The 2011-12 edition of the triennial Volvo Ocean Race, a nine-month, around-the-world yacht showdown, officially began on October 29th with an in-port challenge in Alicante, Spain. Tomorrow the six competing ships will set sail for the first of nine major legs of the competition, a 6,500-mile trek from Alicante to Cape Town. Aiming to improve on its second place finish in the 2008-09 Ocean Race, the crew of Newport, Rhode Island-based Puma Ocean Racing spent the past year and a half developing groundbreaking nautical technology and doubling down on its approach to fitness. Last week's report tackled the new tech. This one details how the team righted its conditioning
Just six hours into its sail toward South Africa, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing's boat tumbled off a wave and snapped its mast. That same night, Team Sanya's craft hit...something...and came away with a hole in its hull. They withdrew from the leg and airlifted the yacht to Cape Town for repairs. The race isn't five days old and already there's evidence of the battering crews will face over the next 39,000 nautical miles. The goal, as the Abu Dhabi and Sanya teams will attest, is to keep the boat together. But keeping bodies intact over those nine months is just as critical. "Going into the 2008-09 race, fitness was not a priority," says Puma skipper Ken Read. "Then we had a guy blow out his knee, I got a hernia; everybody had a lot of nagging injuries. It took a mental toll on us."
Realizing that better conditioning could translate into smoother sailing—both literally and figuratively—the Puma crew dug in with trainer Mike Cecchi, who owns Bridge to Fitness, a gym near Newport, RI. To tailor the workout, Cecchi joined them on the water and observed the way their bodies moved during competition-like situations. "We put together a regimen based on the idea of functional training," he says. "At no point did anyone do a bench press, because that's not a motion used on the boat. The exercises were designed to prepare them for the specific movements they make during a race."
To develop core strength and balance, free weight pushing-and-pulling drills were done while standing on a 15-degree ramp—simulating the boat's lean—or a Bosu ball, which Cecchi jostled to represent the unstable footing created by choppy water. Exercises using a heavy, 100-foot rope served to build grip strength. Daily focus on flexibility ensured that no one would tweak a muscle while maneuvering on the deck in traffic, and high-intensity interval training—30 seconds of max effort, separated by short rests—showed the crew how it feels to get breaks only when the weather decides to give them.
The approach was intended to fortify the Puma team for the redline grind of the Ocean Race's ten in-port sprint competitions while steeling them for nine months on the water—and between it and the nutrition program Cecchi prescribed, the crew set sail on Saturday with a welcome confidence in their own sturdiness. "After working out in the gym all winter, we started training on the yacht and thought, 'Man, we're clearly stronger. This was worth it'," says Read. "You could argue that we have the strongest crew in the Volvo fleet." Which means this one's on you, boat.
