Preparing for Fall High School Swimming

Come fall, high school age ANA Synchro athletes often join their school’s speed swimming teams in addition to returning to synchro.  But does competitive racing really mix well with synchro?  “Yes!” says ANA Synchro Head Coach Leah Pinette, who swam on her high school swim team while maintaining synchro as her primary sport.  “It’s a great conditioning tool for the beginning of the season.  When I tried out, I didn’t really know the proper techniques or how to start and turn properly.  Being on the racing team helped me develop good stroke technique, which, in turn, helped my synchro.”   Pinette still holds records at her alma mater in the 200 free relay and 400 free relay.

ANA Synchro athlete
Evan Costanzo swims
 for Central Catholic
High School  in
addition to synchro.

“Speed swimming allows us to focus on our personal best,” says rising sophomore and Central Catholic High School Raider Evan Costanzo, commenting on the individualized nature of racing.  “Like synchro, we set important goals, but, unlike synchro where we really have to work as a group, we learn to achieve them independently in speed swimming.  I also enjoy all the team bonding and school spirit that you acquire throughout the season.”

Read on as ANA Synchro talks to Andover High School Head Coach Marilyn Fitzgerald and North Andover High School Head Coach Erin Cammann about what synchro athletes can be doing over the summer to prepare for high school swim team training camp in August.

ANA Synchro:  Do synchronized swimmers make good competitive racers?

Coach Fitzgerald:  Over the years we've had many girls crossover from synchronized swimming to swimming for Andover High School, and it’s an easy transition. I am gleeful when I get synchro girls to be on the team.  The one thing they have that I like to use as an example to all of the kids on the team is phenomenal breath control, which is so important for going into and out of your turns in a competitive race.   And they have a great ability to streamline, which is something they've learned since they joined synchro, so I don't have to spend much time explaining that concept to them.

Coach Erin: I agree with Marilyn! We love it when we hear there are synchro girls coming to NAHS.  They may not have racing experience, but they are so comfortable in the water that they pick up on racing skills really quickly.  Some kids get in the pool and think they need to splash a lot in order to go anywhere.  Then you look at the synchro girls-- they just glide along and make it look easy. They instinctively know how to be smooth and efficient when they move through the water.

ANA Synchro athletes (l-r) Grace Alwan, Sophia Ju,
and Nicole Carzo will trade their glitter & sequins
for the blue & gold of Andover High as they take on
the challenge of high school speed swimming this fall
with Head Coach Marilyn Fitzgerald (l) and
Head Diving Coach Becky Pierce (r)
who came to watch the team’s annual show in April.

ANA Synchro:  Is there anything ANA Synchro athletes can be doing over the summer to prepare for training camp?

Coach Fitzgerald:  If someone is trying out for the first year, my recommendation would be to get some running in over the summer.  In the early parts of our season we do some running for aerobic training, which also helps strengthen their legs.  I would also recommend a fitness regimen, which probably includes the very same things they do for synchro – stretching, sit-ups, and anything for core because core is huge in swimming.  And they shouldn’t forget about nutrition.  A lot of people take a vacation from eating the right food over the summer, and I would ask the girls to focus more on eating well.

Coach Erin: Yeah, the running really gets everyone!  I think a bunch of the girls on my team would say that preseason running is the hardest thing we do all year!  But we do it to build up the girls’ strength, which will help them swim faster and—more importantly—avoid getting hurt.  The whole point of preseason is to establish a good foundation for the rest of the season.  We are careful—both in the pool and out of it—to build the girls up gradually.  If a girl comes to the first day of preseason after a summer of loafing around, she’ll obviously have a harder first couple practices than a girl who has gotten regular exercise.  So, the more active you are through the summer, the easier your adjustment to the start of the season will be.

ANA Synchro:  What about swimming?  Should they do laps?

Coach Fitzgerald:  Obviously the swimming part is important.  If girls have a backyard pool or have access to a pool to practice in, they can double the amount of laps they normally do.  And they can work on kicking skills.  We have done more with fins over the last couple years with great results, so I would suggest wearing fins during laps and do some power kicking.  But really, most of all, I recommend coming in with a great attitude and be willing to learn something brand-new because they’re going to hear things that they haven't heard before and they’re going to be asked to do things they haven't had to do before like swim longer yardages.  But synchro girls already have the discipline to learn and the mindset to do what it takes to get the job done, especially when they’re trying to do something for the team. 

