Development News

A FINA Swimming Coaches Certification Course (level 3) was held in Harare, Zimbabwe from November 30 to December 2, 2011. In all, 18 participants attended (15 local, 2 from Zambia and one from Malawi) with coaching experience ranging from 3 to 20 years. American expert Larry Laursen, now living in Namibia and current consultant to University of Pretoria Sports as High Performance specialist, gave the course.

Many important topics were addressed: Building a Coaching Model, Mechanics of Swimming, Race Starts, Turning Skills, Training Principles, Physical Well-Being, Core Body Strength, Talent Identification, among others. The participants had the opportunity to test their newly-acquired skills the following two days at the Mashonaland Championships. Laursen discussed with them the strokes and techniques, the pacing and did race analysis.