Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way… to the pool.
This may be the most wonderful time of the year, but with the holidays comes one of the most daunting things about swimming… holiday training. Every year, finals at school wrap up, the semester ends, and instead of getting the next few weeks completely free of responsibilities like some of your school friends, you are headed to the pool…and then headed back again in the afternoon for a double… and then to the gym for weights. In the spare moments you have in between practices, you divide the rest of your time with eating as much food as possible and taking the longest naps you can.
While winter break may look a little different for a swimmer than for most people, here are some of the best (and some of the worst) things that comes with holiday training:
Not being able to travel because you can’t miss practice OR having to find a pool or club team to train with wherever you’re going: For most of my swimming career, we stayed home for most of the break so that I could train with my club team. One year, however, we went to Disney World over Christmas (yes it was both very awesome and very crowded) and so I had to find a club team to swim with. There’s just nothing like leaving Magic Kingdom and going directly to a surprise long course practice. Oof.
Getting to eat as much as you want: While this is true most of the time for swimmers, when you have somewhere around 22 practices in the span of two weeks, you deserve to get a third piece of the pumpkin pie.
Going to bed early: Now, some of y’all may not do this, you may decide to stay up late watching the 24-hour marathon of “A Christmas Story”, but when you have to roll up to morning practice on the 26th at 5 a.m. you’re gonna wish you had gone to bed a little earlier the night before.
Training Trips: This is one of those things that I looked forward to when I signed to swim in college, getting to go on training trips. While you are probably doing even harder practices while on the training trip than you would at home, it is all worth it to get to train in the nice warm weather. I’m a little sad because this is the first time in four years where I won’t get to spend a week in January training in South Florida.
Steamy indoor pools: This happens specifically when you are in the middle of an incredibly long, hard set. Despite the pool feeling like ice when you dove in earlier, right now it feels like a jacuzzi. One of your teammates gasps out to your coach to please open a door. Your coach props open a door, and you get a breath of sweet sweet fresh air. However, the cold air outside immediately steams up over the water. You can’t see anymore, but hey, at least now you can breathe. *Hey Siri, play Smoke on The Water*
Themed Sets: Is it actually December if your coach hasn’t had you do a set based off of the Twelve Days of Christmas or the eight days of Hannukah? If you’re lucky your coach may even write a Dice Game set that is Holiday themed. Maybe you’ve even made a Festivus Pole on the 23rd out of a giant stack of pull buoys and kickboards!
Through all the hard sets and practices where you feel so worn out you can’t possibly go any faster, it’s good to remember that all this hard work is going to pay off. I had a coach that used to say, “every day you are just putting money in the bank”. So, just keep working your butt off during those hard practices, because come championship meet time, you are going to get to make a big withdrawal.