'It was like an octopus attacked you': How swimmers embrace high tech for biggest meets

No other sport has a postseason like swimming. Because no other sport puts so much science into being different — and better — in its biggest meets.

It starts with tapering, which I have written about before. Coaches lighten the practice load at the end of the season to keep swimmers fresher. Harlem, for instance, cuts its practice workload down from swimming 8,000 yards a day in practice to around 3,000 in the final week of the season.

In no other sport do you cut your workouts in half before a big meet.

“That’s something a lot of people don’t understand,” Boylan coach Brian McGuire said. “But you don’t want to lift weights like football and basketball. Swimming is a totally different beast. Your body has all this energy where it has been depleted for so long (by longer workouts). That’s where you get the bump.”

More: Taper: How swimmers all peak at the right time

But tapering workouts to keep swimmers fresh is only half of why virtually every swimmer swims his fastest times of the year at sectionals and state. The other half is science.

Here is a look behind the scenes at what local swimmers do before competing in Saturday’s sectional at Byron.

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Cupping

The pool is loaded with swimmers at the end of the year who are covered by large, purple, perfectly round welts all over their shoulders and upper backs. That’s because they have put small cups made of glass or plastic on their muscles and then treat them through suction or heat.

“It was funny,” Harlem senior Evan McDonald said of seeing himself for the first time after trying the process. “I thought it was cool having them all over my back and my shoulders. It was like an octopus attacked you.”

Remember when scientists used to debate whether a curveball really curved? Well, there is also debate whether cupping actually helps. But swimmers at all levels swear by it.

“I didn’t know what to expect going into it,” McDonald said. “I just knew a lot of people did it and I was supposed to do it. The first time, I noticed a big difference. My muscles felt better. I felt better, faster overall.”

Vito Skominas, one or the top swimmers on Hononegah’s 14-time defending NIC-10 champions, thinks cupping helps but isn’t sure how much.

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“There are other factors in swimming you can do, especially in taper, that help more than all the fancy cupping stuff,” Skominas said. “Everybody has their own method of cupping, usually putting them where it’s sore. I put mine in a consistent pattern and leave them on for five minutes. When I first did it as a sophomore, I didn’t notice crazy power or anything. It’s like eating your vegetables: you don’t notice a big difference but the difference could be there.”

Ice baths

Like cupping, this is all about making a swimmer’s sore, tired muscles feel rejuvenated. Auburn swimmers do it two at a time for 10 minutes after practice in the final week before sectionals.

“It’s like a muscle re-set,” Auburn coach Dennis Bullard said. “It flushes out your lactic acid because your heart rate gets faster. Your sore shoulders will not be quite as sore. They will also be numb from the cold, too.

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“They also have to take their shower before the ice bath. If they take it after, they have just negated the ice bath.”

“I hate doing ice baths with all of my heart,” said Harlem’s McDonald, "but man do they make a difference. I go in feeling like crap after a hard workout and then just feel so much better afterward.”

Shaving

Swimmers are famous for shaving their legs before a big meet. But you might not know that they use a bare razor.

“You don’t put any lotion on, because that clogs the pores and negates the meaning of the shave, which is to make you feel the water,” Auburn coach Dennis Bullard said.

“Shaving,” Harlem coach Todd Mueller said, “lowers the amount of resistance the water has on their skin. You shave your legs and torso and your armpits, but generally leaved the arms alone. The arms you want to have some drag. You want to be able to pull water. You don’t want your arms slipping through the water.”

Diet

Auburn’s 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle champion James Murray has cut out all sweets at the end of the season. Harlem’s McDonald has cut out caffeine as well as sugar. Many teams also have pasta parties the night before sectionals. The idea, also famously used by distance runners, is that pasta is a carbohydrate that will be digested and turned into energy in perfect time for the big race. Or swim. Harlem also uses its pasta party as a bonding experience, where some swimmers dye their hair.

Stimulating the legs

Auburn has a couple of rapid reboot recovery systems where athletes will sit in a chair with their leg encased in a long compression boot. It is supposed to allow your body to flush out metabolic waste and allow new blood flow to places that need it.

Hiring a massage therapist

Mueller’s son, Jeremy, graduated last year after setting Harlem school records in every individual event. He used to see a massage therapist to stretch out tissues, become more flexible and relieve points of tension and stress. The goal is to treat myofascial tissue, which can compress muscles, nerves, and blood vessels if it is too tight. “I tell parents about it and then leave it up to the families,” Mueller said. “I tell them it’s an option and they can go out and find it themselves if they want. It’s not cheap.”

Tech suits

A swim suit seems like the simplest form of athletic equipment, but the fastest suits can cost up to $600. “And they are only good for 10 to 12 swims,” Auburn’s Bullard said.

But they make a noticeable difference.

“Everybody who puts on a tech suit is going to feel faster, no matter what,” Hononegah’s Skominas said. “You feel like you are Iron Man.”

Tech suits last longer than in the old days, when they were only good for five or six swims. And old ones still work. Just not as good. So everyone saves their new suits for the end of the season.

“They are super tight,” Auburn’s Bullard said. “Water just flows off of them. If you get the right fit, it’s going to take you 20 minutes to put the thing on. I’ve seen people break them trying to put them on.”

Picturing the perfect swim

Boylan prepares for sectionals by sending swimmers to their room.

“We do a lot of visualization and mental preparedness,” coach McGuire said. “We try to swim our races beforehand. We do predictions. Kids will sit in a quiet room with a partner or by themselves. We start the watch and see them swim their entire race in their head. The theory is before you ever step into the pool, you have seen your race 10 or 15 times so you will know exactly how to do it.”

Don’t deviate too much

If it seems like everything changes in the final two weeks of the swim season, well, some say it changes too much. The best NIC-10 swimming team tries to keep things somewhat the same. Hononegah begins its taper two weeks before state, but only dips its toe into all of the high-tech stuff — other than the tech suits.

“I try not to overthink things,” Skominas said. “I am a high school athlete, not a D-I college athlete who is going off to the Olympics. I try to keep things simple.”

His coach agrees.

“Taper is not doing something too different than what they have been doing all season,” Hononegah coach Darryl McCabe said. “But cupping and ice baths, I leave that up to the individual swimmer. If they ask, I usually err on the side of if you have not been doing it, don’t do it.

“Even something marginal like an ice bath, it’s usually better to stay consistent. If it’s not a consistent part of your plan, you don’t want to do something so much out of the ordinary you feet it is that different a meet. There is more excitement (for sectionals and state), but on some level you want to feel like it’s just a normal meet.”

Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: How and why high school swimmers embrace high-tech for biggest meets