SwimBox and Vasa Trainer Project: Lesson 1 with Katie Gage

Yesterday marked the first day in our SwimBox and Vasa Trainer lesson plan for athlete Katie Gage!  Over the next few months we'll be working with both Katie and her friend/swim training partner Flaca Guerrero on their swim technique. During this project we'll be combining swim lessons, swim technique training, and Vasa Trainer SwimErg workouts to help improve their technique, strength, and overall performance in the water.

Katie started her first lesson off by jumping in the pool so we could see her swim. One of the keys to the swim lessons at SwimBox is checking our swimmers' starting point. Once we have that our instructor pinpoints the pros and cons of the swimmer's stroke, explains these to the swimmer, and then develops a lesson plan of where to begin and how we'll progress forward. So after our instructor Dan McGuire watched Katie swim he decided her catch was what needed to be worked on first. What did that mean? To the Vasa!

If you're not familiar with the Vasa Trainer the one we work with is their SwimErg. The SwimErg is a machine that allows you to focus on your technique while at the same time strengthening your endurance and power. Like a rowing erg, the SwimErg has an adjustable airflow system that simulates the resistance you feel while swimming in the water. It's really a great tool to help us break down swimming technique and focus on one aspect at a time. It's also a rare opportunity to be hands on in swimming, which can be extremely helpful when a swimmer is having trouble figuring out a new movement they need to make with their body.

With Katie on the SwimErg we spent the rest of her lesson explaining the movements behind a proper, and safe, catch position. When I refer to catch position here I'm talking about hand position as it enters the water, arm/elbow position as she catches and pulls through the water, and shoulder position/movement while pulling through the water to the finish of the stroke.

Quick tip? You want your shoulder blade to glide down your back towards your back pocket (imagine that you're wearing jeans while swimming, but don't actually try this...it's not fun). Keeping this movement allows your body to engage the proper muscles for your catch and pull, as well as prevents you from utilizing your shoulder joint to muscle through the water. Not only is the VASA a great tool to help us gain/work on proper swimming technique, but it gives us the perfect avenue to show you how to make the movements to stay injury free.

Now that Katie has a better grasp of the proper movements she needs to be making in her freestyle catch and pull, we gave her some workouts to do on the Vasa Trainer SwimErg she has at home. Stay tuned next week to read about Flaca's first lesson!

Pull Ups and Push Ups for Days

When you wake up every week day at 3:45am and head into swim practice, what's the best thing that can happen? DRYLAND. Dryland was the best surprise I ever got when I used to walk in the door to my morning swim practice in my high school days. Why? Because it meant I didn't have to plunge into the depts of the frigid, ice-like water that was the pool at George Mason University (don't try to tell me I'm a wimp; that's the coldest water at any pool I've ever swam at). They used to (not sure if they still do) keep their water at 78-79 degrees, which is basically the equivalent to dry ice in the swimming world. 

So when dryland days rolled around and I got to wake up at o'dark thirty but NOT jump directly into the icy waters akine to that of Antarctica I was one happy kid. But when I transitioned into working with mostly triathletes and found out they didn’t do dryland exercises, or really knew what the word dryland meant (apparently that’s a swimming term), I decided something had to be done about that. How could I let some of the happiest workouts I used to have when I was younger go unrecognized? Anyway, I’ll stop my rambling and reminiscing and move on to the meat of this post. The best dryland exercises swimmers can do to to benefit their swimming: pull ups and push ups.

Pull ups are really great because they focus on strengthening the same muscles you use during freestyle without needing consistent technical expertise. Meaning that you can safely do them by yourself without a coach watching over your every move. That being said, you should definitely start these exercises with a coach present to make sure you're starting with good form. Having good form is one of the keys to making sure dryland exercises are giving you the most benefit, as well as keeping you injury free.

Pull ups work your back, rear shoulders, and forearms. This move also focuses on strengthening your lats better than any other exercise on the market, which is one of the main muscles used during your freestyle pull. You want to start with your hands shoulder width apart, palms facing away from you. While keeping your shoulders back and down, try to pull your elbows toward the ground. This is my favorite cue to use to help make sure you're engaging the proper muscles for a pull up.

