K A T I E    M E I L I

PREVIOUS SEASON REVIEW

INSIDE SWIM:  At the Pan American Games last summer you went 1:05.64 in the 100 breaststroke, setting a new Pan Am record and posting the second fastest time in the world.  You were also on the 400 Free Relay in prelims and the gold medal 400 Medley Relay that broke the Pan Am record. Can you take us through that meet and how you felt about your performances there?

KATIE MEILI:  The meet was great. I swam in the prelims of the 400 free relay on the first day and it wasn’t my greatest swim – I guess I was just kind of getting the jitters out. But it was amazing to be on a relay with Natalie (Coughlin), Allison Schmitt, and Madison Kennedy. The 100 breast was the second to last day so I had a few days in between to kind of rest. Then the 400 medley relay was on the last day and that was an amazing experience again to be on a relay with Natalie, Kelsi Worrell, and Schmitty – it was super fun.

You broke the 100 Breast Pan Am record in prelims – how do you feel about that race itself? Do you think that there is anything you could have done better or do you feel like it was a pretty solid race overall for you?

I mean, I would say it was definitely a solid race haha, but there’s always something you can do better. I was really nervous for prelims that day. I think I was just ready to swim fast. It had been building for a few months…actually the whole year. I was really excited and it kind of just expressed itself as anxious energy. I remember my heart rate being really high behind the blocks. It felt like I was 8 years old again haha. So I was kind of trying to calm myself down a little bit. But yea, it was a good race. We’ve broken it down technically and found that I probably could have had a little bit of a faster turn. And you know, there are always other things you can work on. So it was obviously my best 100 breast ever but there are always ways to improve too.

You have Duel in the Pool coming up this week [interview took place prior to Duel in the Pool] and I know that you are not resting for that meet. Will you be resting for any meets this winter to swim fast one last time before trials?

I think it’s good that we (SwimMac) are swimming through Duel in the Pool, we are getting really excited to swim fast at it anyways.  We are going to rest for a couple meets before trials though.  I think everyone is going to rest for a single meet, and we are being strategic where we place those meets. For each person it is probably going to be a little different. Since Duel in the Pool is short course meters, and just the way that meet is set up – almost like a dual meet – I don’t think it’s going to be hard to swim fast because its going to be really exciting and a lot fun. Also, I just don’t think that we really need to come down a ton to be able to perform well.

**Since this interview took place, and the completion of Duel in the Pool, Katie broke her first world record as a part of the 400 scm medley relay team, consisting of Courtney Bartholomew, Katie Meili, Kelsi Worrell, and Simone Manuel. She also set her first American record in the 100 scm breaststroke with a time of 1:03.20.**

TRAINING

You were a great swimmer in college and you have continued to see huge time drops since graduating. Is there anything in particular that you would contribute your continuing, and pretty large, time improvements to?

Yea, there are a few things.  I was lucky enough to have great coaches in college. They gave me a strong aerobic base and we trained a lot of yardage.   And even though it was a lot of yardage, there was always a really strong importance on swimming fast. So we would do a lot of stuff, but at a fast pace. We also raced a ton.  I think what really set me up well for the professional swimming environment is that I’ve learned to really love racing and I get better from racing.  I raced so much in college, in so many different events, that when I was able to come to Charlotte and started focusing a little bit more on breaststroke and the shorter things it all sort of came together at the right time. It has also been great because since I had such a strong base from college I could back off the volume a little bit and focus more on technique after graduating. So we do a little bit more technique based work here at SwimMac than I did in college, but I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t have that strong base. I think for me, everything matters, if that makes sense. Every little piece is important, and I think my college background is a huge part of why I’m doing well now. And at the same time, in Charlotte we’re focusing a lot more on technique in the water. We do a lot of break down drills and really break down my stroke to the smallest parts because every little tiny movement is important, especially in breaststroke because it is the slowest stroke. So we have really focused on the small things and how to make the little movements – movements that you might not even know are slowing you down – how to make them better.

Also, a really big thing in Charlotte that we are working on is strength. We do a ton of work out of the pool and a lot of work in the weight room. I’ve gotten much, much stronger since college. There are things that I do now that I had no idea I was capable of doing in the weight room three years ago. We really push each other in the weight room to do more, lift more, be stronger, but with the mindset that every weight you’re lifting and all the strength that you are gaining has to translate into fast swimming. Its been a really interesting learning process for me because I feel like I’ve learned so much about what makes a fast swimmer and how to translate power into speed. It’s a continuing process but it’s really interesting.

Has your breaststroke changed in anyway since college? And if so, what are the biggest changes?

