By Fg Off Lindsey Gozzard

The Overseas Visit has proved to be invaluable for the novice athletes who are new to the squad. Many of us have just started to reawaken the old athletic tendencies we discovered in our school days and, for us, the training in Portugal has provided positive direction, focus and drive to continue to work towards developing these skills.

Over the 10 days, we have been under the watchful eye of Ruddy Farquharson who provided us with training and advice to take away to our home stations and introduce into our normal routines. In particular, Ruddy taught us basic drills, both static and dynamic, which are vital for warming up before training sessions and equally before competing. The core and abs sessions Ruddy provided every day not only exhausted us after a hard day of weight training or track work but taught us new ways to exercise these important areas. There was also a session working with medicine balls to develop our core and strength which as well as attracting strange looks from some of the other athletes proved highly effective at making us aware of how much work some of us need to do to improve. These are the types of exercises used by all athletes, irrespective of their disciplines and are easy to practice at home now we know how!

Ruddy was also able to correct and provide basic techniques for some of the more technical events such as long jump, high jump and hurdles. Now, armed with these techniques, we can practice and develop them so that they become second nature.

Portugal has given us an insight into what sort of work we should be aiming to do on a weekly basis. By practicing the core techniques and drills daily, they are now becoming second nature and can be recalled easily. It has also been interesting to chat to some of the more experienced athletes, to discover what training they are doing. It has been nice to integrate into the team and voice our intentions and hopes for the upcoming season.

Overall, this Visit has provided us with first class coaching, facilities and knowledge in order for us to learn and develop, ready to hopefully become competitive in the near future.