For many teams, each practice focuses on an upcoming game or match. For the Northwestern women’s swimming and diving team, the workouts all season lead up to the three days of the Big Ten Championships.
Throughout the year, swimmers go through two-a-day practices, hours of weight lifting and dry-land workouts that leave their bodies sore and fatigued.
As the Wildcats head into the Big Ten Championships in Minneapolis this weekend, the question is: How much should the team rest so it can perform at its best?
Swimmers consider the three weeks leading up to Big Tens one of their most important training periods. Swimmers use this time, known as “tapering,” to rejuvenate their bodies after a year of intense workouts. This layoff involves reducing their workout yardage and weight lifting to let their bodies rest and recover from a year of hard work.
“Tapering is recharging the batteries,” NU coach Jimmy Tierney said. “Training is about adaptation. You train your body to work hard, and then you have to let it recover in order for you to perform at your highest level.”
After a season’s worth of work on endurance and strength training, the focus of practice changes to sharpening the details of races. Turns, take-offs and finishes — which can shave off crucial thousandths of a second — become the focal point. By the end of the three weeks, technique should be near perfect.
“We keep a fair amount of intensity during these weeks,” Tierney said. “But mostly we’re trying to sharpen the girls up. When we get to the meet, we don’t want the girls to think anything when they swim. We get the technique down beforehand, so they can swim naturally and comfortably.”
This preparation phase can vary slightly for each swimmer. In general, sprinters, older swimmers and swimmers with higher muscle mass need the most rest. Distance swimmers must maintain endurance, so they tend to decrease their practice yardage less than sprinters do.
“Sprinters want to rest themselves enough, but keep ready,” sophomore sprinter Michelle Oeser said. “We focus more on details because the little things really count.”
Every type of swimmer, however, tries to rest her muscles and stretch as much as possible. Many members of the team relax their bodies by sitting in the hot tub. Some get massages or do yoga.
“Staying loose and resting are really important,” senior Erica Rose said. “You’ll see swimmer avoiding walking around as much, or taking the elevators instead of the stairs. We pretty much lay low for a couple weeks to prepare.”
When workouts decrease in difficulty, some swimmers worry that they will get out of shape and lose some of their speed while resting. During this time, Tierney said, it is important the swimmers trust that rest is more beneficial than harmful.
“Most people think, ‘Why wouldn’t you love doing less work?’ and so forth,” Tierney said. “But there are always a few people who worry that their times will go down. A part of the tapering process is building confidence and getting them to trust in the system. There are always people who do have faith that, in the end, their hard work all season will have paid off.”
Another crucial focus of tapering is preparing mentally for such a big event. When a year of work leads to a couple days of intense swimming, confidence and mental focus play a large role in performance. Some swimmers meditate or use visualization techniques to remain calm.
“I talk to each girl about plans for tapering,” Tierney said. “We talk about what worked in the past and what things are mentally good for them to do to prepare.”
The women said they try to be extra supportive of each other in the weeks prior to the championships in order to boost team confidence. Out of the pool, each woman has a “secret psych” on the team to help her get pumped up for the weekend. The psycher buys her teammate gifts, decorates her locker and does other little things to get her excited.
“We always do a lot as a team, but we’ve been doing a lot more team bonding over the past few weeks,” freshman Ashley Welnhofer said. “We saw Miracle as a team and we had dinner at my house last night. We’re been trying to hang out as much as possible.”
In the pool, the Cats try to cheer each other on a little more.
“We’re a lot more hypersensitive toward feelings lately,” diver Leanne Dumais said.
