As ww.islandstats.com reported earlier this week, Windsurfer Alex Jones took part in the second Training Camp of the Perth 2011 Emerging Nations Programme.
On his website Jones said, “I spent most of the past month at the Emerging Nations Training Camp in Perth, Western Australia. Organized as part of the Perth 2011 Sailing World Championships the training camp brought together 11 athletes from under-represented countries all over the world for several weeks of coaching and sailing at the venue where we will make our first attempt to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games”.
“The organizers did an incredible job of giving us a perfect venue to focus on athletics with few of the regular distractions of everyday life that keep us from our potential”, continued Jones.
Jones’ Key lessons from this camp were:
Get heavy and strong to sail in high winds
I found that I still haven’t gained enough core strength to deal with the extremely high instantaneous forces that come with holding down a 9.5 square meter sail and a large board over the steep chop in Perth’s high winds. Once I’m stronger then I will be in a position to learn the technique to go fast in those conditions.
Train more/harder
In the first few days of the camp I lost 30% of my strength and range of motion because I wasn’t recovering from the workouts every day. Again, this means more strength time in the gym and more nights lying on the couch totally shelled from another epic workout.
Learn more about the wind
The wind in Freemantle and Perth blows onshore driven by the temperature differences between the cooler ocean water and the hot inland air, it behaves in fairly consistent, predictable ways, very different from the weather driven wind that sweeps over the island in Bermuda. To be competitive I need to learn far more about the wind and if possible sail in locales that offer different patterns than my home.
Jones concluded, “For me this event revealed just how far I’ve come over the past year”.
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