Now if you’re like me and have trouble doing pull ups without assistance, then your best place to start off with is negatives, which strengthen the same muscles without having to actually pull your body up from the ground. A negative is a movement where you stand under a pull up bar, use a box/stool to jump up from and grab the bar, placing your hands slightly wider than shoulder width apart with palms facing away from you. Using the momentum from your jump, pull yourself upward until your chin is above the bar. This is your starting position. Now slowly, and with control, lower yourself while keeping your core tight and focusing on using your lats to bring you back down to the box/stool. Make sure you keep your shoulders and back and down while lowering yourself. This move might sound easy but it can definitely be a tough one. Whenever I do these I’m usually sore for a few days afterwards.

Moving onto the push up, which, done correctly, is an upper body workout AND a core workout. Think plank, but with additional work on your upper body. This combo of strength is what swimming is all about, using your upper body to propel you forward through the water and using your core to stabilize you as you do it.

Both of these exercises can be done without the use of weights and take up very little time. Try adding them to your workout routine 2-3 times a week to start strengthening your swimming muscles. In the beginning you might not notice a difference, but as you progress and get stronger you’ll definitely see some changes in and out of the water. Most notably for me is that I now understand the feeling I’m looking for when I pull during freestyle (which I definitely didn't when I was growing up and swimming 10 times a week).

Doing these dryland moves in conjunction with your normal swim workouts is not only a great way to add strength, but also to give you more body awareness of the movements you’re making in the water.

Jarrett Brumett Guest Series Post #2: How Strength Training Helps You Recover

You just finished a week of your highest volume in the pool yet and you’re drooling over next week’s taper. The taper hits, but you’re still feeling like your limbs are lead. Not only that, but your coach has a dryland session planned for you later and you’re shaking in your Speedo just thinking about trying to lift later. One of two things are going to happen. #1 You hobble out of dryland feeling even worse than before and look for the nearest pillow to cry into. #2 You walk out feeling fresh and re-invigorated from the special methods that were thrown in to help your system recover. How do you accomplish #2? I’m glad you asked.

How Dryland Can Help Your Recovery

We’re so used to thinking of dryland to increase our strength and explosiveness that we rarely look at other potential physiological benefits. Like how it can bring balance back to the autonomic nervous system, increase delivery of blood to recovering tissue, and provide a nice mental break from the repetitiveness of your competition season. There are several ways that this can all be accomplished, the key is to understand some of the physiology at play in order to best implement all of these benefits. 

There are two main physiological systems that I view as being able to be influenced in the weight room for recovery: The Autonomic Nervous System and the Circulatory (cardiovascular and lymphatic) System. Both of these are powerful influences in ensuring that you, the athlete, are fully recovered. They also directly play with your tissue quality, nutrient absorption, and inflammatory profiles. And both have specific ways to maximize their function for recovery.

Working with the Autonomic System

The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is comprised of two parts: the sympathetic (think fight or flight) and parasympathetic (think rest and digest) systems. A common problem when you're over-worked is that you become stuck in a state of sympathetic dominance. Meaning, your parasympathetic system is not performing well and you're never tapping into a good recovery-driven state. The curious thing is that you can also have the sympathetic system be dampened so that you can’t tap into what you need to perform optimally. Or, you could even have it so that they both suck and everything is screwed. It’s never a black and white problem, and as more research comes out, we are starting to see just how complex everything is. One common theme that keeps getting driven home, however, is the need for balance and the importance of developing a good system solely meant to seek out this balance.

This can be done over time with good warm-up and cool-down protocols in every training session. But you need to 100% emphasize this element when creating a program that facilitates recovery. Creating an athlete that can easily turn up or tone down is crucial and can be done by programming with some of the following methods.  

