Staying Healthy and Meet Recap of 1-10

Happy New Years folks!

Hopefully 2025 has been treating us well so far! Welcome to the first news post of 2025 where I will be covering how to stay healthy and recapping the meet this past weekend!

Firstly, let's talk about this weekend! We had a ton of great fast swims at the Boston Sports Institute with only two disqualification slips out of the entire team. That is something to celebrate. Everyone's technique has greatly improved and we are starting to take proper actions before and after our races (warming up and cooling down). A warm-up/cooldown pool is not always a commodity in some meets, but if it is every available, swimmers should always do some light swimming after their races to release any lactic acid they have built up in their previous event. It will make the next event hurt a little less and enable the swimmer to move better. As for the two disqualification slips, the two infractions were incredibly minor, but at the same time it is something that every swimmer should be aware of as the two were caught. Both infractions were because of a false start. That means that any movement after the start says "Take your marks" is not allowed. For the most part, meet officials are kind enough to let the swimmer(s) who fall into the pool climb back out and hop back up on the blocks again. A lot of higher level meets will automatically disqualify you if that happens. That being said, the main cause of this (at least at our local level) is that the swimmers try to anticipate the buzz rather than react. Every starter has their own pause period between the three words and the blare. It is not practical to anticipate the buzzer every time. We must learn to react to the sound rather than anticipate!

Now onto the more important topic for today: staying healthy. It is that time of the year where everyone seems to get sick! Obviously, getting sick is not exactly on everyone's New Year's resolution, so we need to do the best we can to stay healthy! Make sure to wash your hands and cover your mouth and all that good stuff that I'm sure the teachers have told the swimmers over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I'm not here to splurge y'all with information that has been repeated on a broken record for the past century. What athletes need to understand is that when the swimmers are working hard and training hard during the toughest time of the year physically and mentally (school and sports) is that we are actually sort of weaking our immune system a little bit because our body is trying so hard to recover the muscles and our fuel source that we've lost during our training. This is complete normal, by the way so don't worry! That being said, we need to make sure that we are taking appropriate actions to make sure that we are staying healthy. Make sure that swimmers are eating a healthy and balanced diet so that they are getting the proper nutrients to stay in tip-top shape! In addition, sleep is the best medicine out there, as much as it is most commonly sacrificed and overlooked. Now what happens when we do get sick? Well, it happens and that is okay too! When you do get sick, it is best not to push your body physically as  your body needs to devote a lot resources to beating whatever has infected you. Coming to practice and swimming while under the weather will most likely weaken you more, making it more likely to remain sick longer. A lot of the times, it is better to just stay home and recover than to just stick it out and do you. In fact, the duration of the illness is almost always shorter when the athlete does take the appropriate rest than when the athlete just sucks it up and goes to practice while sick anyway. Also, we don't want to be sick either, we being the coaches and I'm sure the peers wouldn't like to get sick either. All jokes aside, listen to your body! The human body is really good at sending our brain cues of what we need extremely effectively! Don't ignore it!

That is all for today! Hope everyone liked the first news of 2025! If you liked it, please leave a comment, like, and a subscribe! ...oh wait... this isn't YouTube...uh have a good rest of your day! :D