Yeah, I think my stroke has changed a lot. The biggest thing that I had to change was making my line better. In breaststroke, when we say that you want the best line possible, that’s obviously a straight line. You want your head position down to get it in line and I think that a lot of times breaststrokers tend to leave their head up during the recovery and/or the glide phases of the stroke. In short course swimming you can kind of get away with it because there are so many walls that it doesn’t matter quite as much, but when you’re swimming long course, if you leave you’re head up even just a fraction of an inch, it is going to make a big difference. It is going to slow you down and make you more tired. Fixing that was actually really hard for me haha. I spent probably about a year to a year and a half trying to figure out how to do it properly. It seems so stupid because it’s like “oh, you just put you’re head down,” but when you change one thing in a stroke that you’ve been doing your whole life it feels so different. It feels so weird, it takes a lot of time to change, a lot of time to train the change, and then when you’ve finally nailed the change you have to start training the new stroke. And then when you’re tired you want to revert back to the old one. So that’s probably the biggest change I had to make. And then also just a couple of timing changes. On top of that we’ve been working on really improving the strength of my kick and pull as well. So yea, I’ve actually made a lot of stroke changes haha.

Also, just focusing on long course is a big part of the changes I have made. I think that long course and short course swimming are so different. I focused mostly on short course in college and now I have changed that. You really have to change what you are doing and focus on long course if you want to succeed in it.

Are there any weaknesses in your strokes that you have noticed and intend to work on moving forward?

So on the team we have talked about the fact that this fall is really the only time that we want to make changes. Once January/February/March rolls around you don’t really want to start making any big stroke changes because you won’t really have time to master it. I haven’t really changed my stroke much this fall. It’s just more of focusing on the things that I know I need to work on – so being more narrow as I recover, meaning that I want my hands to be touching as I’m kicking and extending. Also getting more power in my kick – we do a lot of kicking. My kick has improved significantly since I got out of college.   The more you kick the better you get at it and the stronger you become. So it’s nothing really that new, just more along the lines of reinforcing things that I already know, if that makes sense – and just still trying to make those things better.

Would you say that the improvements in your kick are mostly due to the large volume of kicking that you have done inside the pool or does it have more to do with the strength you have gained from your weight program?

I think it’s a combination. My legs have gotten a lot stronger so obviously that helps, but I have never really thought about how to kick breaststroke until I got to SwimMac. I used to just do the kick and not think about it like I think a lot of people do, but here we actually do a lot of kick technique.   We film our kick, we work with mirrors and watch what we do and watch how we catch the water with our feet, we work in endless pools with the flume so you can feel where the water is hitting your feet, and we experiment with changing the angles of our feet and legs. I had never done that kind of stuff before coming to SwimMac. I was like “oh, it’s just the kick, how can you make it better?” But there’s actually a million ways to make it better. So it’s a combination of both – definitely gaining strength but also learning how to kick more efficiently.

Do you currently, or have you in the past, spent time analyzing the strokes of certain swimming greats to try improving your technique/races?

Yeah, I think the best example of someone who I study is Micah Lawrence. We swim together at SwimMac and she has, if not the best, one of the best kicks in the world. She’s an amazing breaststroke kicker and I have watched her kick a lot to kind of try to imitate it.  At the same time, her stroke and my stroke are completely different. She focuses more on the 200 breast and I focus more on the 100 breast. We don’t train together as much as people might think because Micah does way more breaststroke in practice than I do. I tend to do a little bit less because my stroke breaks down. Micah can train and train and train. She’s such an impressive trainer. So we actually swim a lot of separate sets. I’ll do more of the sprinter version and she’ll do more of the distance version.   But she’s still such a great breaststroker that I’m always trying to learn things from her. We also watch videos of other swimmers but everyone swims breaststroke a little bit differently so you kind of have to be careful when studying the strokes of other swimmers. I don’t want to copy Micah’s breaststroke because it’s not how I swim breaststroke, but there are things that I can still learn from her. So I do watch a lot of other people but at the same time I have to remember that my stroke is my stroke and I have to improve the stroke I have and not try to copy someone else’s.

Who would you say is one or a couple of people who you like training with the most, or who push you the most, in practice?

Honestly, everyone at SwmMac is great to train with.  I think that I actually probably train the most with Arianna (Vanderpool-Wallace), who swims sprint freestyle, but obviously my sets are tweaked to be more breaststroke based and hers are more freestyle based. I used to train with Kathleen Baker all the time. I used to do a lot of IM work with her, and I still do the IM work, but she goes to college at Cal so now I am alone in the IM world haha. Those are probably the two people that I have trained with the most in my time here, and probably my favorite people to train with. But at the same time, everyone here is a great training partner.

What do you do for training outside of the pool? What is your lift/dryland program like?  Do you do any kind of cross-training?

We lift 3 times a week. We usually do Olympic lifting on Mondays – hang clean kind of stuff, then the second lift of the week we do upper body – bench press and pull ups being the main focuses, supplemented with a lot of other things, and then the last day is lower body focused – so squats and lunges supplemented with other things as well. Outside of the weight room I do yoga a fair amount. I love yoga because it builds strength from the inside – and that sounds a little weird – but sometimes I think that when you are lifting weights you just get strong because you are getting strong. With yoga you learn how to get strong in a different way. You’re muscles sort of train strength differently in yoga then they do when you’re lifting weights. I also do a lot of Pilates. Pilates has been extremely helpful for me in terms of body awareness. It has helped me to learn which muscles to activate and when. So for example, when you do a crunch or a sit up you are usually accustom to doing it one way, but in Pilates you kind of re-train your muscles. Instead of crunching up with your whole body you learn to do it mainly with your lower abs and/or you’re glutes. That’s something that you have to train your body to do and it has a ton of overlap with swimming because there are so many movements that we do in swimming that are weird or different or that your body doesn’t understand. Since I started doing Pilates I’ve gotten much better at being able to control different muscle groups. I am a lot better at getting them do what I want them to do instead of just having no control over them.