Parasympthetic Coaxing

The 100% best way to improve the function of your parasympathetic nervous system is through breathing drills. In my last post I touched on their importance as well, so I’m not going to beat a dead horse. But starting your session with a postural-based breathing drill and ending it with a relaxing, decompressive breathing drill will go a long way. My personal favorite drill for ALL ATHLETES to perform at the end of their cooldown is Feather Breathing.

Another great way is to put an emphasis on low-threshold, somatic movement (easy and reflexive movement). Some light mobility drills can do this, but the key is that they need to be LIGHT. If the drill causes you to hold your breath, it’s not a good fit for this purpose. There should be no need for feed-forward tension, it should be reflexive and comfortable. I’ve actually found some drills of this style to be very useful for increasing mobility when done correctly, even though they don’t put anything on stretch. Your movement quality and fitness-level will highly influence what is right for you, but there are a few go-to’s that I use for everyone:

Sympathetic Coaxing

As I said earlier, sometimes the sympathetic system may be dampened and needs to be revved up. But, even if it doesn’t, revving it up enough just to stimulate the system can be a very powerful recovery tool. Either way, the key is to give it just enough stimulus without creating more metabolic stress. There are two different ways I like to perform this depending on where you are in your performance schedule and what my overall goal is for the session.

If the goal is still to create a training stimulus, it's best to use a form of dynamic-effort work, as it will still help improve force output. This means that none of your lifts will exceed ~70% of your max, and are done for lower reps and higher sets. This is commonly used in powerlifting circles to help with enhancing recruitment of muscles and rate of force development without adding stress to your system. It’s also good for working on motor patterns that need practice since all these movements are performed with very little fatigue. The trick is to find a total-body movement that is a beneficial for your specific sport, which in this case, is swimming. Personally, I use pushup and pull up variations, or a trap-bar deadlift for my swimmers. With athletes that don’t have true One-Rep-Maxes (in terms of lifting), it highlights the importance in recording training weights and knowing roughly how much weight an athlete can move at a particular rep range. I have found that in general, a resistance that they have previously done for a hard set of 8-10 reps will be about what they should use for dynamic effort. So if one of my teenage female athletes needs a band to perform 8 pullups, she will use that same banded assistance to knock out this method. And the same is true for the opposite end of the spectrum. If an athlete does pushups with 45lbs on their back for a hard set of 10, they will use that same weight for a dynamic effort day.

Programming this is simple, you want to do 6-10 sets of 1-3 reps with anywhere between :30 - :60 seconds rest. You then coach them to perform each rep with the tension and force as if it was a max effort lift.

The other method I will use to stimulate the system is High Resistance Intervals. Ideally this method is performed with a heart rate monitor, but can also be effective with a timed interval. For this method, you choose a ballistic-style movement that never reaches top velocity and also lacks any eccentric loading (read as the lengthening portion of the lift, as in the lowering into a squat).

The eccentric portion of a lift is what is known to create the most micro-tears in the tissue. By removing this portion you are significantly lowering the stress of the movement. You perform that movement, at an intense pace for :08 - :10 seconds, then rest until the heart rate has reached an ideal, rested rate. This ideal will be different for each athlete, but 120 bpm is usually a safe bet for most. The other option is to perform “every minute on the minute,” in which you do your :08 - :10 seconds of work, then active recovery for the rest of the minute.

My personal favorite movement for this method is Rope Slams, as seen below, and then I use specific active recovery drills, as you will see in the next section.

Working with the Cardiovascular and Lymphatic Systems

In a simplified view, these systems work together to not only transport nutrients to your tissues, but also to transport byproducts from your tissue to be processed. So to maximize their influence on recovery, you ideally want to help mobilize nutrients/byproduct and increase fluid flow.

The simplest way to do this is to foam roll. And not even the hardcore foam rolling that everyone seems to think is needed to be effective (because yes, that can be pretty painful). Simply spending 30 seconds of some semi-gentle rolling can be enough to help get some blood into some of your tissue.