ANA Synchro athlete Maxie Zimmerman enjoys swimming
for North Andover High School Head Coach Erin Cammann.

Coach Erin:  The synchro girls are usually ahead of the game because they start the preseason being used to spending long hours in the water.  If girls wanted to swim some extra laps during the summer just to reassure themselves that they’ll be okay, that wouldn’t hurt them.  But honestly they’ll be fine. Their base level of conditioning and water comfort will be a huge asset once the season starts.

ANA Synchro:  They probably learn a lot on your teams!

Coach Fitzgerald:  Synchro girls have been very coachable, and that's a plus. I encourage everyone to have an open mind and be able to be coached.  I always ask them to imagine a big funnel right above their head.  I even get them to put their hands up over their head like a funnel to think about how much can come in that I can teach them.  And then I ask them to think about how much more can come in when they put their hands out wider, essentially making their funnels bigger.  I learned a long time ago that nobody purposefully does something the wrong way.  In their mind’s eye, they think they’re doing it right.  So usually, as soon as I let people know they’re doing something wrong but not intentionally, then they want to intentionally make it right.

Coach Erin: I think the most valuable things they’ll learn will be about what it means to be on a high school team.  The girls at NAHS have a ton of fun outside of the water.  They organize spirit days—my favorite last year was when they all came to school dressed up like cowgirls—and the upperclass girls take turns hosting pasta dinners on the nights before swim meets.  They do a great job creating a network for each other.  The older girls give advice about which classes to take and which teachers to seek out, they support each other as they work toward all their goals—both individual ones and team ones—and they just basically become incredibly close to each other.  I love high school swimming, and I am so happy each year to see the freshmen come in and realize how much fun it can be.

Start dates for the local high school swim team training camps: 

Andover High School -  August 21 @ 7am at the Greater Lawrence Technical School

North Andover High School - August 21 @ 3pm at the Greater Lawrence Technical School

Central Catholic High School - August 21

Healthy Living & Injury Prevention – ANA Synchro Lays a Strong Foundation for Both

The Y stands for Youth Development, Healthy Living, and Social Responsibility.  Earlier blog posts have addressed how ANA Synchro embraces the Youth Development and Social Responsibility pillars of that famous Y philosophy, and in this final post of the three-part series, we turn our attention to the Healthy Living component.  We’re not going to try to cover it all, though!  Healthy Living is much too broad of a topic for a single blog post.  Specifically, we want to talk about Injury Prevention. 

“There are always going to be injuries, no matter the sport, age, or participation level,” says ANA Synchro Head Coach Leah Pinette, who had a couple overuse injuries and one knee injury requiring surgery when she was competing.  “I am thrilled to be bringing some injury prevention activities into our ANA Synchro program.  The beauty of it is that what we do proactively now to help avoid injury and maximize participation and performance is what our athletes need to do anyway to be active and healthy for the long haul, well into adulthood.” 

Andrew Cannon (center) with Head Coach Leah Pinette (R)
and Coach ZsuZsa Belhazy-Kovacs (L)

Andrew Cannon, Director of Sports Medicine at Northeast Rehab and Adjunct Faculty & Team Physical Therapist at Merrimack College agrees.  “To the young athlete, it’s all about success and performance right now.  But the other part of it is that you want them to come out of a youth sports experience with a sense that being physically active is good – that it’ll make them successful because they’re going to be healthier.”

Pinette met Cannon, also a Y Board Member, last November when they were coincidentally stationed together to greet runners who were coming to the Y to pick up their bib numbers and t-shirts for Andover’s annual Feaster Five Road Race.  It didn’t take long for the pair to discover they shared a mutual professional interest in injury prevention. 

“In working through my own injuries, I learned there are a lot of preventive exercises out there,” says Pinette.  “So we’re starting to bring them into our dry land practices.  Squats, for example, are great for synchronized swimmers because they provide a nice balance to all the front-facing moves we tend to do in the water.”

Read on as ANA Synchro talks to Andrew Cannon more about injury prevention and how it relates to our team:

Andrew Cannon talks to athletes and their parents at
ANA Synchro's first Injury Prevention Meeting

ANA Synchro:  What are your initial impressions of synchronized swimming, in general, as a sport?

