Should You Warm Up in Your Tech Suit? & More From US Masters Coach of the Year Scott Bay, EP 235

Have you ever wondered how to maximize your performance at a swim meet? Join us as we catch up with the renowned master swim coach, Scott Bay, at the 15th annual Rowdy Gaines. Scott, the 2016's US Master Swimming Coach of the Year, hands out invaluable advice on how to approach a swim meet effectively - from a warmup routine that tunes your brain with your body, to adjusting your intensity and mentally preparing for every aspect of your race.

Drawing from his vast experience, Scott illustrates the importance of warmup not just for its physiological benefits, but the psychological ones too. He shares insights on the ideal warmup distance, tackling moments when you're not at your peak, and the significance of a good cooldown. Furthermore, he even settles the tech suit debate: should we warm up in them or not? Don't miss out on this enlightening chat that promises to enhance your time in the pool and performance at swim meets.

Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.

Transcript

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Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes.

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Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.

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Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast.

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I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am with my co-host, maria Parker.

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Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to be with you here today.

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Yes, and Maria, this is a special edition of Champions Mojo from the pool deck and we have a great interview for you today.

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It's brief, it's short, but it's powerful.

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Yeah, and we.

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I wasn't there, but I was able to listen to the interview and some great takeaways.

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Yeah, we hope you'll stick around and catch the takeaways.

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And here we go.

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We're on deck with Scott May, the very famous master swim coach, who actually was the US master swimming coach of the year in 2016.

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He's the head coach of the Legends master swimming club out of Central Florida and we are with him on deck at the 15th annual Routy Games knee, where he is also the meat director, so it's great to get a minute with him and Scott.

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We wanted to ask you today all these people from brand newbies to you know lead world record holders what do you suggest when a swimmer comes to a meat?

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Is a good meat warmup?

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That's an excellent question, and one of the things that's highly dependent on is, again, the physiology part and all that good stuff, and that's going to depend on your experience with the volume you swim, what intensity level you swim at and what adventure swimming.

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So, when we put all that aside, the most important part of your meat is going to be the warmup.

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Why?

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Not because of the physiology part, but because of the psychology part, the warmup?

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We do this in practice as well.

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Even with my club team.

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One of the things we do in practice is make sure that they understand that the warmup is where you're connecting your brain with the rest of your body.

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So what you're doing in the warmup pool is making sure that you're feeling the strokes and everything else You're really dialing in for your best performance.

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The brain controls the rest of the body, so you want to make sure you get all those movements dialed in.

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Yes, of course, you want to mix up the intensity and get up to race pace and all that other good stuff.

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But more important for us is okay, think your race all the way through, from every pushoff, every streamline, every breakout, every stroke you take.

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That's where you need to have the value in the warmup.

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I love it.

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Okay, so is there a distance that someone should cover?

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So let's take the 100, for example, like this If I'm swimming 100, what would be an amount that I might want to warm up?

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Again for our club team, for our kids and for our adults as well.

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We have what's called the standard meat warm up and it's just a whole bunch of distances.

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You start with 400, 500-ish day and then we run up something at 25s, 50s, all the way up to a distance and we do things at pace.

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So we find that warm up lane where you feel people are swimming pretty fast.

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You do some get-dies at 25s.

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Of course you're respectful of your lane mates, but one of the things you want to do is make sure you get up to that race speed.

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Now when you're doing that and you still feel like garbage because many of us do, especially as we get a little bit older or experienced I should say take a minute and just swim some easy stuff and then try it again.

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You'll find that a lot of times your body is like Newtonian mechanics.

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If it's at rest it wants to stay at rest and it kind of resists what you're trying to do to it.

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But if you're given a chance to say okay and give up on your lane, control your body, everything works out pretty well for that.

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I love it.

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Now should we warm up in our tech suits, or warm up in another suit and put on your tech suit, or how do you recommend that?

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Wow, that really depends on how well your tech sheet fits, because tech suits especially for the female of the species.