The next way that’s almost equally as simple is through dynamic mobility drills. I'm using the term mobility drills as I don’t necessarily mean just passive stretching. Passive stretching has it’s time and place, but I’d much rather see some active, dynamic mobility work. The pulsating tension in dynamic mobility movements has the potential to create a pumping mechanism for fluids and stimulate synovial movement in your joints. My two favorites for swimmers are the Adductor Rockback and the Quadruped Lat Mobility.

The final way to help get some fluid movement is through good ol’ fashioned, steady-state cardio. Keeping you heart rate around 130 bpm (again, this is athlete specific) for 30-60 minutes can be very rejuvenating on your system. At this heart rate, it should also be fast enough to create full expansion of the left ventricle and increase the overall stroke volume of the heart, which can also improve the your overall endurance.

One trick I use with a lot of my swimmers that combines the last two sections is a method I call the Hybrid Cardiac Output Method. It’s pretty simple, you have the athlete keep up their heart rate to the desired BPM by doing dynamic mobility and medicine ball drills. So long as they don’t hold their breath on any of the drills, you will get the increased left ventricle expansion and you will also help to facilitate more blood flow into the tissues that you’re mobilizing. Win-win.

So, if your coach knows any of these methods, then rest assured, you’ll feel better leaving then when you came in. Not only that, you’ll leave a better athlete than when you came in. Next post I’m going to cover how we can maximize the direct performance benefits of strength training for swimmers. Stay tuned!

Not Kicking in Your Triathlon = Bad News

When it comes to the triathletes I know they're always telling me how they need to "conserve their legs" to be able to perform on the bike and the run. So what does this mean to them? It means they kick little to not at all during their swim. Before you try to tell me I’m wrong, I know that at least 75% of you have all thought to yourselves, “if I don’t kick during my swim, I’ll save that much more energy to use for the rest of my race.”

And you know what? I can’t blame you. On paper, that makes complete sense. But in actuality? That’s a terrible idea, and you’ll only be hurting yourself and hindering your race performance if you do so. Having a consistent kick during the swim portion of your triathlon is key to keeping proper body positioning, maintaining rotation, and preventing unnecessary drag from your legs sinking and being pulled behind you.

Think of it this way, have you ever tried to run while keeping your arms motionless and straight at your sides? If you have, please tell me there’s video, because I would pay good money to see that. But seriously, imagine running without the aid of your arms. Not pretty, and it definitely isn’t efficient. Which if you think about it is what we're always aiming to be in these long races, efficient. The same goes for your kick in swimming. Your kick is needed to round out your stroke and keep the rest of your body/arms in line with what they need to be doing.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to go all out and be crazy with your kick either. There’s a sweet spot we’re looking for here. How do you find that sweet spot, you ask? Well, that’s what practice is for! You need to find a pace that you can maintain for the length of your swim, preferably longer, that isn’t detrimental to your energy stores and promotes a balanced and efficient swim. A small kick that stays up at the surface of the water, is driven from your hips, and doesn’t create too much of a splash is what you’re looking for. The best way to figure out this movement? Start by practicing out of the water to get the feel for a good pace and help your body become more aware of the movement goal.

The pace is going to be different for everyone, so don’t go asking your friends how they kick during the swim portion of their triathlons and try to copy them (because if you do 3rd grade is going to call you asking for it's tactic back). Chances are high it’s not going to be right for you.

Put in the time to find that sweet spot. Don’t exit out of this window and keep on not kicking during your swims. If you do, the time and effort you’re putting in to work on technique and all the other aspects of your swim will have been a waste, and your race times will show it.

Worried because you don't know if you have a proper kick or not? Check out our video Kicking on Land to start from scratch and focus on learning each step properly before you even step foot back in the water.