Andrew Cannon:  There are very few things that the athletes need to do for synchro that aren't also part of a healthy lifestyle.  One of the benefits of synchronized swimming with somebody like Leah in charge is that she's aware that there needs to be a balance for them to have success. There's got to be flexibility; there's got to be strength; and there’s got to be cardiovascular endurance – both aerobic and anaerobic.  So, really, these girls are simply asked to be well-rounded athletes.  Are there parts of the sport that are more risky?   Yes – the excessive flexibility to adopt some of the positions is one example.  But those things just need to be monitored, and the negative trends need to be identified as soon as they start. 

ANA Synchro:  What do you say to the athlete or parent who thinks they just need to throw more hours at the sport to improve?

Andrew Cannon:  I think it should be smart hours.  No matter what the sport or activity is, you will get better if you do more of it.  However, if that's all you do, your tolerance to stress is actually lessened.  Part of being able to do more of your sport or activity is staying injury free, or injury diminished.   You don’t achieve that by just doing your activity and nothing else.  You achieve it by augmenting it with flexibility training, balance training, strength training, maybe running or some other impact activity – all things that ultimately allow you to tolerate the repetition of your sports-specific training.  And in terms of just hours spent on the sport, I think athletes and parents need to broaden their thinking as to what those hours are.

ANA Synchro:  What do you mean, “broaden our thinking”?

Andrew Cannon:  It's always challenging to make the point to high school kids—male or female—that part of their training hours is that they need to train eight hours of their day by sleeping.  Because sleep is critical. I don't expect that that's necessarily going to change all that much, but we just try to get them to understand that sleep is not the thing that gets in the way of doing other activities, it's actually important.  And, if we’re talking about more hours of training, I’d like to encourage people to consider that 90 additional minutes a day of training can be geared into three 30-minute blocks called breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  That's an hour and a half of training that's geared toward putting fuel in the furnace.

ANA Synchro:  I’m sure many of our readers haven’t really thought of it that way before!

Andrew Cannon:  It's that consistency of training, including food and sleep, that will make them successful. And the consistency of training isn't a season.  It isn't a year.  It’s multiple years.  One of the things that makes it so hard in dealing with the high school and collegiate population is that their systems are so tolerant to error that they perceive something is not really an error.  For example, they may not get a lot of sleep and still be okay; then they’ll perceive that sleep is not really important.  Or, they might not eat great but still feel like they have energy; then they’ll think fuel is not that important.  Or, they may not stretch or strengthen and not get injured; therefore they would feel stretching and strengthening is not important.  So every once in a while with this age group, they can pop out a strong performance under-rested and under-fueled.  But that's not going to make them successful in the long term. I think what needs to happen, at some point, is to get them to experience how they feel rested and well-fueled versus not rested and not well-fueled.  

Helping the team understand proper technique.

ANA Synchro:  Is there one key thing athletes and their families should know about injury prevention?

Andrew Cannon:  Early detection is key.  Things are easy to deal with early, and harder to deal with later.  The challenge is to separate out accurate reports that are concerning and other reports that are maybe just ordinary aches and pains.  There are a lot of discomforts that you work through in sports, and part of the education process, as time goes on, is to help athletes and their parents understand what those things are that you can work through and what those things are that you can’t. 

ANA Synchro:  Any final thoughts?

Andrew Cannon:  My own daughters are adults now, and one of the things I’m most proud of is that, as former high school and collegiate athletes, even though they don’t have the formal structure of belonging to an institutional athletic team right now, they still are actively seeking out playing the sport that they have been involved with since middle school.  They still have that passion for the sport and they understand that a healthy life is being physically active and physical activity is the cornerstone to overall  health and happiness.   I see too many kids in high school and college that, due to the intensity of participation and pressure to succeed, they have that passion wrung right out of them and they do not see the value of physical activity.  You don’t have to be super competitive or a super athlete to be active regardless of your age.

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  And I would like to add that there is much more to come for ANA Synchro in the area of injury prevention!  I have enjoyed meeting and talking with Andy over the course of this year, and I look forward to more discussions of how we can continue to improve our team.  We have many ideas, from getting all the athletes baseline tested for concussion to getting more nutrition information out to the athletes and their families.  Stay tuned! 

Andrew Cannon can be reached at Northeast Rehab, 978-521-1186.

Leah Pinette can be reached at the Andover/North Andover YMCA, 978-685-3541.