You can't learn this from a slide deck. You have to get in the water.
Deep water is a physical medium, and every correction in it is physical — where the hands go, what the trunk is doing, how to spot the participant who looks like they're doing it right and isn't.
So my workshops run in the pool. I demonstrate, your people do it, I correct it, and before we finish they teach it back to each other. What they leave with is a set of exercises they can run on Monday and the judgment to know which member needs which one.
Thirty years of this — building Swymfit® around deep water, fifteen years working alongside Dr. Igor Burdenko, conditioning U.S. Ski Team athletes, and a knee osteoarthritis study with the University of Connecticut School of Physical Therapy. All of it came out of the water, and that's where I teach it.
Who these are for
Facility staff teams
Health clubs, YMCAs, community and municipal pools, university recreation centers, multi-site operators, and physical therapy clinics with a pool.
Your pool is already built, already heated, already staffed. The question is what your team can do with it past lap swim and a shallow-water class — particularly for the members land classes lose: joint pain, mobility limits, post-surgical recovery, and the 55-plus demographic.
This is training your existing staff to deliver more.
Trainers, instructors, and therapists
Most trainers hit the same wall. A client's knees give out, or they come back from surgery, or they turn sixty-five, and the programming that worked stops working.
The water is where those clients keep training, and almost nobody in the industry programs it past jogging in place. My own model runs land and water together — that combination is the part most trainers have never seen.
A modality your clients can't age out of.
Coaches and teams
Ski clubs, athletic departments, club and travel programs, and coaching associations.
Deep water lets an athlete work at intensities their joints won't tolerate on the ground, and it's the best recovery tool most programs never use.
I built this into U.S. Ski Team conditioning through an Olympic cycle and I've been refining it since.
What we work on
Every workshop is built around the pool you have and the people on your deck, so the emphasis shifts. These are the areas we draw from.
Pool running, properly
There are four to eight distinct variations and they do different jobs. Most instructors teach one.
Progression and regression
Moving the same exercise across the range from post-surgical to competitive athlete without rebuilding it each time.
Programming for the 55-plus member
Joint health, sustained mobility, and the retention case that goes with them.
The handoff from physical therapy
Taking a client from discharge back to full training, and knowing where the line sits.
Athletic conditioning and recovery
Working at intensity without ground impact, and using the water between hard sessions.
Class design and sequencing
Building a session that holds a group's attention and effort from start to finish.
Equipment
What's worth buying, what's decorative, and what you can do with none of it.
Depth, safety, and screening
What has to be in place before you run any of it with members.
Why train with me
I'm still teaching this every week
Swymfit® is one of the first health clubs in the country built around water exercise as the primary modality. I founded it, I still run it, and I'm still on the deck. Everything I teach you is something I taught a member recently.
I ran the research, I didn't just read it
A knee osteoarthritis study with the University of Connecticut School of Physical Therapy, and a doctorate in Human Movement from Boston University. When I tell your staff why something works, I can tell them where the evidence comes from.
Fifteen years with Dr. Igor Burdenko
Burdenko Method Certified. If you know the methodology, that tells you what my approach is built on. If you don't, it means my training came from the person who developed one of the few genuinely rigorous frameworks in this field.
Elite athletes and eighty-year-olds, one framework
I conditioned U.S. Ski Team athletes and I coach members who want to keep walking their own stairs. The crossover between those two rooms is where the useful material lives.
What your pool needs
A minimum of seven feet of water. You don't need a diving well — participants simply can't be touching the bottom. If you're not sure whether your pool works, tell me the depth and I'll tell you straight.
Let's talk about your team
Tell me what your pool is, who's on staff, and what you want them able to do. I'll tell you honestly whether a workshop is the right thing or whether you need something else.
978-635-0500