Jarrett Brumett Guest Series Post #1: How Strength Training Can Help Bulletproof You

Necks, shoulders, hips and low backs. The areas that bark out to let you know that you did 4,500 yards yesterday. How can adding more exercise possibly help them to feel better? Well, by addressing the negative affects that a lot of swimming can have on the body:

• Poor Breathing Mechanics and Core Stabilization
• Poor Joint Dissociation and Body Awareness
• Compensatory Shoulder Mechanics
• Excessive Fatigue

I’ve seen these 4 variables time and time again plague elite-level swimmers. It’s why I actually put a priority in addressing them in my programming. Here’s how I do it:

Breathing Mechanics

All of my athletes start off with breathing exercises, whether they’re swimmers or not. It’s mandatory and pays HUGE dividends in how the core functions and it helps to modulate their nervous system into a better state to take load.

Swimmers get an emphasis on breathing work for a few extra reasons:

• It helps to teach them how to create stiffness through their spine.
• It helps to turn off the accessory breathing muscles and keep them from affecting shoulder mechanics
• It can be used to improve thoracic and rib mechanics and address mobility restraints.

Dysfunctional Breathing courtesy of In Pursuit of Yoga

Functional Breathing courtesy of breathing.com

In fact, breathing work is so important for swimming that Dominic and I even made a course on it last year and it’s been spread throughout the world. We’ve had many swimmers reach out to us and note how simple of an intervention it was, yet how much time it shaved off.

Below is a video of one of my favorite drills for teaching diaphragmatic breathing to swimmers.

Once they can own a full breath, I let them practice it for a minute or two to try to really coax more rib expansion and then I move them onto this next drill to teach them how to create core stiffness.

This is incredibly important to address as many swimmers are in the habit of pulling their belly button to their spine, which has been actually proven by EMG to turn off a lot of the core musculature. Teaching them how to engage their abdominal wall and be able to maintain its tension throughout a breath cycle will lead to dramatic changes in spinal mechanics and will significantly help with alleviating stress off the low back. It also brings us into our next point….

Body Awareness

In the early progressions of strength work with a swimmer, it will literally be like watching a fish out of water. I have found that many swimmers have a poor ability to dissociate their joints and create the proper tension to execute many traditional strength movements. I’ve always hypothesized that it’s because the water gives resistance to their movements when they swim and their body gets used to the feedback. Then, when they’re out of the water, the volume of that feedback is significantly reduced, and thus their body awareness decreases. Admittedly, there’s no research to support my theory, but I can site many other strength coaches who have run into similar issues with their aquatic athletes.

The braced breathing work helps to kick start the joint dissociation, but it needs to be expanded upon to have a major effect. The tension from the drill helps to give feedback on spinal positioning. When they can create stiffness and get that feedback, they can prevent it from moving and doing the work. I can’t understate how many times I’ve seen swimmers try to use their spine for exercises. Pushups, rows, hinge work, squats, you name it, and I've seen a spine try to do it. By creating a solid and strong base with the core tension, you can prevent this and slowly build up other movements and teach them how to more appropriately load their joints.

Now even though I just drove home how important tension is for movement feedback, there are other gaps to be filled. You also want to teach the athlete to be able to inhibit their over-recruitment strategies and simply move through specific segments. This is great for those athletes that create high-threshold strategies for simple movements (read: athletes that tense up all the time when they don’t need to). One of my favorites of these drills to drive dissociation home is primal rolling. It’s actually an exercise that was created by a famous PT, named Gray Cook, to help clean up spinal firing patterns and encourage healthy spinal mechanics, which is a added plus for me since I mainly use it to get an athlete able to focus on dissociating limbs from trunk. To perform them, you simply lay on the floor and lift one leg up in the air and use that leg to pull yourself over. Sounds easy, right? Well, try doing that while keeping THE ENTIRE REST OF YOUR BODY LIMP, ESPECIALLY THE OTHER LEG! Not as easy as it sounds. See below.

Again, keep the whole body limp except the active leg. It’s super common to see swimmers shift their hips and try to use their trunk muscles during this movement.

