Being an NCMP Aquagirl has proven to be one of the best experiences of my life. Being an Aquagirl means I get to swim on a high school team made up of girls from Newton, Colfax, Mingo, Pella, and Prairie City Monroe. We form a bond like sisters. Our swimming improves as we work hard together in the pool. There are several things you may want to know before you jump in with both feet.
- None of us know what is tighter, our swimsuits or our team bond!
Woohoo! Swim faster! You got this! These are the words that should be heard for a whole swim meet from all of your fellow aquagirls present. These are the words of awesome teammates standing at the end of the lane cheering like their lives depend on it. They cheer because they care and as a team we want to cheer so loud that no one has a choice to go anything but fast. Sometimes, the best part of the whole meet is cheering others on, especially if you had a rough swim yourself. When I am swimming and I see a bunch of my teammates cheering me on, I can not help but smile.
Even though I am not the fastest swimmer you will ever meet, I know my teammates care enough to cheer me on anyway. Swimming is a great sport because when you are having a bad day, it is a great way to ignore everything else and just hear the water. When you are with the Aquagirls, worries seem to melt away in the water. All of the girls on the team are approachable and always willing to listen and give you advice. They are willing to tell you the truth and they are always making you laugh when you didn’t even think your mood allowed it. That’s the first thing you should know about being an awesome Aquagirl, always be supportive, willing to share, willing to ask for help, and willing to find a smile after a bad day, because no one should be sad at swim practice.
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- We are driven by hard work and mental toughness!
Competitive swimming is proven to be one of the hardest sports there is. This means mental toughness and hard work is crucial! Not only are we swimming for our best times or for first place, we are doing our sport while holding our breath. If that is not difficult, I don’t know what is. When you hear your coach tell you you are swimming a 300 freestyle, you feel like there is nothing you would rather do than leave right there and never come back. It is also easy to just take it slow. A slow steady swim is the easy thing to do and it means you won’t be breathing as hard or be so tired. This is not how NCMP works, we work hard and we spend the whole season not working just on our swimming but on how we will get the best results.
Our ability to expect pain and work through it, is an integral part of practice According to the Swimming World Magazine, the fastest high school boys 50 freestyle time as of 2018 was 19.54 and this record was set in 2012. The fastest high school girls 50 freestyle time as of 2018 was 22.24 and it was set in 2010. Both of these times are crazy fast and even though they are record times and these swimmers got first place, a lot of them were ultimately swimming for themselves. Achieving something as big as setting a record and being first in a race is amazing. It feels even better to know you trained hard, through the invisible sweat, and the tears that no one knows you cried because, well, you swim in water. Practice is never easy, but we get through it together.
- Do not make the official raise his hand!
Hearing you have been disqualified in a race is never fun, so learning the rules and working on breaking the bad habits is very important. There are a lot of habits different people have, and these habits follow them into a race and even if they got their personal record in their race, it doesn’t count. “Like every sport, swimming follows a strict set of rules to ensure competitive balance and to protect the safety of its athletes. Any swimmer who violates the rules may suffer an immediate disqualification.
According to LiveStrong.com, ”Some of the ways to get disqualified you should try very hard to avoid are touching the wall with one hand during butterfly or breaststroke, scissor kicking on your breastroke (which is not going up, out, and around, but instead cheating and bringing your legs in a scissor like motion.) These are just a couple of many ways to get disqualified in a race. In a lot of our practices during the season we had days where we worked on technical things, such as drills that help us feel the swimming motion in a better way. The ways that help us to get faster.
- If you aren’t breathing hard, swim faster!
We have one big rule in swimming, this rule is sometimes hard to follow because it can get tricky. Do not breathe from the flags to the wall, or in and out of your flip turns. Breath control is so important in order to get faster times because of little changes that could be fixed with a little extra control. We like to say if you aren’t breathing hard, or you can still talk normally when you get out of the water, then you were not swimming fast enough and you need to step it up. Swimming hard means good times. If you start to get used to breathing hard every time you get out of the pool, it will get easier to work through pain. Sometimes it takes some time to accept you have to breath hard in practice too, so when it comes to an important meet, you can shoot off the block and be back in the time you have had your mind set on for so long. There is nothing better than the feeling of accomplishment while it is obvious in your heavy breathing you gave it your all.
- Healthy is happy, and hard!
You see a can of pop sitting in the fridge, it has been in there a while and it couldn’t hurt anyone, right? It is even Root Beer, your favorite! But you know you shouldn’t. It is swim season and we are not supposed to drink the sugary stuff. But you drink it anyway, because in the moment, it sounds amazing, it sounds like it will satisfy your body. Wrong! It is proven in a normal two hour practice of moderate swimming, you can burn up to sixteen thousand calories. The calories burned vary depending on weight and pace.
Burning extra calories means that even though pop and sugar is not a good idea, especially during swim season, you do need to make sure you take in a lot of calories to make up for the calories you burned in your work out. Carbohydrates and carbs are great for getting your calories. According to the Nutritional Needs for Competitive Swimmers website, “Carbohydrates yield and store lots of energy for the athlete to be able to compete at their optimal and desired level. Also the other macronutrients such as protein and fats are very important as well. An athlete like a competitive swimmer needs the carbohydrates because they should be the foundation of one’s diet. Carbs provide the most energy expenditure and can be stored for a longer period of time.”
Some of the great food options throughout the day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are whole grain wheat bread/toast, eggs, milk, tuna, turkey, chicken, fruit, whole grain pasta, grilled fish, lean steak, nuts and seeds. These are all great foods that provide a lot of calories, of course you want to make sure you have the right portions so you aren’t over eating your carbs and carbohydrates. Making sure you maintain good eating habits during the swim season is very important for your health and your well being.
- There is no such thing as time off!
Swimming is a year round sport. It is something that you train for all year round, something you can constantly improve, even in the off season. If you take too much time off of swimming you will lose your good technique and you will have to work hard to get back to those good times you had last season. Although NCMP only goes for a few months, it is not something you should stop doing when the season ends. Keep in touch with teammates and find some friends to go to the pool with you. Swimming off season is nice because you get a chance to work on the things you need to by yourself which include flip turns, breathing, and the stroke itself. Practice makes perfect. There are so many aspects to swimming you can always practice. NCMP swimming was one of best decisions I have ever made, the great friends and teammates, the great exercise, and the room there is for improvement.
References
- Swimming | Olympic Sport
- USA Swimming
- Swimmer’s Daily – Swimming news aimed at keeping the world aquatics community in general and the swimming community in particular informed on the latest swimmingnews
- SwimSwam – Swim News
- SwimOutlet.com – The Web’s Most Popular Swim Shop! Women’s Fashion | Men’s Swimwear | Pro+ Resistance Currents – Hot New Products! The site to find all yourswimming products!
- Slowtwitch.com, Your Source for Triathlon Training Plans and Open Water Swimming Information.