PERSONAL LIFE

What are some of your favorite hobbies?

Probably taking naps haha. I don’t know if that’s a hobby but it seems to be what I’m doing a lot of lately.   I also like to read a lot. In college I didn’t have a lot of time to read for pleasure but now I have all this time so I have actually read a lot since graduating. I even sometimes go back to my old college textbooks or files on my computer and realize how interesting some of the stuff I was learning really was, so I just reread some of it for fun.

How do you unwind?

I watch HGTV and the Food Network all the time. It’s like my favorite thing to do before I fall asleep and I have no idea why. It’s just mindless TV. I like cooking but I am not by any means a cooking expert. I’m actually not that good at cooking but for some reason I love watching cooking shows. It like totally relaxes me.

Who is your favorite person to follow on Instagram/Twitter?

Blake Shelton is probably my favorite person to follow on twitter. Sometimes he just goes on these rants and will tweet all of these crazy things at one time and then not tweet again for like another week. It’s hysterical.

On Instagram I like following Paris bloggers.  Its kind of random but I love Paris and there’s all these bloggers who take beautiful photos and post these cool stories. I also really like Humans of New York. If you don’t know what Humans of New York is, it is a blogging team that goes around to random people in New York City and takes their picture and ask them for their story. Some stories are really emotional and some are really funny – some are short and some are long. So it’s a cool snapshot of real life going on around you.

What is your dream car?

I really like the Mercedes G Wagon, I think it’s so cool!

If you had to choose a ringtone for your phone right now what would it be?

Probably something holiday-y, so maybe Little Drummer Boy or something like that. I love Christmas music, plus it’s Christmas time right now.

Who is your hero and why?

Well besides my parents…because that’s boring, but really they are. They’ve taught me pretty much everything I know and how to be the person I am. But otherwise I don’t know if I have one hero as much as there are things about a lot of people that I admire. Sometimes the people are famous people but for the most part they’re not. It’s usually people that I know like my friends or my coaches or people that have had a big impact on my life. There are little pieces of everybody that I find extremely impressive. So I guess I don’t have a hero but I find heroic pieces in a lot of people that I surround myself with or people who are important to me.

What would I find in your refrigerator right now?

Ohh, ok! So I live with Camille Adams who is also a swimmer. She is a lot better at cooking than me and she is a lot more consistent. So in my fridge you would find a lot of her food.  She’s always got chicken and meatballs and produce and all this stuff to make great salad. I think I have like pizza and yogurt and eggs haha.

If someone made a movie about your life, who would you want to play you?

Probably Keira Knightley because I’m obsessed with her. She’s a good actress, beautiful…perfect in every way.

FAVORITES

Pre-meet meal:

Its boring but its just like eggs and fruit. And coffee.  I have to have coffee.

Pre-race song/music:

I actually don’t listen to music before I race and if I do it is usually something to calm me down.  So any kind of music that’s more chill and relaxing because I tend to get really excited on my own.  Sometimes I’ll have to kind of calm myself down before I swim instead of pump myself up.

Movie/TV show:

Movie would be the Lord of the Rings series, in particular, The Two Towers. TV show is Friday Night Lights.

Competition pool:

Indianapolis.

App/most used app:

A game called Two Dots.  It’s pretty addicting. It’s a puzzle game where you just match colors of dots together – its kind of like Candy Crush. I’m totally obsessed with it; I play it all the time. My boyfriend says it’s going to be the end of our relationship because I play it so much haha.

MOVING FORWARD/OLYMPICS 2016

What events do you plan on competing in at Olympic Trials?

The 100 breast, 200 breast, 200 IM, and the 100 free.

Maybe try the 200 free?

I don’t think I could get the cut in that haha. I’m not very good at the 2 free. I have a decent short course 2 free but my arms get really tired when I do it long course.

How is going into this trials going to be different for you than 2012 trials?

In 2012 I really was joust going for the experience. I knew I probably wasn’t going to make the team. I was hoping to maybe get a second swim in but I was really just excited to have the cuts and to get to go. And I actually had a broken finger with a plate and screws in my hand at trials in 2012. Now I am more interested in going to make the team, but at the same time it’s just another swim meet. You go to do your best and try your hardest. Fortunately, now I am at the level where I can actually consider making the team and sort of plan past that for Rio. I mean obviously we are planning for trials and I want to be the best I can be and hopefully make the team at trials, but I also sort of have my sights set on Rio at the same time.

How long do you plan to continue your swimming into the future?

I think that I am definitely going to swim through 2017 just to figure out what I want to do in the future.  At this point I am just taking it one year at a time.  There’s a lot of other things that I want to do in life too.  One thing I am interested in is law school, along with a lot of other things.  I’m going to take 2017 to swim and figure out what I want to do next, whether that be continue swimming or transition into something else.