How to get out of workouts (without really trying)
Former Member
I'm sure this type of thread has been started before, but I didn't feel like looking for it. The rec swimmers thread reminded me of two of my favorite attempts to get out of a workout. Please share yours too.
In high school I used to always start practice by standing on the blocks, then trying to throw my goggles onto the backstroke flags as I was diving in. One day I finally succeeded. I then told my coach, straightfaced no less, that I couldn't swim that day because my goggles were stuck on the backstroke flags. My coach, standing on the deck, never changed his expression, or took his eyes off of me. He simply put one finger on the rope for the flags, gave it a small flick, and my goggles landed on my head.
I've had a small bump on the back of my head since birth. You can't see it under my hair, and I never told anyone about it. One time in college I told my coach that the bump had "just suddenly appeared" in order to get out of the afternoon workout. A key element to my story was that I noticed this bump just as practice was about to start. My coach felt the bump, was seriously concerned and sent me to the campus doctor right away. As I was walking to the doc's office, I realized that I hadn't really thought my story through. I ended up going back to practice a little later, and basically saying, "Oh...yea coach, that was my bad...I remembered after talking to you that I've always had that bump there.."
Former Member
You could always just toss a Baby Ruth in the pool.
"Only the strong belong"
I always told the coach during tough sets, "If you can speak it, we can swim it-so bring it on!" The coach would always smile and say, "You asked for it, so how does 30 X 100 on 1:15 sound? On the top---go"
A few times my fellow team mates used to tell me, "Rocky, keep your big mouth shut--that last set of 30 X 100 on 1:15 was a ****h---"
I never backed down, but their were many mornings I wished I had kept my big mouth shut---I darn near got hanged one morning on a 4th of July hell day practice when I told the coach he didn't have the brass to give us a
100 X 100 set---
This happened for real, but my coach (we never got along) told me I was lying...
In 7th and 8th grade, I played school soccer everyday, then left that practice to go to swim practice for 2 hours. One day, when i had a full mouth of braces, I took a soccer ball to the face, which didn't feel that bad, but managed to split my top and bottom lip everywhere they touched braces. :doh: I told my coach after warm up that I simply couldn't swim because everytime I took a breath, the cut opened again, and I was bleeding in the pool. He didn't care and I wound up finishing the workout, bloody mouth and all.
Public safety concerns? not back then 0 there was enough chlorine in that pool to kill anything!
Also - we had serious pool temp issues, and decided to take a thermometer from the science room - stuck it in the pool, it hit the side, broke and there was a nickel sized ball of mercury on the bottom. You'd think that would get us out, but NO. Janitor brought a wet/dry vac, a teammate got in with huge gloves on, sucked it up, and we carried on!
