Getting back into it

Taking time off of swimming is hard. Those first few weeks back are hard. Its is the hardest time of the year (for me at least). Unless you work out during that time you loose all feeling for the water. Instead of swimmings you sink and it feels like you got hit by a train. Over the last 5 years you know hot many breaks I've had from swimming? 3. I have taken 3 total weeks off of swimming in the last five years. It is literally the worst thing for a swimmer to do. We loose all of our muscle and there is nothing we can do about it. We loose our feel for the water and there is also nothing we can do about it. It's not like we can just move back and forth in a hot tub or something you actually have to be pulling your body weight. We can go to the gym and lift weights, or go biking for hours on end and we will either build to much or not enough muscle to keep us in shape. While yes that seems like a hard thing to do, its all us swimmers can think about. We don't really have a lot of friends because we are always in the pool and what ever true friends we have are at the pool. So when we are taken or walk away from the pool (or any chlorine for that matter) we loose our selves. But breaks aren't all that bad... you get some time off and you get a life (... kind of). You get to sleep and catch up on homework that you have been putting off until the last nigh and you get to eat like never before (Micheal phelps would still beat you at eating on his bad day) because eating is the most important part of a workout. It's amazing really how great it feels until you get back in and it all come rushing back to you like never before and you wish you could have gone to swim at least once while you were away from your pool.

Photo Courtesy of Swimmingscience.com

Why Can't Swimming Just Never End?

Winter Break is probably the worst part of high school swimming. Practice isn't mandatory so nobody comes. The pool just sits there... unused by hundreds of people. Our team consists of almost 70 people, only eight to nine showed up on any given day. Thats not even a seventh! Those few of us who did come are in great shape for the rest of the season. We are ready to go, just add water. Not those who didn't come, and now their all regretting it too.

Picture courtesy of Nevada state pool

Swimming is the one sport that even with three days off you could potentially ruin your entire season. After day your body forgets how to do specific things in each stroke correctly, within two days your body starts to lose muscle. Now take that bit of information and think about the effect of taking all of winter break off. I have only seen someone comeback from two weeks and do good or even better once. It was not very fun forcing myself to do stuff on land and I don't even know what exactly helped, swimming takes a lot of commitment but its worth it in the end. "Stay in shape and you'll stay on this team" thats the moto I came up with. Our coach can only take about twenty people total to state, two in each event. Our team isn't even worried about the other competitors, it's a race to see who can get their spot on the state team. Nobody will talk about it but everyone is thinking about just they will have the advantage over the other, weighing possibilities, and if your really lazy you'll find out just how slow you will have to go to get into the top six.
If you want to see just how much time we have till we are swimming at state click here.

Training the best team in the state

Park City High School is the best team in the state. We won for boys last year with eight boys. Our girls won by over 100 points. There were no senior boys last year, we only added on to the team and got better. We now have a swimmer in the top ten for the nation. We will be on the podium for every single event. This is all thanks to our coaches.

Mike is the greatest coach I have ever met as he is training three future olympians right now and they are all in high school. No body could deny that he is doing great at his job but his job is hard. He lives in salt lake and trains us at least five days a week. On tuesdays and thursdays we have morning practice at 5:15am. Then everyday he also stays after high school practice for the smaller kids which we also are able to stay and train with them, and just because they are small doesn't mean they are not fast cause they could beat most of the juniors and seniors.

What Most People Don't Know About Swimming...

When people look at swimmers in the water, like Olympic athletes, they think wow they work really hard. They don't even have a clue. They compare swimming to Football or Soccer, and sure those can be hard sports too with all the running, memorizing plays and getting slammed in the face with a ball. Well, just think of that times three.  Now it sounds quite a bit harder don't you think? Well it most definitely is! Competitive swimmers trains like no other and do workouts that no one would ever think swimmers would do.

Most high level swimmers train 7 days a week either in the pool or in the gym.  In addition to swimming 2 hours every day, on Tuesday's and Thursday's right after school I walk over to the gym where I work strength training for almost an hour. Then, right when I am done I drive to the pool where I work out with the rest of the team for another two hours, and about a quarter of that is running and core training. The entire time we're are in the water we work on strength, precision, skill, and team work. So while people think swimming is an individual sport, while it may be for some, you really have to work together to get practice done. You can see just how hard we work, go to this website.