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It's an ordeal to get on and off Because so I've heard I've never put one on before myself.

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But one of the things you want to do is if you warm up in just a regular sheet and then you put on your tech sheet and warm up again small warm up just before your event.

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That's always what we recommend.

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It's been pretty successful so far.

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But like anything else, it's swimming.

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Let's see if it works, and if it doesn't, then we'll try something else.

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All right, now how about cool down?

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So we've done our race.

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Should we cool down?

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Super and coordinate that you cool down after every race.

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There's a lot of things in the blood stream, a couple of bad things too.

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If you don't give your body a chance to buffer that properly, then you're going to probably feel the effects later on, if not that same day, certainly the next.

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So there's really no way to simulate actual race intensity and get close.

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There's no way to simulate actual race intensity in the training pool, so your body's going to experience a different kind of stress.

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So that cool down super important.

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Awesome, scott.

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We really appreciate you taking the time in the middle of the meet where you're the meat director at.

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Things are for One Great.

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Anything else that you would like to share, that I haven't asked you about the meat, or just in general.

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For those of you guys who have been coming to this meet for a while.

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Thank you first of all.

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The second thing is you guys have not experienced Orlando in mid-October, especially the someplace cool at the great short course meters meet.

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If you haven't swum short course meeting, you have an opportunity to get a best time because you have your own short course meters and it's just fun.

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It's very warm and inviting, it's very laid back and I'm glad that you keep coming back every year.

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Yeah, it's been going for 15 years.

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Super fast, cool, super great, blaying the awards, the High Point Awards, the medals you guys just do it right.

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We got all kinds of vendors here, routing games himself, scott, you and Gillian put on an awesome show here every year and we just love it Really appreciate.

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Thanks for being with us.

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Thanks very much, my pleasure.

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Stay tuned for the takeaways.

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And now the takeaways.

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So Scott Bay, I wish I could have talked with him longer.

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He is one of my favorite coaches and he's a great coach.

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He's won a lot of awards.

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He's at the top of this game.

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He writes a lot of stuff for Swimmer Magazine, for USA Swimming.

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However, at the moment I was interviewing him, he is the meat director for the Rowdy Gaines Classic and has been for 15 years, so I think he was a little busy, which I just wanted to hit him with the warm up and cool down.

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Yeah, it was good, yeah, so what was your takeaway?

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I loved the takeaway where he talked about doing some odd-paced stuff, some sort of faster stuff.

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This happens to me all the time.

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He said you'll do it and sometimes you feel it's airable and a set of panicking over that.

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Just rest a little bit, especially, I think, as we get older.

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Rest a little bit and then try it again in a few more minutes and you're going to feel better.

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That's very true, especially as we get older.

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It takes a minute sometimes to wake your body up and not to let that kind of make you panic.

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Oh gosh, I feel terrible.

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So that was one of my takeaways, but you yes, I like that a lot.

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I think you said connects the brain of the body, and I've done the same thing where I just always try to hold a certain pace when I'm swimming for my events and then if I don't hit that pace and warm up, oh no.

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But trying it a couple of times is worth it and that's why you need to give yourself time and space to warm up.

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You really do like enough time.

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So my takeaway from this was obviously cooled out is important, and you've got to move the lactic acid out of your body and we hate to do it.

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But the sooner you can do it, the closer to your race that you can get in and keep moving, the better.

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The standard rule is usually double the distance that you swim at least, but that does not apply to like I was a joke.

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When I do a mile, oh, I got to swim down two miles but you can feel it in your body when you feel better.

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So that and then just that.

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If anyone is looking for a great meet with all of those things that I mentioned, the Rowdy Games Masters Classic is every year in October.

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It's the same weekend, it's the middle weekend in October, it's in Orlando.

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It's a fast pool, it's well run, it's got great everything and Jillian and Scott are the race directors and they do an awesome job and I highly recommend it.

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That's great.

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All right, maria, another great one.

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Love you, love you too.

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Bye-bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast.

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