British Swimmer Edward Baxter Starts Race Clinics with Adam Peaty

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Photo Courtesy: Ed Baxter

By Rachel Helm, Swimming World College Intern. 

As the Youth Commonwealth Games champion 2015, multiple national champion, British age group record holder and English Short Course senior champion, Edward Baxter has a high success rate so far in his swimming career. He currently trains at the British Swimming National Center at Loughborough under the watchful coaching eye of Mel Marshall. Baxter is a breaststroke specialist, with his best event being the 200 breaststroke (SC best time: 2.06.90, LC best time: 2.12.50).

Baxter also has a high success rate with his business ventures. Partnering with fellow friend and teammate Adam Peaty, the two Brit breaststrokers have set up their own race clinics called Adam Peaty Race Clinics. Baxter sat down with Swimming World to discuss all that the clinic entails.

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Edward Baxter swimming breaststroke during practice. Photo Courtesy: Ed Baxter

Swimming World: How did your friendship with Adam Peaty start?

Baxter: I first met Adam when I was 17. I was looking where to move to further my swimming career, and I started doing some sessions at Derby. After these sessions, I was invited on a six week training camp to Australia with Mel, Adam and the rest of the team from Derby in January of 2016. During this camp is where mine and Adam’s friendship really started. As we were going through some very brutal sessions together, we started to really bounce off each other.

SW: How did the idea of running a Race Clinic come about?

Baxter: Running swim clinics is something myself and Adam have talked about for a while. I started doing a lot of One to One coaching, and this started growing in a huge way. It turned in to something massive. I started running my own swim clinics and Adam did guest appearances at a few of them to do a talk and Q&A about some of his experiences. One of Adam’s biggest goals in his swimming career is to build and leave a legacy. By running these race clinics, he is getting to spread his knowledge, his thoughts ahead of Tokyo and his learning through all his ups and downs in the sport of swimming so far.

As well as all this, the swimmers get the chance to be coached in the art of breaststroke from Adam himself in a group of 17 or less (much less than most club swimming squads). I do a lot of work away from the pool on my own business, and Adam’s focuses are solely on “attacking” his Olympic title next year. The relationship of myself doing the behind-the-scenes work and Adam’s experiences through swimming make a perfect paring.

SW: What does a typical Race Clinic entail?

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Edward Baxter and Tim Shuttelworth explaining a set. Photo Courtesy: Ed Baxter

Baxter: There are 100 spaces at each Race Clinic, and the swimmers will be split into three groups with three stations at the clinics: a swim station, a gym station and a racing edge station.

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A run-through of the clinic:

Group 1 – Peaty leads this group through the “free swimming” aspect of breaststroke. Swimmers will learn to fine-tune and practice different elements of breaststroke to maximize the distance and power.

Group 2 – Baxter runs this group through the “pullout” phase of a breaststroke race. Swimmers in this group will learn how to maximize each phase of the pullout movement.

The gym station – Peaty and Baxter’s strength and conditioning coach Robert Norman will run the gym station. His swimming specific knowledge is vast! Norman will be taking the guys through some general land training to best compliment the work done in the pool.

Racing edge station – this is the station we are most excited about. This will be led by 2016 Olympian and World Championships medalist Tim Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth will be taking the swimmers through some different techniques to best combat nerves and pre-race stress. Participants will learn how world class swimmers not only calm their nerves but also use them in their favor. Nerves can actually be used to enhance performance in a pressure situation.

To finish the day, Peaty will lead a presentation that takes the swimmers through what it means to be the best in the world. He details how he got there and how he has been unbeatable for so long. After this presentation, there will be a photograph and autograph opportunity.

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SW: What is the success rate of the Race Clinic?

Baxter: We’ve got five Race Clinics running through August taking place across England in Bath, Kent, Repton, Macclesfield and Cumbria. We have got around 30 spaces still available out of 500! We opened booking for each clinic one at a time, and the fastest sell-out time for 100 spaces was just over 9 minutes!

Swimming World: What are your goals for the future of the clinic?

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Edward Baxter at one of the Race Clinics. Photo Courtesy: Ed Baxter

Baxter: We want to inspire as many swimmers as possible and help teach as many athletes as we can to race. There are millions of good swimmers out there, but a lot of them find it hard putting the hard work in training into a perfect race, so we want to help people achieve that. As it is going into Olympic year, you can imagine Peaty doesn’t want to do hundreds of these as they will be exhausting. For us, these are a way to inspire 500 young swimmers and for us to fine-tune our formula for the Race Clinics. Post Tokyo 2020, we have very large plans for where we want to run the Race Clinics and how many we want to run, and I’m sure you can imagine these locations don’t just reside in the UK!

This dynamic British breaststroke duo has only begun their clinic ventures. We look forward to seeing their impact not just in England but also throughout the world of swimming!

-All commentaries are the opinion of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World nor its staff. 

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Sharon Brown
4 years ago

See you at Repton ?‍♂️?‍♂️

Helen Downey
4 years ago

Well done Edward ?? xx

Thomas A. Small
4 years ago

Awesome guys

Ruby
4 years ago

been on one it was brilliant, be seeing you guys again in 2 weeks. then the big one thanks guys see you all soon great courses

Sarah
Sarah
4 years ago

How can we be informed of next one we could book?

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