One with the Water is proud to announce founder and head coach Kenneth Rippetoe is now a Level 3 certified U.S. Masters Swimming Coach.

The US Masters Swimming is a nationwide, membership based nonprofit offering benefits to over 50,000 Master Swimmers around the country. These benefits include liability insurance, sport specific publications, sanctioned events, and more. USMS programs vary by location but the majority of programs include certified Masters Coaches on the pool deck. The highly trained coaches create and implement workouts and provide expert feedback and training.

By increasing his U.S. Masters Swimming Coach Certification to level 3, Coach Rippetoe continues to work hard to provide expert, quality coaching to swimmers of every age at every stage

“As a swimming and strength coach, it’s important for me to keep up with my education in order to continue to add value to our clients. My certifications let them know that I take this very seriously and they’re going to get the newest and best information to help them live a healthy and happy life, and a safe, smart workout when they’re with us.” – Coach Rippetoe

Adult Swim Lessons

From non-swimmer to competitor to triathlete, One with the Water adult swimming lessons provide a personal and customized swimming program designed to increase your skill, comfort level, and safety in the water.

And if you are a swimmer over the age of 18, consider all that a US Masters membership can do for you.

Congratulations again to Coach Kenneth, and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. (Remember that whole “Wait 30 minutes after eating to swim” is, in fact, an old wives tale favored by grandmas everywhere.)

As you give thanks this week for all that you’ve been given, would you consider using your resources to help your community? Aside from being the best swim school in LA, One with the Water is a nonprofit foundation specializing in teaching the most vulnerable members of our community the lifesaving skill of swimming. But we can’t do it without you.

By donating directly to our nonprofit foundation, you can help reduce the risk of drowning for at-risk populations by up to 80%. Thanks for being a part of our One with the Water family!

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Press Release: US Masters Coaching Certification appeared first on One with the Water.

For some folks, though, strong and brave isn’t just a tagline or an  ideal, or even an effective way to feed your children healthy food.

For those living with Type 2 Diabetes, strong and brave is a life-saver.

WHAT IS DIABETES

Diabetes is a metabolic disease occurring when the body is unable to process food to use as energy. The pancreas, an organ located close to the stomach, makes insulin to help sugar (glucose) enter the cells of the body. Diabetes prevents the body from making enough insulin or using the insulin it has correctly. As a result, sugar builds up in the blood. Complications from diabetes range from heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, and amputations. According to the CDC, it is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.

Pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and PCOS, are all conditions that progress to Type II diabetes, a process that can be halted with diet and exercise.

About 90% of all diabetes cases are Type 2, or adult-onset Diabetes. There are a variety of risk factors that make a person vulnerable, including age, weight, race, and family history. The usual treatment of Type 2 involves home monitoring of blood sugar, diet, exercise, and sometimes insulin injections and oral medicine.

At One with the Water, the exercise is where we come in!

BENEFITS OF STRENGTH TRAINING

While aerobic exercise has always been prescribed to help manage the disease, the American Diabetes Association also recommends that adults with Type 2 Diabetes start strength training to better control blood sugar as well. But that isn’t the only benefit! Studies completed over the last 20 years show clear benefits of strength training for diabetics. They include:

• Improved sensitivity to insulin – most important!
• Also, reduced risk of heart disease and lower blood pressure
• Weight loss
• And finally, stronger bones

This is applicable to pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and PCOS, all conditions that progress to Type II diabetes, a process that can be halted with diet and exercise.  Also, mismanagement of glucose leads to high cholesterol levels which can contribute to heart disease.

Did you know that One with the Water provides private or semi-private barbell workouts using the Starting Strength training program? We’re not in the business of building bulk, only to make you a stronger person, inside and out. Barbell workouts will build your confidence and strength like no other exercise in the world. We guarantee it!

And P.S. – Check out this graphic from Positive HealthWellness for more activities beneficial for fighting diabetes

If you or someone you love is living with Type 2 Diabetes, contact us today to start your journey of courage and strength.

*Always check with your doctor before starting any strength training program to monitor your success.

Have you already experienced what swimming can do? Partner with us today to teach economically disadvantaged children, special needs children, and Service-Disabled Veterans to become One with the Water! Be a hero today, and when you donate now, you can help reduce the risk of drowning for children by up to 88%! Be a hero and help us save the life of a child.