By progressing the appropriate joint loading strategies and increasing the internal feedback, you are essentially making an athlete that will be easier to coach and correct, as well as one that is more body aware and able to detect changes in positioning. This is why it’s so common to have swimmers a month or two into training with me start to talk about how they can actually feel their lats now when they swim. They have better awareness, which gives them better access to the muscle, and then in turn can give them better feedback on accomplishing the movement correctly. Which again, brings us to our next point:

Shoulder Mechanics

If the Greek legend Achilles had been a swimmer, the story would have told of his weakness being his trap, not his heel. Swimmers are notorious for being trap-dominant and having poor shoulder mechanics. It is by far the number 1 complaint I get from my newer athletes.

The problem is that swimming under fatigue can really coax the shoulder into some bad positions, especially in freestyle. The athlete will often ditch using their upper back on the pull and instead try to recruit with the pecs while doing so in what we call downward rotation of the scapula. Think of this as a form of desk-posture. And it’s a pretty bad position to try to emit force from.  

Good strength training should help to place more balance across the shoulder and help to cue the athlete out of these pathological movements. A well thought out program will have a high emphasis on strengthening the upper back and lats as well as promoting that healthy movement and awareness of the shoulder positioning. Below is my favorite drill to give swimmers in their warm up to help warm their shoulders up:

Notice how I cue them to first keep the core tension? The tension creates awareness and then allows them to disassociate their shoulders from their spine. It comes full circle.

Fatigue Management

Fatigue management is probably the most important aspect of injury prevention that no one talks about. It’s actually so important, that SwimBox now offers a special service for it. And yes, strength training can help. Or I should say, it can help to prepare the system to take on more stress when implemented at the right time of year.

If an athlete starts strength training at a time of year when their swim volume is low, it will allow them to build their system up and condition their joints and tissue to be able to take on more work. That is why it’s called Strength AND Conditioning. We are conditioning the body to be able to do more and better work. To be fair, if a swimmer is regularly doing an ignorant amount of yardage and their body can’t keep up, it won’t matter how much strength work has been done or how much recovery work is implemented, they’re cruising for a bruising.

The important thing to note here is that the harder and more intense strength work is done when swimming is on the lighter side. When the athlete is building large amounts of volume, that is when strength work should be manipulated to accommodate all the stress that is already on their system, not add to it.

The manipulation doesn’t have to just be in pulling back on the amount, it can actually be manipulated in such a manner that it stimulates recovery. If a swimmer is really building volume and they’re showing high signs of fatigue, a strength session can be written to facilitate recovery and give them a bit more juice to get them through their build problem-free.

How can you make a dry-land session so that it helps the athletes to recover? The answer may actually surprise you, but you will have to wait for my next post to find out!

Bahamas Training Trip Recap: Week 2

It's been a little over two weeks since Dominic and I got back from our Bahamas Training Trip and I'm missing the sunshine and our swimmers even more than ever. Last year, the first year we hosted this trip, we had one group of swimmers and were there for 7 nights. This year we had two groups and were there for 19 nights...quite the jump if you ask me. Going into it we were more than a bit nervous we would be completely drained after saying goodbye to our first group, but thankfully with a day to rest in between groups (and a little, okay a lot, of rum cake) we found ourselves amped up to welcome our new swimmers and get back into the water with them.

Last year's group and this year's first groups were made up entirely of women, so it was nice to have two guys join us for the second week. This entire group was made up of newcomers and it was great to get to show them around the cove and the island for the first time. The first morning swim in the cove was absolutely beautiful, everyone loved it and couldn't get over how clear the water was and how many sea creatures they could see while they were swimming. 10 minutes after we finished that workout? Torrential downpour. No stop in sight. Thankfully it was Sunday, which means traditional Bahamian breakfast was called for: chicken saus and johnny cakes.

