MADRID, 10 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish swimmer Mireia Belmonte, quadruple Olympic medalist, stressed this Friday that she is now “working in a very different way” after the change of coach and that now her training sessions are “of higher quality and with much fewer meters”, with a view to not punish your shoulders.
“The changes are always very different. I am working in a very different way than before and the body has to get used to the changes, but I simply have to continue working with the same enthusiasm and desire as always,” Belmonte said. during his participation in the ‘Marca Sport Weekend’.
In any case, the one from Badalona, ??who now works with Olaf Wildeboer after his time with Fred Vergnoux, clarified that his program “is going to change”. “I am going to focus more on the 200 butterfly and the 200 and 400 styles. I am not going to go up to 400 meters because my shoulders have already suffered enough. Now, the training sessions are of much higher quality than before, intensive, with much fewer meters and my body is adapting, it needs its process,” he warned.
What does not change is the goal of being in his “fifth Games” in Paris, with which he is “dreaming” and for which he must qualify “first”. “My goal is to be in Paris and I am going to continue working for that goal, which is close, but at the same time far away because there are a couple of years left that go by very quickly,” she remarked.
At the moment, this 2022 “is going quite well” if you take into account that he started “a little later in the season” and that he has been training “for a few months”. “I’m better with my shoulder, which was injured from so many years of training. Now you always have to control yourself and do what you can every day, and above all not force yourself so as not to take steps back,” said the Catalan.
On his preparation for Tokyo 2020, he confessed that “it was a rather strange period.” “I was injured in January and I didn’t start training until May. Facing the Games with two and a half months of preparation is very hard mentally because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.
“In addition, we traveled four days before and for the ‘jet lag’ it was horrible, and the finals were in the morning, which we are not used to. I was fourth (in the 400 styles), which for me is like a medal for everything I did. Entering the final and remaining 23 hundredths from the medal was already a gift,” added Belmonte, who “always” tries to set “short-term goals to see them closer” and “achieve them more real”.
The Spanish swimmer explained that to be in the elite for so many years she has needed “work, patience and discipline”, but also to have “a goal and her dream”. “For me it was important to enter the national team so young because you leave your comfort zone when you go on to compete against your idols,” he admitted about a “very nice” sports career and of which he stays above all with the gold in the 200 butterfly in Rio 2016.
