Competitive swimming is not just about turning up at the pool, jumping into your cossie and diving in.
Whether you are elite end or club level, just starting out or well established, what you do outside the water has a huge impact on what happens in the water. Both physical and psychologically.
Jon Rudd knows all about each component and their individual significance in adding up to a whole, much like the cogs in a wheel.
One of the world’s top coaches, he was presented with Ruta Meilutyte, just 12-years-old and homesick for Lithuania, and within three years Rudd had moulded what was initially an unwilling student into an Olympic champion.
He also took on Ben Proud, a 16-year-old who arrived in Plymouth from Malaysia, all raw talent not long out of training in board shorts.
The workload came as a shuddering shock to Proud but in 2014 he became the Commonwealth 50m freestyle and butterfly champion.
While the two athletes already had the raw material, talent and single-mindedness, it was up to Rudd to fine tune the pair who had a combined age of 28 when they came to him.
Rudd says: “It’s the physical and mental state of the athlete.”
“A swimmer’s life isn’t just swimming and you have to balance family, school, social life, boyfriends and…
