Northshore Fitness | Winter 2023

Swimmers Enjoy Our Drylands Program

By Josh Curry, Pelican Athletic Club

One of the core pieces of PAC is our swim department. Some aquatics programs include swim lessons, adult swim classes, specialty programs, swim meets, seasonal swim teams, and year-round swim teams. Swimming is so popular with children. It can keep kids engaged daily, provide hours of cardiovascular and endurance exercise, and reduce impact compared to other forms of exercise like running. However, experienced swimmers would agree that they must address the wear and tear on muscles and skeletons as they move through the sport. As swimmers get older and more experienced, they generally spend more time in the water each week, which means less time for their skeleton and muscles to deal with the full force of gravity. So while kicking and stroking help keep muscles and bones strong, it does not strengthen them in the ways that make them strong on dry land. This is where the Fitness department and the Swim department merge our specialties and improve the lives and performance of swimmers through the Drylands programs.

The Drylands program started years ago for high schoolers only. They would meet twice weekly for over an hour of strength training. For the first year, there was a big struggle with body awareness, coordination, and group organization. Some days the coaches got it right, and others felt like they were herding baby giraffes with dumbbells in their hands. Finally, after some trial and error, they developed a solid program that was consistently easier to implement. As a result, they saw swimmers make PRs in the pool, suffer land-based injuries less often, and suffer from overuse injuries less often. The addition of the AG1 and AG2 classes

(grade school and middle/jr high) was an obvious next addition. The coaches knew that if there weren’t some “base” to the swimmers’ exercise experience, they would continually suffer a quality control problem with each new wave of Drylanders. The goal for AG1 is to provide familiarity with equipment and coaches, coordination and communication through games, strength, and stability through bodyweight exercises, and overall athleticism through sprint and jump training. The goal for AG2 is to provide increased strength and stability through more challenging exercises and a wider variety of modalities. AG2 participants join high schoolers when the swim and fitness coaches deem them ready to advance. Coaches, swimmers, and parents have well received this overarching Drylands program. The coaches have already seen drops in injury frequency, resilience in the face of injury, more powerful dives and flip turns, more extended kicking power, and healthier swimmers. The coaches have great faith in this program’s ability to continue enhancing PAC’s competitive swim program. Additionally, the coaches hope the program is an example to young swim coaches all over the community.