Grant-A-Week WINNER
Synchronized Swimming

Grace, Power, Success
Written by: Claire Carver-Dias

Everyone knows that it takes the strength and power of a weightlifter, the agility of a track athlete, and the grace of a ballerina to be a good synchronized swimmer.

It really does. We work hard. Really hard. Eight hours a day, six days a week. We are a group of ten women devoted to our Olympic goal: a gold medal performance.

The road that leads to achieving this goal is rough terrain. Our training regimen includes strength training, circuit training, running intervals, speed swimming, endurance training' Pilates, stretching, team building, choreography sessions, synchro specific training, and ballet.

All of these training components are equally important. So how on earth do we fit all this into our practices? We are constantly searching for new ways to be efficient at practice. There are stopwatches going during each segment of training. . .

And then there's our ballet classes. We did our bar exercises on this tiny ballet bar in the basement gym of the pool building. For a while we tried to fit everyone on the bar at once. After a few bruises from close proximity grand battements, we started splitting the team into two groups to perform the exercises.

On our efficiency meter this plan ranked badly. Everything took twice the time. We were wasting time that could be spent perfecting our Olympic routines.

Thanks to NIKE/CAAWS Grant-A-Week Program, we've purchased an extension for the existing bar. Now we can work at the same time, as a team, and save precious minutes. When you're working towards gold medal performances every minute is valuable.

Thanks

Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity contact us