Andy Barrow: Hard Yards

GB's Andy Barrow discusses his training leading up to the 2010 World Wheelchair Rugby Championships.

After the relative glamour of the January Tour comes the heaviest training block of the year. First we have a brief rest period to recover and prepare ourselves for the coming months. This time around I was lucky enough to spend the weekend showing my girlfriend that I hadn’t disappeared off of the face of the Earth! We managed to catch the new “Cirque de Soleil” show at the Royal Albert Hall and also got to Twickenham to see England beat Wales in the opening game of the Six Nations. The following week the squad and I had our six-month reviews where we were issued with the training programmes that will shape our lives for the next eight weeks.

All athletes work from a “Macro,” which is essentially a plan detailing the various sessions that are to be completed in any given training week. It’s no different for Wheelchair Rugby. We follow some group guidelines and have some individual action areas too. This ensures that everyone on the squad gets the optimal training programme for them. After that it’s down to us…Complete the sessions to the best of your ability, encourage your teammates when the going gets tough and make sure you get enough food and sleep to see you through. I haven’t got any games until mid March now so this is an ideal opportunity to really get my head down and concentrate on banking my fitness for later in the year. The kind of work we’re doing now is dull but necessary and will provide a strong foundation to build on.

This week the squad went through another battery of testing to get some base-line data so we’ll be able to gauge how effective the latest Macro was in eight weeks time. I’ve also just taken delivery of my new Rugby Chair today. I tend to change chairs every eighteen months or so and it always takes a little while to get used to the new one. I’ll be spending the next few weeks tinkering around with and making adjustments to the wheelchair with which I’ll be going into battle in Vancouver later this year! Speaking of Canada, if any of you are watching the Winter Olympics right now, the “Richmond Oval”, where the speed skating is taking place, will be the venue for the Wheelchair Rugby World Championships this September. Seeing the place packed out on TV certainly sends shivers down my spine when I think that I could be there in around seven months time vying for a medal myself!