SWIMSTRONG DRYLAND

This past August, we partnered with SwimStrong Dryland in order to further advance our dryland program. SwimStrong Dryland is more than just a dryland program. Their program consists of strength and conditioning, psychology, nutrition, and leadership opportunities. Their focus is to better athletes as a whole. They write workouts for every group from our green groups all the way up to Senior 1, with the intentions of building agility, flexibility and mobility in the younger age groups, to more explosive and powerful movements for the senior groups. We also had our very own coach George Vlahos (West Senior 2 t) win the SwimStrong e Year for 2022!

In September we had 111 Senior level athletes from YOTA and an additional 45 senior level athletes from other North Carolina YMCA teams to Camp Seafarer for a weekend leadership retreat. We began the weekend with Friday evening events that were conducted by the Camp Seafarer staff and we got to know each other in very quick fashion! Saturday began with a keynote session entitled “Know Better, Do Better, that was presented by our own Yo Sobha. He engaged the swimmers with some thoughtful activities and gave them more opportunities to work together in their new groups.

Other workshops during the weekend included servant leadership, mentality, and goal setting. Swimmers also got to train in the pool, compete in an open water race on the river, complete 2 dryland sessions and participate in camp activities that included riflery, archery, golf, zip line, paddle sports, water sports, the blob, basketball, and 9 square. We began each day by attending optional yoga, then raising the flag before breakfast and lowered the flag prior to dinner. We enjoyed family style meals that were provided by Chef Allie and her staff and of course got to make s ’ mores over the fire on Saturday night! For sure one of the highlights of camp was the Saturday night variety show where we discovered hidden talents of many of our swimmers.

New friends were made, team bonding was at a premium and the bus ride home was quiet as swimmers tried to recover from the weekend with a nap to make up for lost sleep! We can’t wait to go back again next year!