OLYMPIC gold medalist and multi-time swimming world champion Adam Peaty led a series of coaching clinics at Workington Leisure Centre.

After coaching young people from poolside with his team of swimming experts, Peaty gave a talk and question and answer sessions, revealing everything about his background and biggest career moments.

Peaty is motivated to help young sports people: “The basic headline of sport is to inspire as many people as possible.”

The decorated swimming champion spoke of the importance of sports psychology, and standing up to fear.

“We’re teaching them how to use their mental skills, the mental skills that helped me win the worlds and the Olympics,” he said.

One of the principles Peaty spoke of in his talk was mental toughness: “Just because you’re not ahead now does not mean that you’re not going to be ahead in the future.”

He said: “If I’m training my body to go to gold why am I not training my mind?”

Youngsters in West Cumbria received world class swimming advice from the Olympian who in 2017 became the first person to finish the 50m breaststroke in under 26 seconds.

During his question and answers session, Peaty took was asked how he deal with hate, he said: “For some reason jealousy is a human trait that a lot of people have in the modern world but it’s not a very good trait people are focussing more on you than themselves, which is always good because you must because you must be doing something right.”

Peaty is accompanied by an elite team including Edward Baxter who was born in Gilcrux.

Being Peaty’s chief training partner, Baxter is himself in a good position to impart knowledge.

He said: “We’ve trained together for three to four years now. “ They push each other to improve: “We know exactly how to push each other’s buttons.”

Workington Leisure Centre’s Assistant General Manager, Aimee Threapleton was delighted to have the AP Race Clinics team: “He is only doing five of these across the country.”