MediocreAthlete.com » conditioning

I Always Feel Like Some-body’s Watching Meeeee

Rebecca — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:21:44 +0000

For the third year in a row, I’m taking Teresa’s swim conditioning class. The first couple years I took the class, Teresa ran it solo. Class size varies from a few athletes total to about three per lane. When the class gets crowded, you could sometimes get away with less than perfect swim form if Teresa was on the other side of the pool analyzing your classmates. However, this year things have changed, making swim class much, much more difficult.

Apparently, TN Multisports has gained in popularity enough to add another coach and two specialists to the team. Normally I’d applaud the growth and success of my favorite triathlete’s coaching business; however, these rock star coaches have taken it upon themselves to come to swim class and poke their noses in my mediocre swimming business. Before, I could maybe sneak in a crooked leg kick or the occasional windmill arm and Teresa was none the wiser if she was busy inspecting the far lane. Now there are 2-3 coaches on-hand at any given moment, peering down at you like eagles scanning the plains for a field mouse to eat. A crappily swimming field mouse.

Last weekend, I swam a length and brought my head up when I got to the end of the pool. The first thing I saw was a pair of feet. I looked up and Rusty was peering down at me, instructing me to widen my left arm entry. I nodded and took off to swim to the other end of the pool. 20 yards later, I pop my head up and see…another pair of feet. I sigh and look up, and Bridget is staring down at me. What does she say? “Widen your left arm.” Gahhhhhh, I already heard that at the other end of the pool. Boo, hiss.

So now I can’t slack when I think the coach isn’t looking because the coach is always looking…all three or four of them. Group workouts just got a whole lot harder…damn those knowledgeable coaches. They really should mind their own business and let me make little to no progress in the water. ;)

Apparently I Don’t Know How to Breathe

Rebecca — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:33:51 +0000

I started doing Pilates (I know, I know) once a week and strength training once a week (throw in dry land and I’ve got 3 days of muscle flexin’ each week) for a pretty important reason (which I’ll get to in my next post, so stay tuned), and both my Pilates instructor and my strength trainer, Eli, keep barking the same order at me: “Remember to breathe. No, engage your core. No, your core.” Apparently, once you get serious about strength training and trying to be healthy, you have to learn how to breathe in a manner different than you have been accustomed to for the past 26 years. Who knew?

Every week I meet with Melissa, she chirps at me for an hour and says “Suck in your tummy. Now inhale going down, exhale coming up…” She then watches me sucking in air like a dying fish for a few repetitions before poking my gut until I yank it in so far that I feel like my pooch is going to stick out through my back. Then she nods as if she’s finally satisfied. We continue doing this the entire hour, her poking at my stomach and me whooshing air in and out of my lungs in a highly insufficient manner until I feel like I’m going to pass out due to lack of sweet, sweet oxygen. Pilates, like swimming, is stupid — I can’t remember to breathe all fancy-like while trying to recall fifteen other things simultaneously!

Eli is a bit more subtle in his breathing critique. I’ll be mid-lift and he’ll suddenly go, “You’re engaging your core, right?”, at which point I flex my abs in a knee-jerk reaction and respond with, “Uh, yeahhhhh…” Everything requires an “engaged core,” even writing a check for the day’s workout session (okay, maybe not). After our last meeting my abs were sore despite not having done any crunches or ab work — they were all hurty by proxy.

Regular, lazy Becca breathing is different than workout breathing. Lazy Becca Breathing is quiet, calm and satisfying. Workout Breathing is loud, shallow, “I’m gonna pop out a baby because I’m in labor and this is how I learned to breathe in Lamaze” breathing. I hate Workout Breathing. Why can’t my belly loll up and down like a distended Somalian’s when I’m exercising? Stupid core being all important and whatnot!

All I’m saying is that this fancypants new breathing better get me a sick-ass looking stomach, because if it doesn’t then I’m gonna call shenanigans on this “having to think about how to breathe” nonsense and will start gulping in air like a greedy chunkster again…

My Mr. Burns-esque Triceps

Rebecca — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:31:34 +0000

One of my greatest triathlon weaknesses (aside from running and biking, of course) is swimming. I don’t like swimming. I feel like my stamina in the water sucks, I drag my arm too much, my turnover is too slow, I’m either too hot or too cold, my wet suit is ghetto and ill-fitting, and I find swim training boring and craptacular. My disdain for swimming has reflected in my swim times: every race except for one has resulted in disappointment.

I want to improve a lot in 2009, and I figured that a huge area of opportunity would be improving my swim. I think I can shave anywhere from 5-15 minutes off my worst half Ironman swim time, depending on how much I train. So I cued up the training montage music and signed up for a dry land swim conditioning class that would help strengthen my body and improve my swim stroke, technique, and stamina.

Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh.

Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal.

Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble.

Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like:

I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee.

Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps.

After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Tale, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever he’d try to hug, squeeze, or otherwise vaguely touch my arms and lats:

[Jason and I are laying on the couch watching TV. He adjusts his weight and brushes up against my arm.]
Me: “Aghhhhhhh, don’t do that!”
Jason: “What?”
Me: “You hit me!”
Jason: “I barely touched you!”
Me: “Well it hurt! Don’t do that!”
Jason: “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Me: “Seriously, I am so sore…so, you’re coming to the class with me next week, right?”

You know how some people are like “I love feeling sore after a workout! It’s so satisfying!”? Well, I’m all for post-workout soreness but this was just obscene. Seriously. Friends don’t let friends get that sore. (I’m looking in your direction, Teresa.) Anyway, even though I got my ass kicked and my wimpy arms got bitch-slapped left and right, I’m determined to take the class every week to strengthen up and hopefully shave some minutes off my swim time. If nothing else then at least maybe I’ll be able to do a frickin’ pull up by the end of the season (wanna help me with that, T?).