pick her brain about stroke drills, programme development and competition preparation.
“We are hoping that we will be working with Penny quite regularly, as we have developed a very good relationship with her and her manager Zelda. This is such a good thing for swimming in our region, especially when different coaches can come together and work together for the benefit of the swimmers”.
