Gymnast Sam Oldham set for season opener at English Championships
Friday 18 March 2016 09:37, UK
The Olympic qualification journey for the country's top gymnasts is about to get very interesting.
The standard has never been higher in the GB squad and Sky Academy Sports Scholar Sam Oldham cannot wait to strut his stuff against his team-mates and rivals in the competitive arena again.
Rio is less than five months away and this weekend's English Championships and the British Championships in April will go some way to determine who will be on the plane for Brazil.
Oldham's Olympic dreams were reignited with a recent trip to Rio, but now the nerves and pressure will crank up. Here are Sam's latest thoughts as he prepares for action.....
It's finally here! This weekend my competition season gets under way at the English Championships at Loughborough University.
I've spent the last five months preparing for the start of this Olympic year and it's been a tough but really motivating process.
After the disappointment of picking up small injuries which left me unable to seriously contend for a place on the World Championships team, I took a step back with my coach Sergey to look at the big picture and make some small changes to our training programme.
The main thing we decided was that my health needs to come before everything else. It was something at times I sacrificed since making my comeback from my ankle surgery in 2014 after the Commonwealth Games.
We went back to basics and built myself back up again to a place where I was healthy and my fitness level was very high. I refreshed my ankle rehabilitation programme and began working on my shoulder stability strength.
By December my ankle was ready for full training again and I had no pain in my shoulders for the first time in over a year. This was a great platform to start from and I began putting together the routines I wanted to use for 2016.
This Olympic year came around and training was really positive. The changes I made to my training schedule meant I stayed healthy with no injury issues throughout January and February.
I had the trip to Rio with the GB squad to sample the surroundings which really fuelled my motivation even more.
I made great progress during this visit and I came home ready to push on towards March and the start of my European team selection campaign.
I'm really looking forward to getting back into the swing of competition this weekend (poor punch line I know!).
I've had great preparation with my winter training and I'm very positive I can hit the ground running.
My target for this weekend is to have a solid competition and to compete to the level I've been training at, no more no less.
Next week I fly out to Doha for the second leg of the Apparatus Gymnastics World Cup circuit. So things are really getting going now. I'm so excited to get started and motivated to keep working hard.
WHAT'S COMING UP FOR OUR SCHOLARS…
MARCH 19: Sam Oldham, English Championships, Loughborough
MARCH 28 - APRIL 3: Jessica Judd, pre-season training in USA
APRIL 9/10: Sam Oldham, British Championships, Liverpool