It might sound terrible, being on a gorgeous island for your swim training trip only to wake up to pouring rain your first morning. But is there anything better than a warm, comforting meal right after a long workout? Especially when that meal is hot soup, buttery grits, and thick cut johnny cakes with melted butter? I don't think so, and I'm definitely not one to see the silver lining, especially when it's raining. The first group of swimmers wasn't here on a Sunday, so unfortunately they didn't get to partake in this weekly tradition Bahamians have (restaurants only prepare this meal on Sunday mornings), but that just left more food for the second group! Chicken saus is essentially a rustic chicken soup with potatoes and juice from sour oranges mixed in with the stock. It's warm and the sour orange gives it a perfect tang mixed with the starchiness of the potatoes. Johnny cakes are cornmeal cakes that have a slight amount of sweetness, and grits are grits. If you don't know what grits are then you most likely didn't grow up in the south, which means I'll just describe them as savory oatmeal made from coursely ground corn kernels. There, that's my culinary lesson for the day. Back to swimming.

One of our favorite aspects of this trip is the fact that we get to see our clients out of our Endless Pool applying what they work on in their lessons in a different environment. Some drills can feel differently in a 25M pool, and it's a great opportunity to help our swimmers work through the differences and get the proper feeling we're looking for. One of our pool workouts focused on only technique work, we weren't there to get the yardage in that afternoon (don't worry, we did anyway). We set the pool up as a circuit and got in some of our favorite drills: paddlehead, parachute on the head with a theraband around the ankles (lots of focus for this one), paddles in hands, and parachute around the waist. 

This group of swimmers reallyyyy wanted to take advantage of getting to swim in some waves, so we actually took two trips to the ocean (not the cove) to work on entry and exit of the water. A lot of the work you need to do to prepare for this aspect of open water swimming is mental, and in my opinion you just need to bite the bullet and go. That being said, I hadn't swam in the ocean - in this respect - for years. Last year I watched and took pictures from the beach while everyone got their ocean workout in, so saying I was scared was a bit of an understatement. But I didn't panic, I made sure I had calmed myself down before walking towards the waves, and I just got in. As simple as that. Once I was out there I realized I just had to work with the ocean, not against it, and as long as I stayed calm I would be okay. And I'm SO glad I did because I saw countless schools of fish, sting rays, and the largest parrot fish I'd ever seen. It was great.

I could honestly write about this trip for hours and still not be done telling you about everything we did, but I think you get the gist of it all. Wake up, swim, breakfast, break, swim, dinner, sleep, get up and do it all again the next day. Not to mention many of these athletes went for runs in between the swims everyday, so they definitely put in a lot of work. Yardage count? 33,000 yards. Not too shabby you guys. And by that I mean you crushed it.

This trip is such an incredible experience and one I'm so glad I get to be a part of. Having our swimmers travel with us to this special place and get a chance to swim in the sun is one of my favorite parts of the year, I can't thank our clients enough for making this trip possible. Can we go back yet?

Jarrett Brumett Guest Series: Strength Training for Swimmers

We're so excited to have Jarrett Brumett, owner of JB Pain and Performance Solutions taking the time to write for us about the importance of strength training for swimmers. His intro to this series is below.

I want to start this post off by removing a few misconceptions regarding strength training and the sport of swimming (especially in regards to endurance events). To put it bluntly: smart strength training can improve a swimmer’s performance, help facilitate their recovery, and decrease their risk of injury. Let me repeat that, SMART strength training can improve a  swimmer’s performance, help facilitate their recovery, and decrease their risk of injury. This means that strength training, when performed and done right, can:

• Increase force production (without adding mass if necessary)

• Improve mobility

• Improve body awareness

• Give powers similar to that in Disney’s The Thirteenth Year

• Decrease overuse injuries

• Improve breathing mechanics and utilization of the breath

• Make you an all-around more useful person

• Improve the effectiveness of a taper

• Make you look better naked

Now I say when done RIGHT because incorrect execution or negligently programming can:

• Mess with mechanics and reinforce poor body awareness

• Increase injury rates

• Cause overtraining AND completely kill a taper

• Make me want to put my head through a wall

• Add unwanted mass

The perfect Drcox Scrubs Head Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.

I use a repetitive and semi-arrogant tone with this because over the years I've found swimming to be a completely different beast when compared to other sports. The means of force production is much more methodical, the amount of volume can seem ungodly to those outside of aquatic circles, and the importance of a well executed taper is often unrivaled compared to other sports.

