4 Parts of Christmas Training You Might Miss As A Swammer

Photo Courtesy: Cathleen Pruden

By Annie Grevers, Swimming World Staff Writer

After reading article after article on how to navigate the turbulent waters of winter/Christmas training, I thought back to my years of unimaginably difficult post-holiday practices.

We had eight days to spend with our families over the holidays. As a freshman Arizona Wildcat, I swam ONE time during Christmas break. I knew I was going to get annihilated in the pool, on stadiums and in the weight room when I returned to Tucson, so my thought process was, I might as well store up some reserves for the upcoming weeks of depletion. No one else in my family swam, so there was no one there to guilt trip me into attending club practice. I was thrown the opposite kind of guilt: So swimming is more important than making fudge with your mom? Fudge won every single time.

When I returned to the pool, I felt like a dense piece of fudge attempting to complete punishing practices. I certainly had reserves, but not the type of reserves that were going to fuel me through three to four hour workouts. Now a swammer, I read over words about surviving the annual torture with a weird envy.

There will be no boot camp in your post-swimming life that will draw you so close, push you so hard, and leave you feeling so accomplished as winter training does. Maybe if you plan to join the Navy SEALs you can argue that, because their Hell Week is a different beast– “5 1/2 days of cold, wet, brutally difficult operational training on fewer than four hours of sleep.”

So, as you choo-choo your way forward on the pain train, enduring unthinkable practices, dwell on some things you might just miss in a few year’s time:

1. Swimming As Your Job

Yes, yes, the real world starts to sound fun after thousands upon thousands of miles logged in the pool. A whole different wardrobe, money of your own, making a difference in the world, etcetera. We’re all a bit starry-eyed about the professional life which (hopefully) begins after you hang up the swim suit. Not to say you will not love whatever you do next, but there will be days when you do not have time to workout, and that is not something trained athletes adjust well to. Savor these days where your assigned task is not at a desk, but in an low-gravity space that chisels you into fantastic shape and helps you extract potential you may have never dug into without a demanding coach and some scrappy teammates pushing you.

2. The Nap

Photo Courtesy: Laura Bittner

Yes, some are able to work the power nap into their everyday, but the power nap is nothing like the hibernation that winter training induces. Sleep, eat, nap for three hours, eat, swim, eat, Netflix, sleep. Do you know how many people want that life? Your scope is tainted because you’re surrounded by teammates with the same schedule. As intern (and world record holder) Courtney Bartholomew noted in her article on the benefits of naps, nap time is when major muscle repair takes place. You will most likely not be breaking your body down to such a degree when you finish swimming, so these epic naps will not be necessary…and I don’t foresee you having three hours mid-day to curl up in bed. If you find a job outside of the pool demanding this kind of siesta, let me know.

3. Holiday Weight Loss

Yeah, that’s an oxymoron. Unless you’re a swimmer. The inevitable holiday weight melts away after a week of winter training, but it will linger when you are finished swimming. The peanut butter jar can no longer be your portion. You may realize you liked your swimming diet so much, that you’d better become a Masters swimmer to keep it.

4. The Utter Exhaustion

Photo Courtesy: Swimming Canada/Scott Grant

Do you know why people go into Ironman races and ultra marathons? Neither do I. Really, I don’t, because I’ve never done either. But I can surmise one of the main reasons is because they love that feeling many swimmers have right now. The feeling of being completely spent; of driving their body past what they thought to be possible; the wringing process of getting the most out of every muscle. Most people in the world have never and will never experience this type of physiological demand in their lifetime. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 20.8 percent of adults 18 and over met the federal Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic physical and muscle-strengthening activity in 2015. And these federal guidelines for one week equate to one day in the active club swimmer’s regimen! Swimmers are a unique, hyper-healthy camp of people.

Intern Sarah Lloyd just wrote a terrific article about being proud of the figure swimming has bestowed upon her. It is ridiculous to me that I ever felt a since of shame in toting around big biceps, powerful quads, and a broad back. These are beautiful byproducts of working toward a goal; (literally) hard evidence of how many times your fibers have been torn down and built up, bigger and stronger. Your load of swimmer muscles may feel heavy in the water now, but a few years down the road, you may choose to dive in for a casual swim. Then you will think back to how much water you used to hold with every stroke, what fantastic shape you must have been in to swim four plus miles in a workout, and how inspiring it was to have people around you who continually brought out the best in you.

I’m certain there are some Masters teams out there doing their own variations of Hell Week/Month. I think I’ll stick with being nostalgic about my winter training days, and a tiny bit envious of the exhausted swimmers out there, as I prolong my life taper.

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