The Ubyssey sat down with two UBC athletes — in swimming and respectively — and talked to them about their schedules, their training and the diets they maintain in order to be at their physical peak. One thing that stands out for many of these athletes is that there is no one standardized way to prepare for their respective sport. There are different body types, different workouts and different diets, all of which are valid in their own way.

Swimming: Yuri Kisil

Yuri Kisil first started swimming for survival. His parents wanted to make sure that if he ever fell off a boat, he could swim safely. He got pretty good at it, and kept getting better.

Today, Kisil is an arts student at UBC, a varsity swimmer and an Olympic athlete. So one would think that his days require a lot of workouts and swimming to get there. One would be right.

The Calgary native gets up at 4:45 a.m. He needs to be up in time because he needs to be at the pool for deck activation — the swim team’s morning workout — which starts at 5:15 a.m. He eats a bowl of cereal or a granola bar — something that can be eaten quickly.

When asked about what a swimmer like him is required to eat, he laughs. “I'm probably not the greatest person to ask about this. My diet is pretty bad — you can ask any of my roommates,” he says as he chuckles. He decides to talk instead about what he should be eating.   

Swimmers on the UBC team look at their schedules riddled with workouts and class, and talk to their nutritionist. They then revolve much of their eating around this training schedule.

“If you have a hard practice the next morning, it's really good to carb load the night before, so like have pastas and stuff so you do have a lot of energy for the tough day,” said Kisil.

“After practice, it’s good to load up on proteins, and have lots of fruits and vegetables during the day.”

Kisil then gets ready, jumps on his bike and cycles to the Aquatic Centre. There, he and the rest of the team do stretches before receiving instructions from their coach, and then swim several laps back and forth across the entire length of the pool.

Kisil has always thought that muscles were extremely important for swimming and that his workouts need to be targeted towards making those muscles stronger. But he looks at himself and sees himself to be an outlier to the trend.

“I'm a pretty skinny, small dude and I’ve been doing pretty decently,” said Kisil. “I would say swimming is actually more technical. You see these jacked swimmers that can’t really swim that well, so it doesn’t work well for them.

“Each swimmer is very personalized and very different. I know my starts aren’t the greatest, my turns aren’t the greatest but my swimming is pretty decent, so then I just work on those areas every year and try to  improve.”

He is in class by 8 a.m.

After class, he eats again and then naps till 11:30 a.m. He then goes to his next class between 12 and 1 p.m. He does another activation after this and then swims for two hours until 4 p.m. He lifts weights after that until 5:30 p.m., and then he goes home to do his homework and make dinner.

With lots of schoolwork and swimming included in his day, it becomes important for Kisil to take breaks and hang out with friends, especially in the weekend. He is close friends with other swimmers and goes to the team’s fundraisers.

On Sundays, Kisil tries to recuperate and get ready for the new week.

Power Lifting

Bryan Wong is an executive of the UBC Weightlifting and Powerlifting Club. He is also in charge of media and communications for the club, which means that he handles all the emails and social media for the club. Surprisingly, he has only been involved in powerlifting for over a year.

“It started as a new year's resolution. It started off as ‘Oh, I just want to get fit again,’” said Wong. “My new year's resolution was to stick to something and not quit because ... I know a lot of people, including myself, [go] on for two months and [go] ‘alright, I'm done.’

“So I started getting into fitness and I met a couple of people from the gym who were into powerlifting, and I just thought, ‘This is pretty interesting.’”

Wong’s day starts a bit later than most other types of athletes. The night before, he goes to bed at 11 p.m. and sleeps for about eight and a half hours, waking up at 7:30 a.m. He then makes some “proats” for breakfast, which consists of oatmeal and protein-heavy foods like almond butter, almond milk and protein whey.

Wong is quick to point out that food is not standardized among power lifters. According to him, powerlifters believe more in “flexible dieting.” This means that they find out the amount of calories needed to maintain a certain weight — for Wong, that number is 3,000 calories — and they get to eat whatever they want within that calorie range.

At  9 a.m., Wong heads over to the gym for his workout. He does this only three times a week, as he says it is difficult to maintain that volume of exertion.

When he is done, he switches gears. He heads home at 12:30 p.m. and cooks lunch. Lunch is comprised of the three macro nutrients — carbohydrates, proteins and fats. For carbs, Wong eats brown rice. Beef, chicken or salmon make up the protein component of lunch, and steak is high in fats.

Wong then heads to class afterwards, which he pre-scheduled to all occur in the afternoon. After class, he heads home and eats dinner. If he has homework, he does it — if not, he hangs out with his friends. His day has come to a close. He sleeps once again at 11 p.m.

Wong points to a central philosophy behind powerlifting. In his experience, there is no one way to be a powerlifter. There isn’t a perfect proportion of muscle and body fat one is supposed to have. Wong says he has seen people in his weight class that are lean and some that are heavier.

“That’s the thing about powerlifting — it's not about how much muscle you have but ... how strong or effective or efficient your muscles are,” said Wong.

Sometimes according to Wong, powerlifting athletes can forget this and get carried away.

“Sometimes it's easy to get sucked into it and get too competitive ... If you try to compete against someone else and your body isn't ready for it, you get injured,” said Wong. “And when you're lifting heavy weights, it could be pretty serious.”

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