Want more details? Visit our foundation page to be a hero.

Sources:
http://www.diabetes.org
http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/strength-training-diabetes
https://www.cdc.gov/media/presskits/aahd/diabetes.pdf

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Strength Training for Diabetes appeared first on One with the Water.

At our swimming lessons for children and our Dolphin Swim Team practices, we take technique very seriously. Without technique, a swimmer limits their ability to swim beyond their current level. In a recently published article on the same subject by John Leonard, “The Real Limits on Your Child in Swimming,” Mr. Leonard informs coaches and parents that they should, “make sure your swimmers are focused on learning good technique in all starts, turns, and strokes.” One with the Water whole-heartedly agrees with Mr. Leonard.

It has been said that the biggest enemy of great is good. If an age group swimmer has good technique, it’s very challenging to get them to change it if they “feel like” they are being successful. ~ Mr. Leonard

We have had numerous clients come to us and fight us on changing their technique. At a young age, typically teenagers, within a few years, they’re most likely going to end their swimming career, either because they have plateaued or gone on to other interests, but not because they burned out. We teach technique and love of the water in order to help swimmers have a lifelong career and pursue a college swimming scholarship if they so desire.

One with the Water coaches believe that only after technique is corrected can you learn to swim faster, and to learn to swim faster, you have to train with fast swimming. We could discuss the mechanics of fast swimming: stroke rate, technique, and training, that would be volumes of information, and that’s something that takes time to develop in a swimmer. The bottom line: swimming lessons and the importance of technique should be your first priority, when choosing swimming lessons with One with the Water , we guarantee that you’ll be provided great quality swimming lessons from professional athletes and certified coaches and personal trainers.

I personally have taken lessons from Olympic coaches, since my high school days in Texas, training during the summers with Coach Eddie Reese and his staff at the University of Texas, to attending sessions with the Race Club’s Hall family. I can tell you that you cannot change your stroke technique overnight. I suggest that you expect it to take anywhere from six to nine months to re-learn to swim with great technique. Putting your new stroke into practice is a process that requires patience and being gentle with yourself, and lots of thinking while swimming. It is VERY difficult and mentally strenuous to train and think about your stroke at the same time. It’s mentally exhausting when compared to swimming laps and laps with bad or just good technique – it’s an incredible workout!

So, today, I leave you with these tips from Mr. Leonard:

1. Parents, make sure you swimmers are focused on learning proper technique in all starts, turns, and strokes.

2. In early years, through early teens, de-emphasize “winning” in favour of focusing on technique improvements, and only coaches can measure this.

3. Realize that “training more” will make you really good at poor technique unless you also improve your technique.

4. Coaches, read the above and make sure you “get it” as well as parents do or better. (Parents, rest assured, One with the Water coaches “get it.”)

A swimmer with quality technique has NO LIMITS to their ultimate performance.

The converse of that statement rings true, too loudly in most cases. So, parents and adults looking for swimming lessons, do yourself a long-term favour, and choose One with the Water to learn to swim.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Swimming Lessons and the Importance of Technique appeared first on One with the Water.

At One with the Water, we teach freestyle in the commonly referred to as “3 Styles of Freestyle.” A stroke for each race so-to-speak. If you’re swimming a very long distance race, or just getting in to move your body for an hour on a work break, then you most likely aren’t going to be lifting your head from being in alignment with your spine because this will cause too much stress in your upper back around your shoulders, where a lot of people carry emotional and physical stress already, especially when sitting at a computer all day; that’s not a sustainable position to swim over a long distance. If you’re sprinting, 50 or 100 meters, then most likely, that might be a way to do it.

As a US Masters Certified Level II Swimming Coach, I prefer to teach people to exercise over the long haul, and that entails having your head in a position that is most comfortable for your body. If you are a competitive swimmer, by all means, let’s experiment and find that fastest freestyle for you. And that’s where Mr. Gary Hall’s article comes in to play.

Mr. Hall discusses the two conflicting forces that must be considered while swimming: “the forces of frontal drag and the forces of propulsive power. They are both important and they often don’t agree. It turns out the best head position to maximize propulsion will also increase frontal drag. The best head position to minimize frontal drag will reduce propulsive power.”