Let's also not forget that a competitive swimmer, even in their early teens, is often a highly specialized athlete and has a totally different physiology when compared to athletes of land-based sports. This means that much more care needs to be taken in regards to their programming and its implementation.

With all of these factors hanging in the balance you can see why dryland training for swimmers can get pretty tricky, especially if you’re actually trying to address deficits and get the swimmers stronger and faster. It’s not as straightforward as, “just lift more weight,” or “just do more pushups.” There are some easy methods and ideologies that can be implemented that will get people faster, with less wasted effort.

So that brings me back to my point: smart strength training can improve a swimmer’s performance, help facilitate their recovery, and decrease their risk of injury. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to dive further into these subjects and give you things you can implement into your dryland training to help you to channel your inner-Phelps in the water. You will learn:

• Do’s and don’ts of exercise selection

• How breathing interventions can be used to strengthen your core

• How to prevent shoulder and low back injuries

• What exercises have been proven to help your speed in the water

• How many bullet points I can put into one blogpost

• How to adjust your dryland when on a taper

• How to use dryland to facilitate recovery when you’re beat down from high volume

• How to train your core for swimming

If all of this tickles your fancy, then stay tuned and prepare for the gainz.

Bahamas Training Trip Recap: Week 1

As I write this I can't believe I'm sitting outside at a restaurant in the Bahamas in 81 degree weather. Last year was the first time we did this trip and we were here for a total of six nights (five nights for our swimmers), and this year we've been here since 2/15 and still have four nights to go. This is one of those times I can really appreciate owning my own business and the perks it can come with. Don't be fooled, this trip is a lot of work, before and during, and my downtime is usually limited to about 20ish minutes a day, but I know when to see things from a positive light when I need to. 

Our first group of swimmers landed on 2/16 and we went right to work. Well, after a few drinks and some lunch that is. Less than 2 hours in the Bahamas and Dominic and I were already leading them to the pool for their first workout.

The days on this trip are setup pretty similarly every day. 7am open water swim, group breakfast cooked by yours truly, free time, 1:30pm pool swim, then it's time for more food before collapsing into the pillows and getting up to do it all over again the next day. Think that sounds like a lot of swimming? At the end of this week the ladies had each swam over 20K meters in 5 days. So yea, I'd call that a lot of swimming. 

One of everyone's favorite parts of this trip are the morning open water swims, which we do in a gorgeous cove behind our hotel. The cove swims are used to see where everyone is starting at, then work on open water drills and techniques to get them better prepped for their upcoming seasons and work on their problem areas. We set up a course with two of our buoys and do workouts around that course. One day this week we brought our swim parachutes to have them work on adding resistance and bringing some of the drills we do in the pool into the open water. This helps familiarize what we do at SwimBox with the swimming they'll be doing when they compete.

After our morning open water swims in the cove we all shower/rinse the salt off (or not shower, I've decided the salt water is my favorite new product for styling my hair) and scarf down as many pancakes and eggs as I can whip up. Once everyone is done with breakfast our down time varied. For instance one day we explored the island on foot, another the swimmers napped while Dominic and I worked, the next we trekked to the nearby Lighthouse to take in the incredible views of our surroundings.

This year we added a well deserved (and much needed) rest day in the middle of the trip. We took a drive out to a place called Little Harbour and had freshly caught seafood and drinks at Pete's Pub and enjoyed not getting in the water in the attempts to break records at how much yardage we could get in. But before we did that we drove into the woods of Marsh Harbour and took in the natural beauty of the Treasure Cay Blue Hole. You have to be lucky to see this, because it's not listed on a map and there are no directions. 

All in all we'd call the first week of this trip a success. Everyone had a great time, got some incredible swimming in and a ton of work done, and we got to know this group of our clients that much better. Ohh and I almost forgot. I got this delightful rum cake, which just happened to arrive the afternoon everyone left...oops?