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Full-bodied workout with Wave Run
Versatile aquatics program adds new ripple

By Hope Green

Getting in shape for the Boston Marathon need not be all icy asphalt or muddy trails. A new course at Boston University's Faneuil Pool promises runners a rigorous workout in the waves.

Water calisthenics is an activity that once conjured images of older women in flowered bathing caps doing scissors kicks at the shallow end of the pool. But now BU's young and fit are flocking to courses with hip-sounding names like Hydrodynamics, Water Power Workout, and the newest addition, Wave Run.

Instructor Donna Lubrano (MET'93) leads basic and intermediate swim students in a water workout at the Faneuil Pool. Photo by Fred Sway

Offering high-intensity workout sessions is helping the aquatics program in the Department of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (PERD) keep up with the times. But it's only one draw for the BU students, faculty, and staff who plunge into the 6-lane, 25-meter pool at the Case Athletic Center, even during the coldest winter months. Just ask Suzanne Muchene, who is taking her second class in swimming techniques this semester while completing a graduate degree in environmental health.

"I think winter is the perfect time to be swimming," says Muchene (SPH'01). "It's almost spiritual, because it clears your mind. It really gets me going into my day."

Water works wonders

BU has one of the largest noncredit aquatics programs on a university campus, according to Ann Richie, PERD's director of aquatics and promotions. The spring course catalog reflects this, with offerings that range from scuba and springboard diving to lifeguarding.

For advanced swimmers, doing laps can become a healthful addiction. Lawrence Kohn, coordinator of development at Sargent College's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, has swum with two CAS professors five days a week during lunch hour for the past 10 years. Their workout of choice is interval training, where a swimmer alternates 12- to 100-yard sprints with periods of rest. When training as a group, athletes swim one behind the other, faster ones in front.

"It's more fun when more people join you for the set," Kohn says. "We get young guys a few years out of college and they're lightning quick, but I love that -- it pushes me."

Kohn swears by the pool's curative powers, not only for stress but for sinus infections, sore muscles, and even office dilemmas.

"If I go in feeling irritated about something, I leave having worked it out while swimming," he says. "My life wouldn't be the same without it."

But the aquatics program also welcomes adults who have scarcely dog-paddled in their lives. Kenneth Elmore, associate director of the Office of Residence Life, took a learn-to-swim course at PERD several years ago.

"I was a 30-year-old man and deathly afraid of the water," he says. "I liked fishing, but I always had this hesitancy about getting in a boat. Ann Richie and her staff did a fabulous job in getting me over that fear." Now Elmore regularly splashes with his three-year-old son in a Brookline pool.

With the anticipated opening of BU's new athletic complex at the old Commonwealth Armory site, Richie looks forward to expanding BU's public outreach to include young families. She envisions developing an urban learn-to-swim program in conjunction with Boston's Parks and Recreation Department.

"A competitive pool restricts our breadth of classes because it requires deep water and a cooler temperature," she says. "In the new complex we'll have a separate leisure pool."

Running with the waves

For the present, Richie and her staff are making efficient use of pool hours between varsity practice meets. And now that the competitive season has passed, time slots are open for courses like Wave Run, which begins March 23.

Wave Run will teach athletes of all abilities a set of drills designed to enhance their regular practice routine on land. Participants wear buoyancy belts while conditioning their muscles with resistance equipment, such as dense foam ankle cuffs and webbed gloves.

"Because you're suspended, there are no issues of gravity or impact on the joints," explains instructor Donna Lubrano (MET'93). "Wave Run is a full body workout, and you get the full range of motion. It's also a resistance workout, because water provides three times the resistance as you would have on land. So there are four things going on: cardiovascular training, muscular endurance, strengthening, and stretching."

Raising the standard

The Faneuil Pool at Case operates seven days a week for varsity swim team practice and laps as well as instruction, a schedule that requires about 25 lifeguards. Richie admits that maintaining a staff that size is a challenge, reflecting a national crisis in the field: last summer, lifeguard shortages forced pools and beaches across the country to close their gates or limit their hours.

At the same time, tough new Red Cross certification requirements are raising standards for lifeguard training. Besides understanding pool chemicals and health regulations, lifeguards may soon be required to know how to use automatic heart defibrillators and administer oxygen.

"As our society is requiring more and more from our aquatics facilities, we have to realize that lifeguarding requires a lot more than just sitting in a chair and getting a tan," says Richie, who last year cofounded a professional coalition called the New England Aquatics Network. The organization serves as a resource for anyone whose profession is tied to water safety and swim programs.

"It would be nice," Richie says, "to see the aquatics field respected for what it is."

A free Wave Run workshop will be held on March 16. Preregistration is required. For information about this and other aquatics programs, call 353-2748.

23 February 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations