Andrea Fuentes prepares her artistic swimmers for the unexpected. During one practice, she told them to imagine that their coaches suddenly couldn’t attend a competition. The staff let the swimmers guide themselves as they warmed up and prepared for their routine. Two hours later, Fuentes turned on the music and simulated a competitive performance. She relies on those types of off-the-wall scenarios to teach the U.S. national team how to manage uncertainty.
“I put them under stress situations,” Fuentes said. “But I never thought of this one.”
The novel coronavirus pandemic left the swimmers without a pool and without one another — two essential elements of a sport more often known by its previous name, synchronized swimming.
Long(er) road to Tokyo
The U.S. team trains full time at a high school about 20 miles from San Francisco. That pool shut down midway through March, and the swimmers practiced in an unheated outdoor pool for a day. With an Olympic qualifying event slated for the end of April, the team considered moving into an Airbnb with a pool so it could continue training.
But once counties in the Bay Area instituted a stay-at-home order and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics seemed inevitable, the coaches adjusted their planning: “Let’s stop fighting nature,” said Fuentes, the U.S. national team coach and a four-time Olympic medalist for Spain. “The virus is a virus. You cannot go against it, so just accept that we have to adapt.”
A few of the American artistic swimmers scattered around the country, heading back to their hometowns, but others remained in California. Rather than guiding the group at the pool each day, Fuentes stares into the camera on her computer and leads workouts from home. The swimmers work through routines on land — leaning on drills, practicing with only arm motions or doing headstands so their legs can move as they would above the water. Through virtual sessions, the swimmers have stayed fit and in sync while forging connections with others who share their sport and these new challenges.
In addition to the U.S. team’s daily training, Fuentes has organized international sessions, allowing artistic swimmers around the globe to work out together on a video chat. A few days after the first call between swimmers from the United States and Israel, Fuentes invited national teams from countries in North and South America. An athlete from every nation on the call presented the others with a challenge or exercise.
“Okay, first country is Argentina,” Fuentes said a few minutes into the recent Friday morning video call with more than 100 participants. “Be loud! Where is Argentina?”
A flurry of waving swimmers filled the screen, and the laid-back session began. A Canadian swimmer assigned V-ups, but each time, the athletes had to move a toilet paper roll from their hands to between their feet. Anita Alvarez, a member of the U.S. team, taught everyone a TikTok dance.
“It’s time to realize that we need each other,” said Lara Teixeira, the U.S. high performance manager and a three-time Olympian for Brazil. “There’s no way that we’re meant to do things alone anymore. It’s a time to reflect on that.”
When the coronavirus halted sporting events around the world, the U.S. national team was in the midst of its preparation for a qualification event in Tokyo that had been scheduled to begin April 30. The United States only sent a duet to the previous two Olympics, but Fuentes believes the eight-member team can also qualify for Tokyo, particularly after progress shown at a recent competition in France.
But now, with the Tokyo Games postponed, members of the U.S. team can only practice their routines from home. Fuentes plays the music and corrects the swimmers’ positioning. Alvarez and Lindi Schroeder work on the duet during separate sessions. A flag with Olympic rings hangs on the wall behind Alvarez, who competed at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, and an American flag decorates Schroeder’s wall at her Boston home. Their faces slip out of view while the two swimmers stand on their heads perfecting the leg movements during a portion of the routine.
In typical circumstances, the athletes would train about eight hours per day, with up to two hours of that work taking place out of the pool. The online practices instead last four to five hours, six days a week. The sessions are broken into one-hour training blocks, which call on each national team staffer’s strengths. The workouts are diverse and change each day, in hopes of keeping the athletes engaged.
Fuentes has incorporated sessions that cover more than just physical and technical training. The group had a personal branding webinar, and the sports psychologist who works with the swimmers has checked in from afar, helping them navigate all of the unknowns.
During ballet sessions, Schroeder holds the handle of an exercise bike as if it’s a barre. A coach leads the swimmers through kicks. They hold arm positions to build strength and reinforce “being aware of the lines of your body, so you’re able to transfer that grace into the water,” Schroeder said. The ballet work helps the swimmers hit specific positions with sharpness while matching their teammates’ precise angles.
The routine the U.S. team plans to perform through the Olympics has robot-themed choreography, so Fuentes contacted a hip-hop dancer, who taught a session that helped the swimmers improve within that style. Sometimes coaches or athletes led dance workouts, but Fuentes said asking outsiders to contribute adds “something special and different and fun every day to keep the motivation very high.”
The artistic swimmers have gymnastics-based conditioning workouts that incorporate handstand holds, pushups and core exercises. They will hold different positions, such as the bottom of a pushup or a triceps dip. In separate cardio sessions, the athletes have a high-intensity Tabata workout, meaning they do an exercise for 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds, a rotation that continues for an extended period of time. The team is accustomed to similarly structured workouts in the pool.
What’s missing through all of this work and creativity, though, is the water. Schroeder has stopped counting the days since she last swam. Fuentes leads a session she calls “water sensations” with exercises that mimic sculling, the hand movements essential in artistic swimming.
Schroeder wears socks on her hands and moves them in that familiar motion as she presses her palms underneath a wooden table, which feels similar to the resistance of the water. The swimmers might add a nose clip during this session, to make it feel as if they’re underwater. They also slide their feet on the floor with socks, re-creating the eggbeater kicking motion used when treading water.
On Mondays before the pandemic, after the athletes took Sundays off, Schroeder said the water would seem foreign. It’s worse when she goes a week without training after a competition. So this hiatus, which could last months, will present another set of hurdles once the swimmers dive back into the pool.
“It will feel awkward,” Schroeder said. “But hopefully with all of the training we’re doing right now, our bodies will be stronger in certain ways that they weren’t before.”
