Olympic silver medallists Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe share their daily routine

Behind every athlete’s success lies a daily routine that is planned to enhance performance, recovery and mental sharpness.

For artistic swimming history-makers Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe, they’ve been preparing for their Olympic medal-winning moment for their entire career – culminating in an incredible silver in Paris.

That success couldn’t have been achieved without getting their balance right in their daily routine to help them reach the top of their game.

Ahead of their success in the French capital, the duo spoke to Swim England about what their average day looked like as they built up to the Olympics.

Speaking about their daily routine, Thorpe said: “I get up in the morning around 6.30am and have breakfast – have a porridge.

“I go to training and we always tend to start the day with some strength and conditioning. That’s just the usual normal strength stuff, lifting weights and then a bit of flexibility as well after that.

“Then we’re normally in the pool for three hours in the morning, an hour lunch break and then three hours in the afternoon.

Shortman continued: “That’s on our like full days so we’re in Monday to Saturday with half days on Saturday and Wednesdays.

“We usually train around 8am to 5pm and then when we’re on a training camp it will be 8am to 7pm.

“So in the morning it’s strength and conditioning, speed swimming and then we’ll work on our routines.

“And then in the afternoon, a similar sort of session in the pool and then we’ll go on to stretching and some video review.

“For me, my favourite parts are just when we’re working hard. With artistic swimming there’s a lot of breakdown and detail work that needs to happen because we need to go through the same routine every single day.

“Whereas for me, I like doing the strength and conditioning and the speed swimming – the stuff that keeps us really fit.”

Despite what can be a tough schedule, Thorpe admitted that the hard training sessions always feel rewarding.

She added: “I do enjoy doing the hard training sessions because you do feel like you’re getting a lot out of training.

“You feel accomplished once you finish the session and sometimes when you’ve done a really hard set you do feel pretty good afterwards.”