Augustana Swimming & Diving Costa Rica Blog

At 5:00 AM this morning, 37 of my Augustana College Vikings swim and dive teammates, our two coaches, and I boarded a plane in the brutally chilly state of South Dakota. Right after a brief layover in Atlanta, Georgia, we created our way to Costa Rica, a minimal piece of Central American paradise tucked concerning Nicaragua and Panama, for a analyze overseas and training trip led by Dr. Shane Scholten and head coach Lindsie Micko.

Even though right here in Costa Rica, my teammates and I will be using an workout science class titled “Cultural and Outside Adventures in Costa Rica,” a course that seeks to weave cultural expertise and human well being alongside one another via a numerous possibility to utilize scientific ideas in a third-environment state, wherever wellbeing and wellness are viewed from an fully diverse point of view thanin South Dakota. 

We will study Costa Rican health and fitness and wellness society utilizing kinesiology, biomechanics, and nutrition by applying these ideas to actual physical pursuits these as swimming and diving, soccer, surfing, climbing, ziplining, and mountain biking. Through our time, though our main purpose is to deepen our comprehending of personal and social accountability in Costa Rica as it relates to sporting activities, health and fitness, and performance by civic engagement, we also hope to recognize how mental procedures, investigation, and learning can also make us greater swimmers and divers.

For Augustana’s swimmers and divers, our mornings below will start the similar way they get started in Sioux Falls: far just before the sun rises. We will start out virtually every single early morning with a schooling session–swim follow for the swimmers and strength and conditioning for the divers–at the Cariari State Club outside of San José, which functions an 18-gap golfing system, 12 tennis courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a health club, and other activity and social services for its several users. 

Nevertheless, this is not to say that our time below will be all operate and no engage in. We will also be checking out Braulio Carrillo Nationwide Park, which characteristics an aerial tram, zip-lining, butterfly gardens, terrariums, hanging bridges, and mother nature walks through the houses of howler and white-faced capuchin monkeys, tapirs, jaguars, ocelots, and peccaries, as very well as far more than 500 species of birds. When we’re not swimming or diving, we’ll find approaches to cross-teach by cycling by means of the mountains, mountaineering in the Burrito Forest, and finding out how to surf on the beaches of Jaco. Even far better? We won’t have to be concerned also a great deal about our sore muscle tissue. 

Even though researching entire physique cryotherapy and sizzling drinking water therapy, we’ll also help our bodies in recovering by checking out Rio Agrio’s Blue Swimming pools in Alajeula, as effectively as Poas Volcano National Park’s very hot springs. We may well even locate ourselves having gain of the caffeine presented on the Doka Espresso Tour.

Higher than all, Dr. Scholten has encouraged us to be existing, to just take time on how we are sensation or what other people are feeling, and to contemplate how we could possibly elevate up just one of our teammates or a area citizen. During the working day, we are requested to keep a journal in purchase to spend attention to all of our senses. While it is effortless to just take shots, Dr. Scholten wants us to don’t forget smells, appears, tastes, and the way the Costa Rican sunshine feels on our pores and skin.