When Olympic athletes are in the spotlight for about a month once every four years, fans only see the results of years or even a lifetime of hard work.
They don’t know about all the early mornings, the two-a-day workouts, the recovery, the injuries, the mental battle of staying focused when the ultimate goal could be years away. Those things, and so much more, contribute to an athlete standing on the podium, but in that moment, they’re all absent to viewers.
So we asked Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel, who’s actively in the “heat” of his training cycle, what a typical day looks like as he eyes trials in June for the 2020 Tokyo Games this summer.
“This is a tough period right now,” he explained recently to For The Win on the phone while at Toyota Team USA Day in Plano, Texas.
“It sometimes gets hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel just because it’s not just this year. It’s not just 2020 [Olympics] training. It goes … all the way back to high school. It just kind of accumulates and builds upon each other, the stuff you’ve learned year to year. But it’s been a tough couple months just because trials are close in the grand scheme of things but also very far away.”
2020 is shaping up to be quite the year for this dude…
Dressel with a casual 49.50 100 Fly World Record and a celebration that suggests he's got a lot more to do. pic.twitter.com/f05RDdcPw1
— Kyle Sockwell (@kylesockwell) July 26, 2019
After winning two gold medals in relays at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the 23-year-old Florida native is looking for more. A sprinter, he’s training for the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle races, along with the 100-meter butterfly.
There’s a good chance Dressel will qualify for all three individual events at Olympic trials, as he’s currently one of the most dominant swimmers in the world. At world championships in July, he won a record eight medals, six gold, and broke Michael Phelps’ decade-old world record in the 100 butterfly.
So with less than four months until Team USA’s Olympic trials for swimming, here’s a look at Dressel’s typical training day, his favorite meal and how he balances eating just enough to have energy in the pool but avoid an unfortunate disaster.
7 a.m.: Wake up and eat some carbs
His club team, Gator Swim Club, practices at the University of Florida — Dressel swam for the Gators for four seasons from 2015 to 2018 — but after the college swimmers, so he actually gets to sleep in.
Getting ready for his first practice of the day, Dressel said he’ll eat something small like a bagel, toast or oatmeal. He’s not looking for a full meal by any means, but he also doesn’t want to go to practice on an empty stomach.
“I never eat a lot before I get in the water because I don’t want to, you know,” he said. “Anything with carbs is what I go for if it’s not a full meal.”
8 – 10 a.m.: First practice (plus a snack)
Dressel’s practices are always two hours, and after the morning one, he heads to the weight room and grabs a small snack on the way.
“I try to get something small like chocolate milk or a bar,” Dressel said. “Whatever bars they have in the weight room [at] a little fuel area.”
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: Hit weight room, then breakfast/lunch (but not brunch!)
Dressel said sometimes he’s only in there until noon, and after that, it’s time for what he described as “breakfast-lunch,” which is always balanced with more carbs, some protein, fruit and vegetables.
“I still get three meals in, it’s just that my breakfast is late,” he explained. “That’s why I have a bunch of those little snacks before. But sometimes, I’ll be done with weights, and it will be a late breakfast or an early lunch.
“And then I’ll eat again before I leave for afternoon practice, and then I’ll eat after afternoon practice. I’m kind of like a horse: I just kind of eat throughout the day, so I’m not ever hungry. I don’t want to go to practice hungry.”
Sometimes there’s a nap in there too between the weight room and lunch and leaving again for afternoon practice around 4 p.m.
5 – 7 p.m.: Second practice, then dinner (maybe meatloaf)
And by the time this one is over, he’s — UNDERSTANDABLY — very tired. So he quickly heads home to “get food as fast as I can.”
Dressel said he doesn’t count calories and joked that he actually wouldn’t even know how to do that. For dinner, he said he just eats until he’s full, which is “kind of great, but if I wasn’t swimming, I think that’d be a problem.”
But he agreed that Michael Phelps’ estimation of eating 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day at his peak is a lot, but for all Dressel knows, he’s in that same range too.
His favorite big meal to have at the end of the day? Meatloaf.
“I love meatloaf so much,” he said.
After dinner: Think about something other than swimming
When he’s done eating meatloaf or whatever the day’s dinner is, he said he tries to enjoy a little down time and relax. That includes playing video games or just hanging out with his roommates or fiancee.
“[I] just try to have some moment in there where I’m not thinking about anything,” Dressel said.
“Practice does take a lot out of me mentally because I have to be on it for every stroke, every turn, every breakout. Anything I do, I want to be as focused as I can, so by the time practice is done, I’m kind of physically and mentally fried. So I just want to go and not think about anything for maybe 30 minutes to an hour.”
And just like that, the day is over. He said as he starts to wind down a bit before bed, he’ll read, journal and get ready to “start the day over and try to do it better.”
10-10:30 p.m.: Time for bed
Dressel said this is his “sweet spot” for what time to crawl into bed, looking for eight or nine hours of sleep before starting the next training day all over again.
“Sometimes you lose a little bit [of motivation],” he said. “Sometimes I break down a little bit. But at the end of the day, I know what my goals are, and I know I have to stay focused. Just try to keep the same attitude. It does get tough, not just physically, but mentally.
“Sometimes I just get fried doing the same thing over and over, but that mundane-ness is what, I think, kind of makes people great — coming in, doing the same thing, keeping good habits, keeping a good attitude and doing it with good people.”
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