At school the word “Velocity” is spoken with a plethora of negative connotations attached to it. The reason for this is the fact that those that have to go through the program (which is virtually every athlete at the darn school) find it to be a painful, time consuming, and an ultimately dreadful form of conditioning. Of course, being the over enthusiastic athlete that I am, and apparent nonconformist, I was ecstatic when I heard swimming would begin Velocity strength training and conditioning two days a week.
Now, I am actually rather familiar with Velocity’s training methods. For starters my brother did it as part of his training regimen when he was on football. I also researched and watched some of their training techniques out of boredom one day. Finally, I used it as part of my football team’s daily warmup and conditioning regimen back when I was coaching flag football last year. So when I showed up on the field this last Wednseday I had a solid idea of what was coming, and unlike most of the Velocity nay sayers, I wasn’t afraid.
Velocity is tailored to condition Athletes first, and then serve as a tool to optimize performance second. Given the fact that I ride nearly 50–75 miles on the bike each week, swim constantly, and do a regimen of body weight exercises to improve core and upper body strength, I was already in pretty decent overall condition. This meant that Velocity would serve more so a tool for optimizing my abilities. We started with easy stuff, simple jogging to warm up the muscles, and some stretching exercises. The only thing that I don’t like about Velocity is the way stretching is handled. Velocity’s theory is to essentially keep the body in constant motion, so that when it comes time to perform, the muscles are ready to fire at 100%. It sounds good in theory, but when it comes to stretching, I find it hard to walk and properly stretch my quad, hamstring, or groin, as well as I can from the more traditional stretching techniques.
After stretching, or “Active Dynamic Warmup” as they called it, we went on to working on our explosiveness. Here’s where things got fun for me. First off, our drills mostly involved fast sprints and short jumping over only about a twenty yard distance. Basically, I was doing Parkour on a field, and since we were only doing our drills over twenty yards (bear in mind the average length of a swimming pool is twenty five yards), I was able to do the whole bit with a high level of intensity and quality. My fellow swimmers though? Not so much. A lot of people had issues sticking their landings when they jumped, and when it came to sprinting, they really only utilized one speed, which was jog.
Water break came and it was hilarious seeing the amount of people that rushed to the watering tree, only to realize that for one reason or another it wasn’t working. In comparison to my epic 40+ mile, two hour long bike rides, I was hardly dehydrated, or even thirsty, so I was able to manage without water, but it was obvious that some people badly needed the hydration. After our water break, in which case barely anyone got water, we moved on to working on the core and upper body strength. In other words, this was a fancy way of saying we’d be doing push ups and squats. Our coach set us at a set in which we would do about ten squats, and then five downs (which is a push up, but instead of going down all at once, you count five seconds as you descend). Probably my least favorite exercise in the world is the pushup, and that’s simply because I find them to be boring, repetitive, and ultimately too uncomfortable for me to enjoy. However, when I was doing these Velocity pushups I believe I changed my form slightly ( I lifted my knees up a tad bit, and moved my elbows closer than I usually do), and that allowed me to do the downs really well. Of course, during this portion people where dropping left and right. For whatever reason, people just can’t do pushups properly, and squats for someone who doesn’t run, or bike ride, really do suck.
After another water break, this time people actually got to drink some water, we moved onto some core work. Now when people think of working out the core, they think of doing situps and crunches, and they often think that somehow these two exercises alone are going to translate into an awesome six pack. While I can’t deny that the situp is great for developing baseline abdominal strength, it’s a fairly useless exercise. I mean, how often do you find yourself having to use your abs like you would when you do a sit up? The answer is basically never. With this fact in mind, I wasn’t surprised when we started doing a bunch of leg lifts and things of that nature to develop our core strength. These kind of exercises help develop the leg muscles, lower back, and all of the abdominal muscles. Basically, they are more practical than the good old situp but for someone who has never worked on their core, they are basically impossible to do. So I can’t say that I was surprised when the majority of the team kept failing to do the exercises and sets that we were given.
When the core work was finished we were dismissed by our coach, who remarked that she gave us the easiest Velocity workout she could due to the fact that it was our first time. Some people looked like they were going to die when they heard it could only get harder, while others like me, relished in the face of the challenge. I know this post may seem a little condescending in regards to my teammates, and that I’m going to come off as a complete braggart by remarking how good I performed at my first Velocity session, but I would like to extinguish such notions. If I didn’t spend every waking moment of my life at a gym, I would have just as much of a hard time with Velocity as my teammates did. In fact, I’ve often been in their shoes and know how much it sucks to be out of shape and be thrown into a full speed training regimen like that. Heck that’s the whole reason why I spend so much time working out, and that’s so I never have to repeat the process of getting in shape again. With that being said, it was rewarding to see all of my hardwork in the off-season pay off . The swim season is months away, and even when that time comes, I have little chance to relish in my off season accomplishments as I am forced to compete with all of the top notch swimmers in the program. However, for me to perform so well at what nearly every athlete at school considers to be “micro hell”, was something that made me proud. For the first time in a long while, I felt as if I actually accomplished something athletically, and that what I’ve been doing this off season is actually preparing me well for the swim season. It really is a nice feeling.
