Good morning Guys,
Just sitting here at Gatwick airport waiting to board a plane to Portugal, what’s that you say… holiday? I wish!!! My training partner Sam Milner and I, along with our coach Malcolm Fenton, are off on a two week training camp to the IAAF Training Centre, commonly known as Monte Gordo.
The facility we’re going to is considered to be one of the best in Europe and provides a great service especially to the throwing community, which is ideal for us. The training camp will allow us to complete our final preparations ahead of the 2014 season and more importantly the Commonwealth Games, which both myself and Sam have within our sights. The English Team is being announced in the 1st week of June so not long now!
So why go & train in another country?
Firstly the most obvious reason, the sun. Getting away from the dull, grey weather will allow us to increase the volume and intensity of both our throwing and lifting. But most importantly we will be solely focusing on throwing without any other distractions that life provides, just 2 weeks of Throwing, Throwing & more Throwing! It’s always surprising how much of an impact everyday life stress (work, paying the bills, remembering to do the shopping, etc.) can have and as our HRV often shows this effects our ability to train and perform. So the plan is not only to enjoy the sunshine but also to remove as much non-training stress as possible.
So what do you pack when you go on training camp?
Normally, I’d be packing hammers and loads of other equipment but thankfully due to the status of the facility we don’t need to take any equipment which is great. As you can imagine hammers aren’t the easiest of items to travel with! Iron Mighty are sponsoring my apparel for the 2014 season, so I’ve plenty of high quality functional clothing suitable for the nice new climate. So that’s the basics covered, and obviously I have my iPad with me so next thing in my bag is Reflex Nutrition supplements; these will provide a huge boost to my recovery and training, and as the season approaches its time to get down to competition weight! Of course I’ll also be taking my ithlete Finger Sensor and app to measure my recovery day by day (utilising heart rate variability) and as a result we will be able to ensure that I am getting the best from my body and training. This will also help me track how much those life stressors I mentioned are reduced whilst away!
Gotta go, we’re being called to board the plane now, so I had better get off my iPad and hurry up, I hope this was of some interest and look forward to catching up with everyone when I’m back from training camp!
Before I set my iPad to “Airplane Mode” I’d like to thank everyone involved with Team Williamson, particularly my sponsors, coach (Malcolm Fenton) and training & medical advisor (Rob Earle) for making this training camp & my future achievements possible. Without their support the journey would be a lot harder!
Any Q’s you can catch me on Twitter, @AmirWilliamson.