Our swim camps are both residential and non-residential. The swim camps are for competitive swimmers and masters swimmers. Triathletes are welcome but all four swim strokes are part of the camps.
We have camps in the summer and we run clinics throughout the year.
Discounts available for booking early.
These camps are very popular so do not wait long to email your interest, we will put you on our email list for once all the details are ready. Our swim camps are attended by swimmers from around the world. Our camps have had swimmers from the following countries: Kuwait, France, Spain, Portugal, Isle of Man, Ireland, Germany, China, Malaysia, Kenya, Oman, Italy, USA, Canada and every corner of the UK. Many swimmers have returned year after year.
Gary's coaching style is open, honest and thorough. Many coaches attend the camps as their own personal education. Gary teaches how to balance correctly, how to have correct timing and the basics of pacing, sprinting and aerobic training.
Private lessons are encouraged at the swim camps for an additional fee. These private lessons book up quickly prior to the start of each camp. If you are interesting in what Gary has to offer in terms of coaching expertise you can visit his coaching blog: http://swimcoachingblog.wordpress.com
There have been hits on this swim blog from over 150 countries and more that 30,000 hits. Re-tweeting is making the articles very widely read. Our camps include:
- 2 x 90min swim sessions focussing on technique coached by Gary Vandermeulen; Olympic coach and Olympic swimmer
- dryland sessions daily for learning new skills
- circuit training daily for putting new skills to practice and to do some hard work in a fun way
- Sport Psychology sessions daily to learn new skills
- swim guru chats with Olympic Coach Gary Vandermeulen
- evening movies in a movie theatre setting (huge screen TV in school theatre)
- loads of fun with poolside games like Snakes and Ladders and RACE PACE GAME (RAPAGA).
Our camps have been running since 2007. The camps run from Monday to Friday and include two swim sessions each day run by Olympic Coach Gary Vandermeulen. We were very proud to see that one of our first campers (Camilla Hattersley) earned a spot on the 2016 Rio Olympic team! Congratulations Camilla! The focus is on technique in the morning and then applying those new skills in the afternoon.
One of the main skills learned is how to hold water. This important skill is often forgotten in normal training situations and an interesting and new way of understanding the principle of how to move through the water is taught in a memorable way.
In addition to holding water swimmers are taught how to balance correctly in each swimming stroke and also how to have correct timing. These skills in addition to holding water makes the Sheppard Swim School camps extremely worthwhile to be re-learned over and over. It is essential to swimming correctly. However that is only the beginning of what we do at our camps. We also use poolside games to introduce training as 'fun'. We have developed the swimmers version of 'snakes & ladders' which we use in our warm-ups and also we use RAPAGA (which is short for RAce PAce GAme). The race pace game forces swimmers to use all the newly learned skills and put them into a tough race-like scenario.
Sheppard Swim School Swim Camp Glenalmond Classroom
In addition to the pool skills we also teach new dryland skills. From 2008 we taught swimmer pilates exercises and we taught swimmer exercises on 'exercise balls'. Our focus continues from the success of previous years and will continue to be on technique on all strokes and STARTS AND TURNS. We then put those new skills into a circuit training programme each day so that the swimmers get an opportunity to train hard and train new skills. We have our coaches teach how to maintain healthy eating habits, good shoulder stabilization exercises, play games and all of these programmes are recorded into a log book updated by each swimmer each day.
A classroom session with Gary Vandermeulen provides the opportunity to record all of the day’s skills into the workbook and also a chance to talk about the interesting world of swimming with an Olympian and an Olympic Coach. There are loads of more pictures on our Facebook page: search 'Sheppard Swim School Competitive Swim Camps'.