The best head position to maximize propulsion increases frontal drag. The best head position to minimize frontal drag reduces propulsive power.

I hope you’ll read his article to learn more. And when you come for your next swimming lesson with us, let us know your goals from learning to swim, a weekly workout routine, or competition, and we will help you to become One with the Water. We will design a personal swimming program which will allow you to become a strong swimmer regardless of your athletic skills, flexibility or body-type.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Head Position While Swimming Freestyle appeared first on One with the Water.

“In every weight room in all the countries of the world since the dawn of training with weights, the single biggest distraction from the actual task at hand has been abs. Or rather, an obsession with/ misunderstanding of the biomechanical role of/misunderstanding of the way to train abs. More people, including me, have wasted more time/incurred more injuries doing/gotten very little out of training the damn things than anything in the whole training repertoire except biceps. Some of the things I’m about to say will be met with a lot of disagreement by conventional wisdom exercise-science types and PTs, as well as virtually everybody that trains for appearance. I don’t care – I have to get this off my chest (Atonement? A guilty conscience for having trained lots of people incorrectly? An attempt to come to grips with years of having been wrong?) and perhaps in the process I can be of use to some of you.

First, by “abs”, I mean the muscles that surround the abdomen. I don’t just mean the rectus abdominis, the group in the front that everybody identifies with the term “six-pack” (that I never use), the most graphic visual evidence of both low bodyfat in most people and our remote connection to phylum anellida through its evident septa that separate the muscle into repeated segments. I refer to abs when everybody else refers to “the core” because I insist on being difficult, contrary, disagreeable and out of step with the infomercial people. This is the way I learned it, and I see no compelling reason to update. So in this article “abs” means the rectus, the internal and external obliques running across the lateral aspect of the abdomen, the transversalis (or transversus abdominis), and the muscles of the floor of the abdominal cavity.

Second, the abs stabilize the spine, meaning that they maintain stable if not rigid intervertebral relationships under compressive or shear (moment) loading – that is their primary physical function in a biped. We have been placed under the impression that the primary role of the abs is display to other humans in either courtship ritual or as a means of evoking envy, and this temporary cultural bias has not proven useful to many of us.

Stabilizing the spine is an extremely important thing to do when working or training… Mark Rippetoe

Stabilizing the spine is an extremely important thing to do when working or training, since the force generated by the muscles that extend the hips and knees is usually transferred to the external environment through the arms and hands (in the case of the squat the bar is supported by the trunk itself ), which means that the spine is the bridge connecting the force-producing musculature to the task to which it is being applied.” By Mark Rippetoe

Download the full 5 pages here:

At One with the Water, we focus on providing quality swimming lessons for kids and adults, with quality service. As part of our training to provide swimming lessons, we continually research the latest techniques and studies on the best and latest techniques to conduct fitness activities safely. We want to share our findings with you. Our research helps us to provide safe and effective swimming lessons to you and your child.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Strengthening Your Abs – By Starting Strength appeared first on One with the Water.

“The purpose of this paper will be to describe a different interpretation of training zones, one that is based on training the three muscle fiber types. The physiological rationale for this theory was presented in an earlier paper. This follow-­up to that paper goes into greater detail concerning how to administer training according to the theory.”

At One with the Water, we focus on providing quality swimming lessons for children and adults, with quality service. As part of our training, we continually research the latest techniques and studies on teaching swimming lessons to kids and adults. We want to share our findings with you. Our research helps us to provide safe and effective swimming lessons to you and your child. We are certified and trained instructors, with decades of experience.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Swimming Training Zones Revisited appeared first on One with the Water.

“With the finding that short, intense sprints can improve aerobic capacity, there has been a huge increase in the number of experts who advocate this kind of training over traditional endurance training.”

At One with the Water, we focus on providing quality swimming lessons for children and adults, with quality service. As part of our training, we continually research the latest techniques and studies on teaching swimming lessons to kids and adults. We want to share our findings with you. Our research helps us to provide safe and effective swimming lessons to you and your child. We are certified and trained instructors, with decades of experience.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Swimming – Training Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers: Why and How appeared first on One with the Water.

