Commonwealth Games silver medalist Cameron Brodie shares the training programme of a professional swimmer
Scottish swimming has a rich success of producing world class swimmers competing at the highest level around the world.
One of those is Cameron Brodie who retired as a swimmer in September at the age of 25 - something only too common to today’s group of splashers.
Putting it down to the lack of finances available to him from the governing body Scottish Swimming, Brodie has had to hang up his cap and goggles and look for experiences outside of the sport he has dedicated so much time and effort to.
Despite the difficulties in having to bow out, the Inverurie born athlete has plenty of extraordinary experiences to look back on - including a silver medal in the 4x200m relay at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014.
The main hub for Scottish swimmers at the University of Stirling has been pivotal to so many medals for the current generation of stars and Brodie gives an insight into the training behind the triumph and the funding issues surrounding the sport.
He said: “Within swimming there isn’t very much funding.
“I’ve done six years of university so I've been able to swim for six years after school. If you’re a student there are things that make it more financially sustainable to be a swimmer.
“At one point I was 15th in the world at my event. Now if I was the 15th best right-back in world football - or Scotland - how much money would I be getting?
“If I had been earning enough money where I could survive, maybe £12,000 or £13,000 a year, I would still be swimming.
“But when you're getting maybe £3,000 or £4,000 from Scottish Swimming it is unsustainable.
“If you win an Olympic gold medal you get £28,000 the next year. If you come fourth in some cases you get nothing.
“And that could be point one of a second. So for four years you are working towards getting a gold but then if you don’t that’s suddenly a bombshell. Then you don't have that money, you cant swim for another year and you have to stop.
“It’s incredibly taxing on your body with a hell of a lot of training to do.
“The group in Stirling I trained with was pretty much all 100m and 200m swimmers so we were pretty comparable and all roughly had the same training schedule.
“A typical week for me would be at least nine pool sessions and three land sessions.
“I remember going to Sierra Nevada in France on camp and doing three weeks of three sessions on Monday and Tuesday, two sessions on Wednesday, three sessions Thursday and Friday and then two sessions on the Saturday.
“So you would be doing over six hours a day in the water plus land stuff around that.”
The gruesome demands of training has caused several athletes to fall out of the sport. Most recently Scotland’s Michael Jamieson - who won a silver in the 2012 London Olympics - retired in February and disclosed his battle with depression due to the demands he put his body through in practice.
And Brodie reveals the level of dedication starts at an extremely young age which could be damaging, while also giving his advice to the younger swimmers beginning their journey.
He added: “It’s an incredibly professional lifestyle at an incredibly young age.
“They’re ten to 12-years-old and they are getting up four times a week at about 4:30 in the morning to go to training.
“I think cognitively and developing mentally it probably isn’t good because they’re sleep deprived from that age and possibly neglecting school work. It’s quite dangerous if they don’t have a good balance.
“Kids are expected to swim from five to seven in the morning and then go off and do a full day of school and then come back at four until six at night to swim.
“I feel a lot of swimmers who don’t have the balance right and are too keen on swimming and neglect other areas of their life then come to a point where they realise swimming isn’t the be all and end all.
“The things that I tell the kids is just focus on your technique.
“I’ve been fortunate to work with Duncan Scott for the last couple of years. He does everything incredibly slowly but it’s precise and accurate so he knows exactly where his hands are entering and how many kicks he’s doing. Then when the coach says go fast he goes incredibly fast with perfect technique.
“In swimming, technique is sometimes under appreciated but it’s about doing what your coach says at the end of the day really.”
Read Cameron Brodie's diet plan as a professional swimmer here