Courtesy of Dane Vincent
22-year-old British Breaststroke Champion and Loughborough University student Jocelyn Ulyett tells us how she has managed to juggle education and training, to reach the top of her game.
05:30 // The standard day for me is getting to pool at about 5:30 am for pre-pool, which involved stretching and mobilising. I’ll train for about two hours and then I’ll usually go back home and have some breakfast. It’s normally porridge!
09:00 // I head to the gym and spend about an hour and a half there, then come back home to have a second breakfast of usually eggs and avocado on toast.
I gym three times a week and I think the main aim at the moment is to build strength up. I came to the University quite new to the gym, so throughout my years here I’ve just been trying to build my strength up.
When I get a bit closer to leaving for the Commonwealth Games or competitions, I’ll train more for power. It will be lighter weights, but faster so I’ll be able to increase my strength and be faster in the pool.
12:00 // My day varies really. Sometimes I’ll do some Pilates or a bit of rehabilitation or physio. If I have lectures, they’re usually around lunchtime so I’ll bring my lunch with me and go straight from training in the gym.
17:30 // I’ll head back to the pool about 5:30pm. I’ll do a bit more pre-pool stretching for maybe half an hour, and I’ll train again until 8pm.
That’s on a standard day. Sometimes, I’ll train once a day. The session varies depending on what day it is. I could be doing race pace, practicing skills of racing ahead of the Commonwealth Games, or it could be working on my kick and techniques.
20:00 // My typical evening meal would be probably pasta, with some sort of meat and vegetables. I’m not really too fussy! Sometimes we will go out for a meal.
After dinner, I’ll usually chill out with my housemates, watch some TV and catch up with what we’ve been up to.
23:00 // I try to be asleep by 11 pm, but it varies because sometimes you’re exhausted from training twice and going to the gym, so it could be earlier. If I go to bed a bit later then I like to have a nap the next day!
Having a routine definitely helps my training because I like knowing what I’m doing and when. It helps with food preparation, especially if I’m making a big batch of something. I like to prepare it in advance to bring to training or to eat in between the gym and a lecture. If it had to leave everything last minute, I’d stress about it and think about other things in my training session when I need to be focussing. Routines definitely do help me!
Discover more about Jocelyn and other athletes’ training by viewing the #MyRoutine series.
