We recently had the opportunity to chat with Kristen Gellert, a water polo and swim coach on Bainbridge Island, which is about a 30-minute ferry ride from Seattle.
Kristen Gellert has been playing water polo for years and uses a variety of NZ Manufacturing products to keep her athletes in tip-top shape, even during the recent pandemic. We hope you’ll enjoy this interview that shows the dedication Kristen brings to how she’s coaching young girls in the Bainbridge area.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I grew up in Southern California and have been playing water polo since I was in the 8th grade. I played at Bainbridge High School and went on to play water polo at the University of Hawaii. I’ve been the head water polo coach at Bainbridge High School and Club program for about 10 years.
What sort of precautions have you guys been taking in terms of practicing as it relates to COVID?
It has been somewhat of a progression. Initially, it started out as a full lockdown with a large number of virtual workouts where we would send out 3 challenges each week and also tried to incorporate some mental challenges such as journaling to keep our athletes engaged.
Once we could do some small group workouts, we’ve been doing circuit training at the track as well as running and using resistance bands.
We’re currently one of the only teams in WA and Oregon who has access to a pool, which has been great. Only 12 kids are allowed in the pool at a time and they have to maintain 6 feet of distance between them and must wear a mask coming into the pool and aren’t able to use the locker rooms.
Our practices look much different than before COVID. We’re mostly doing individual movement drills as well as swimming, conditioning, and doing egg beaters to tread water.
What are some of the benefits that you’ve seen come out of having to modify workouts due to COVID?
Interestingly we have less downtime in practices because the kids aren’t waiting in line to do a drill and we’ve been able to give more individual attention which has been nice. It’s also given us a bit of a reset in terms of form and fundamentals since we’re able to give individual attention to help build up muscle memory.
While we’d all love for things to be back to how they were before COVID, it is nice to see that there have been some benefits to this different way of handling practices.
What sort of NZ products are you guys using right now?
We used the StrechCordz®️ grudge belts quite a lot pre-COVID because those are great when we’re looking for ways that our kids can compete against one another. We also do leg sets and team up doing egg beaters against each other.
When we have 12 kids in the pool due to COVID, we typically will do a couple of different circuits for conditioning. We’ll have half of the group using StretchCordz® Safety Cord Short Belts all connected to start blocks to help with leg conditioning while the other swimmers will be doing individual movements out in the pool.
Why have you used NZ Manufacturing products as opposed to others on the market?
We’ve been using NZ Manufacturing products for quite some time, and they just work. They hold up extremely well over time and we’ve been happy with the price because it’s allowed us to buy multiples of most of our favorite products. We feel that NZ Manufacturing products are a great value for what you get.
Interested in Learning About Kristen Gellert?
We really appreciate Kristen giving us a few minutes of her time to talk about her work with the Bainbridge water polo team. If you’d like to learn more about the team, feel free to check them out on Instagram: @BainbridgeWaterPolo