“We teach freestyle that is efficient as well as strong, fluid and fast. It can take anywhere from six months to a year to change your old swimming habits into a more efficient stroke. It will feel very strange to your body and muscles.”

At One with the Water, we focus on providing quality swimming lessons for children and adults, with quality service. As part of our training, we continually research the latest techniques and studies on teaching swimming lessons to kids and adults. We want to share our findings with you. Our research helps us to provide safe and effective swimming lessons to you and your child. We are certified and trained instructors, with decades of experience.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Off-Season Swimming – A time to Learn Efficiency and Strengthen your Core Skills appeared first on One with the Water.

Brush Up Your Technique: The absolute first thing you should do is get your technique in order. Take lessons with a respected coach or join a Master’s Swim Team. Many swimming newbies have trouble with their kick as a result of poor ankle flexibility, so I recommend swimming with a pair of short fins. For those who are planning on an ocean swim or wearing a wetsuit, the addition of fins also simulates the effect that additional buoyancy has on your stroke.

Hit the Pool For Interval Training: One of the most common mistakes for first-time open water swimmers is that they practice by doing long uninterrupted swims in the open water or the pool. On the contrary, interval and speed work is just as important as ever! Instead of doing a straight 1,500 (1 mile), try breaking it up into 200s, 100s, and 50s. Quality sets (high intensity with long rest) will improve your threshold speed and make you faster even during long races. Sets of repeats on a short rest improve your endurance and make you work a little harder than straight swims.

Get Some Open Water Practice: Attend clinics and group swims, but always do so with safety in mind. Swim parallel to the shore in swim areas attended to by a lifeguard. If you have one race in particular in mind, try to find a “practice” race you can do beforehand! The open water is a completely different scenario than the pool, and the best way to learn is to do! Practice sighting and swimming straight. Wear the swimsuit or wetsuit you plan on wearing during your race, and take note of the fit and any areas that are prone to chaffing. Vaseline or an anti-chaffing product can reduce chaffing, but DO NOT use Vaseline if you are wearing a wetsuit!

Work On Your Backstroke: Anxiety in open water is very common, even for experienced open water swimmers. If you begin to feel anxious, roll over on your back and swim easy backstroke until you feel better. This gives you an opportunity to catch your breath!

Research: Talk to experienced open water swimmers. Usually they are more than happy to share with you what they’ve learned over the years through trial and error. Read books, blogs, and discussion boards on the topic. Whenever possible check out the venue in advance, even if it is just the morning of! Find out what kind of a start and finish it will be. For beach starts and finishes, inspect the ocean or lake floor for pitch, rocks, seaweed, etc., and learn what you can about currents. Swim out to the buoys and take note of how many there are and landmarks to aid in navigation.

Prepare Yourself for Bodily Contact, and Know Your Limits: Depending on the race and the number of registrants, starts can be an all-out dogfight coming out of the gate. If this is something you are prepared for, go for it! If you are slower or more prone to anxiety, just hang tight in the back until things calm down. Be prepared for the challenges presented by “pack swimming” both unintentional and intentional. Small preparations such as putting your goggles on under your cap, adhering them with duct tape, or greasing up your ankles can go a long way to fending off competitor contact.

The more prepared you are going into your first open water swim, the more likely you are to have a pleasant experience. Here’s to swimming the way nature intended it!

By Mallory Mead
About Mallory

With 17 years of open water swimming experience under her belt, Mallory is considered to be one of the foremost experts in the sport of open water swimming. In 2010, Mallory became the 39th person in the world and one of the youngest to complete the “Triple Crown” of open water swimming. In fact, Mallory completed her first marathon swim, the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, when she was a green 18 year old. Hailing from Northern Indiana, Mallory now resides in Los Angeles, California where she is a full-time swimmer competing in the FINA Grand Prix, professional marathon swims over 10km.

Mallory, when not swimming full-time, also works in marketing for Malibu C, a US-based manufacturer of skin and hair care products, where she manages the company’s line of products for swimmers. She volunteers as an observer for the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation and jokes that she had been to Catalina Island a dozen or so times before she finally set foot on the island for longer than a minute. In addition, Mallory teaches open water clinics both locally and nationally where she works with aspiring open water swimmers and triathletes.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Preparing for Your First Open Water Swim appeared first on One with the Water.