24-year-old Jesse Puts of the Netherlands made his mark on international swimming by way of his 50m freestyle Short Course World Championships title back in 2016. While competing in Windsor, the Dutchman took the gold in a time of 21.10, beating out Russian Vladimir Morozov and Lithuanian Simonas Bilis on the way to the top of the podium.
Since then the Mark Faber-trained athlete has been keeping his name in play among the sprinting elite, competing at the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, as well as the 2018 European Championships in Glasgow, finishing 6th at the latter competition in the men’s 50m free in 22.08.
Puts most recently took home 2 silver medals at the 2018 Short Course World Championships as a member of the Netherlands’ mixed 4x50m medley and mixed 4x50m free relays.
The man has been active into the 2019 calendar year as well but has added a new twist to his preparation heading into the 2019 World Championships. Working closely with Faber, who also coaches breaststroking ace Arno Kamminga and the country’s top backstroker Kira Toussaint, Puts has coined his pre-race warm-up routine as ‘hot turkey,’ in a twist on the ‘cold turkey’ tradition of no warmup at all.
Instead of traditionally warming up in the pool prior to a race, Puts stays dry and instead undergoes a series of active dryland exercises to get his body primed for racing.
Puts, who started the routine 5 or 6 weeks ago, told SwimSwam from Italy this week, “Exercises depend on what I think I need at the moment.
“First some mobility work and then we go into the more shoulder and core activation stuff, such as explosive pushups, jumps, throwing or slamming a (medicine) ball.
Puts says that the mobility exercises typically take around 30 minutes, with the activation hovering around 10 minutes.
“It’s just something I’m trying out for a couple of times and then we will decide if we will implement it permanently.”
Summing up ‘hot turkey’ succinctly Puts says, “It’s just skipping the water warm-up and just prepping my body to race on the land. Starting slow and bumping up the intensity towards the race.”
“It’s not completely new, but for me, it’s a new thing.”
Taking a look at how the Dutchman has fared so far this year, the ‘hot turkey’ routine appears to be treating Puts well.
In January of this year, pre-hot turkey, Puts produced a 22.41 for gold at the Flanders Cup, followed by a silver medal-worthy 22.33 at the FFN Golden Tour in Marseille.
April brought Puts gold at the Swim Cup – The Hague with his podium-topping 22.25, while he dropped that down to 22.16 for gold at the Swim Cup – Eindhoven just little over a week later.
Puts has continued to drop in time, hitting 22.08 at the French Open, adding a bit of time en route to capturing 6th place yesterday in Sette Colli with a mark of 22.16.
The routine seems, so far, to be enough to keep Puts hovering just-over the 22-second barrier: which he’ll most definitely need to cross to make the final at next month’s World Championships in Gwangju.
Well at least he won’t smack his hand against another swimmer’s during warm-up
Now I’m hungry.
But why?