Melbourne Olympians share tips for staying fit during lockdown
Tokyo’s Olympic Games were due to start this month until coronavirus threw a spanner in the works. But Melbourne’s Olympians are not resting on their laurels – and they’ve shared their top tips for staying fit in lockdown 2.0.
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Australia’s Olympians should have been donning the green and gold this week and stepping up to represent their country, but like everyone they’ve had to put their 2020 plans on hold.
Tokyo’s Olympic Games were meant to kick off from July 24 but have been postponed until at least July 2021.
So how do athletes stay motivated during a lockdown and what did it feel like to have four years of preparation come to almost nought?
We asked past and prospective Olympians from across Melbourne for their advice on tackling lockdown 2.0.
Anabelle Smith
Age: 27
Suburb: Prahran
Sport: Diver
The Olympics was always London and Rio Olympics diver Anabelle Smith’s dream, and with two Games under her belt she said she was looking forward to hopefully adding to her medal haul in Tokyo this year. Smith won bronze in the 3m synchro at Rio and said representing her country had been her goal since the age of 15. She was always outside practising her tricks and flips on the trampoline when she was a youngster growing up in Vermont, she said, and with her natural knack for acrobatics she said diving was a perfect fit. “As a kid I was always super sporty and I did every sport under the sun, but when I was 12 I went to a school holiday program for diving.” She’s had to give up a lot for her sport, including temporarily moving interstate and away from her family at a young age to train, but she said nothing could have prepared her for the coronavirus. The first lockdown meant she and many of her fellow professional divers couldn’t get into the pool for months on end, and she said she was initially disappointed when the Olympics were postponed. “It’s taken a lot of readjusting and mentally accepting what I was mentally peaking towards is now set back,” Smith said. “We kind of didn’t do anything for three months … we usually build up for an Olympics for four years and to have three months off right at the end is pretty out of the ordinary.” But she said her coach and sport psychologist were on hand to help her set new goals, and during this lockdown professional divers could still get in the pool to train at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. And she encouraged anyone struggling with the second lockdown to set themselves small goals each day and to exercise to lift their mood. “I do feel lucky to be in Australia and to have everyone looking after us,” Smith said.
Campbell Harrison
Age: 23
Suburb: Seaford
Sport: Climbing
Campbell Harrison started climbing when he was eight years old and he said he was the sort of child that most parents feared would end up in the emergency ward. He said he was “hooked” on the sport from the moment he started and he’d been looking forward to hopefully making his first Olympics debut at Tokyo this year. “I was always running and jumping over everything,” Harrison said. “To be honest it was nothing I had ever expected to do in the Olympics, climbing was such a niche little sport … but when the opportunity presented itself it was something I couldn’t say no to.” When the pandemic hit, however, he was forced to put his dreams on hold, and was even out of work for a while as an instructor at Bayside Rock Climbing. “Initially I took a little bit of a break because we’d been training so wholeheartedly and I think I was a little burnt out,” Harrison said. “But then with my parents we built a little rock climbing wall our in our back shed. It’s mostly about trying to keep the movement going.” Harrison said he still tries to train five to six days a week like he did before the pandemic, and he was more prepared with a home workout plan when lockdown 2.0 was announced. But he said the best advice he could offer people during lockdown was not to beat themselves up if they failed to achieve a goal or weren’t meeting the same goals and expectations they were pre-lockdown. “I think the most important thing for me was to just be forgiving. You know it is a lot of pressure and it can be quite stressful,” he said. “It’s the intention of showing up.”
Gronya Somerville
Age: 25
Suburb: Brunswick East
Sport: Badminton
Like many Melburnians, badminton player Gronya Somerville has embraced home workouts during lockdown. Before the first lockdown she said she and her doubles partner would train six days a week on the court for up to three hours as well as squeezing in gym sessions and bike rides. But with the courts closed she said she was forced to get creative in order to keep her fitness up, and she’d been sharing her home workouts online with her Instagram (@GronyaSomerville) and YouTube followers. “In the first lockdown there was no access to court or gyms so I got set up with an adequate gym (at home),” she said. “My old high school I went to is Maribyrnong College and they have a special sports program so they loaned me a lot of stuff.” Badminton Australia also chipped in and Somerville said the HIIT and strength workouts had proven popular. She also said she’d been hitting a ball against a wall in a laneway next to her home and she’d been working on her footwork at a nearby park to keep her on her game as a possible contender for Tokyo next year. “I definitely was up and down,” she said. “You do need that bit of self-discipline and you also need to not push yourself (too hard) … it gets degrading because you get too bogged down with not meeting your goal.”
David Powell
Age: 29
Suburb: Mitcham
Sport: Table tennis
As a high school teacher and a professional table tennis player, it’s fair to say Rio Olympics competitor David Powell’s seen a lot of change since the coronavirus struck. He’s juggled new teaching arrangements with trying to keep at the top of his game, but he said his bosses at Haileybury College were supportive of his sporting dreams. “It’s been a balancing act in terms of balancing my career with the sport,” Powell said. “It’s pretty hard to become a table tennis athlete in Australia just because of the lack of funding … just to make it to the Australian Olympics team is, I guess, the gold medal for table tennis athletes.” Powell said he coached a table tennis team for his students and they were often keeping him on his toes by challenging him to a game when face-to-face teaching was allowed. He also had a table at home and was working on keeping his cardio fitness up while in lockdown. “We (the prospective Olympics team) haven’t been able to get into the table tennis hall so that has impacted on us,” Powell said. “But I try to practise my service a lot more, that’s something I can do at home.” While Powell said the postponement of the Olympics was a setback, he said he was focused on taking things as they come. “It was certainly the right call,” Powell said. “I always try to look on the glass half full side of things, that said it’s not always easy. It has been a major goal of mine, but I guess (we need) to be as optimistic as we can.”
Elena Galiabovitch
Age: 30
Suburb: Parkdale
Sport: Shooting
Elena Galiabovitch has a steady hand and a sure eye that serve her well both on and off the shooting range. As a doctor she’s equally adept with a scalpel or a sports pistol and while she didn’t start to compete seriously until about 2014 she said having shooting in her life was a welcome break from the intense nature of her medicine career. “I take lessons from shooting into the workplace. The pressures are very different but resilience and the ability to cope are transferable,” Galiabovitch said. Initially she said she was looking forward to going to the Tokyo Olympics after representing Australia in Rio in 2016. But while the coronavirus meant she had to put her dreams on hold, she said she’s got her hands full working long hours as well as doing research and studying a master’s degree to become a urological surgeon. She also said she’s been working closely with Victorian Institute of Sport staff to keep up her strength and conditioning and practising her shooting skills using simulated technology. “There hasn’t been a single plan that I have for this year that I haven’t had to rethink,” Galiabovitch said. “Everyone has had to make their own adjustments. This year has been a lot of adjusting, changing and adapting. That’s fine, you find your way eventually.”
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