Lauren Siegel (pictured above) is a senior Back/IM swimmer on the women’s swimming and diving team. (Photo Courtesy of Lauren Siegel).
While quarantine has been challenging for everyone, collegiate swimmers have had it particularly rough due to their distance from the pool.
Some of these athletes went from spending up to six days a week in the pool, to no days at all as public pools were closed until recently due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This forced swimmers to adapt to a new style of workouts and a completely new workout environment.
Geneseo swimmer Lauren Siegel describes the challenge of coming to terms with this new way of life.
“It was really hard for me personally because my entire life, since I was 10 years old, I've been doing competitive swimming,” Siegel said. “Even prior to that, I had some practice and practice was like my daily routine, so it was really hard to transition to working out without a pool at home.”
For Siegel, one of the hardest aspects of working out in quarantine was that she didn’t have her coaches and teammates with her to motivate her.
“I've always had a regimented workout where I have a coach watch me and like tell me what to do and with other people,” she said. “I learned that working out with other people pushes me to do more.”
Siegel discusses that for her, quarantine was difficult because she was always so used to being busy. She would get up, have a few minutes to get ready and then get to practice. After that, she would have class and other scheduled activities.
The lack of a rigid schedule was something she had to adapt to because she had to rely on herself to motivate her to keep to a daily schedule.
Siegel explains that the length of quarantine has also played a role in the toll it has taken on athletes.
“I think at first, you know, our season is so long that it was nice to have a little bit of a break, but not the type of break that we're having now. There's still like no pools to really go to,” she said.
While Siegel now is home with her family and has access to their pool, it’s not at all like the competitive swimming pools she usually works out in, which eliminates a lot of the workouts she usually does with her team.
This has resulted in Siegel relying on running, which is something she wouldn’t normally do.
“I have bad knees, so I just really did not like running,” she said. “I have an elliptical in my house, so I've been doing that a ton because it's cardio [that put’s less] strain on your joints than running does.”
Siegel also explains that the lack of a gym has been problematic and has resulted in her coaches sending her team workouts that can be done without weights. While this keeps them in shape to an extent, Siegel says the lack of lifting has caused them to all lose some muscle mass.
For other athletes in her situation, Siegel recommends reaching out to teammates for support.
“I feel like the best thing is to remember that there are so many other people in your sport or in any sport going through similar things. Reach out [to your] teammates, [get] inspiration from your teammates about what they're doing,” Siegel said. “Also, it helps to know that the feelings that you have, they have too.”