Beyond the Pancakes: How Indiana Post Grads Train in the Weight Room (Video)

In Practice + Pancakes, SwimSwam takes you across the country and through a practice day in the life of swimming’s best athletes. It breaks down training sessions, sub sets, and what every team is doing to be at their best. But why are they doing things that way? What’s the philosophy behind these decisions, and who’s driving this pain train? In Beyond the Pancakes, we dive inside the minds of coaches and athletes, getting a first hand look at why they do the things they do, and where their minds are pointed on the compass of evolution as a swimmer.

There are hundreds of philosophies about how to optimally train a swimmer in the pool. There might be even more theories on how best to train them outside the pool. Jackson Bertoli, the Sports Science Coordinator at Indiana University, has his own take on the matter. He’s been working with the IU post grad group for the last year, which started with breaststroker Cody Miller. When Miller had a knee injury, he started working with Bertoli, who specialized in athletes coming back from injury.

That partnership was such a success that head coach Ray Looze started incorporating Bertoli into all of the IU postgrad’s dryland routines. With the relative small size of a postgrad group, compared to an entire collegiate sports team, Bertoli can specialize his workout to each athlete, giving them what they need or can handle. From the way IU has been swimming this spring, it seems the results speak for themselves.