Engine Like Briggs - Pool Special

Samantha Briggs is a well known name in the CrossFit world, as she is the UK’s most successful female CrossFitter and in 2013 was crowned the Worlds Fittest Woman at the CrossFit Games. She is known by her nicknames “Biceps Like Briggs” (for obvious reasons) and Engine Like Briggs (as she has the most impressive ability to just keep going), and SwimWod had the pleasure of working with her for around 8 months, doing one to one sessions with the goal of making her more efficient in the pool for her CrossFit career. During those sessions it became obvious very quickly why she is such a successful athlete. She would pick up technique pointers instantly, and managed to make her stroke much more efficient in very little time. It was a proud moment to see that at the CrossFit Games that year she smashed out the swim and finished in 3rd place for that event.

SwimWod caught up with Sam to find out a bit more about her experience of swimming and any tips she has to share…

Favourite Stroke?

Crawl 

Least favourite stroke?

Backstroke

As an elite CrossFit athlete, how important would you say it is to include Swimming in your training regime?

A lot of the main competitions have a swim based event so being able to capitalise on those points is vital.

How often do you swim as part of your training and what sort of sessions do you do at the pool? (In normal times not covid!)

Depending on the time of season it varies from once a week to three times a week.

Closer to competition it’ll be intense intervals or long distance time trials with some open water exposure. 

You find a lot of people say that they are fit but when they get in the pool, it is a whole different type of fitness needed. What, if anything do you find different about training swimming to training CrossFit?

I’ve found that you can’t out fitness poor technique. 

When you were training with SwimWod, what was your main goal of the sessions?

To improve my stroke and efficiency in the water.

When you were training with SwimWod, did you learn anything in particular that you have found has helped with your swimming since then?

Emma really helped dial in my technique and fine tune my stroke which has definitely helped me in swim based workouts. 

What has been your favourite CrossFit Games workout involving swimming and why?

It wasn’t a Games workout but a CrossFit comp had Wet Amanda.

You swam to one end of the pool and did muscle ups on rings hanging over the pool then swam to the other end and got out to perform squat snatches on the side of the pool.

It was really cool to take a traditional CrossFit workout and incorporate swimming to increase the complexity of the workout. 

What has been your least favourite CrossFit Games workout involving swimming and why?

The swim and paddle event - more because the prone paddle board was so hard rather than the swimming being the limiting factor

We are seeing swimming becoming more and more a part of CrossFit competitions on all levels, what tips would you give anybody who is nervous about a swim event?

Get comfortable being in the water, take a few lessons and maybe enter a few open water swim events to got use to mass starts 

As an ex triathlete, can you rank the 3 disciplines in order of your favourites and why?

Bike - always enjoyed this part as I would be recovering from the swim and starting to warm back up again.

Run - this is where I typically excelled but I would have to push hard on legs of jelly after the bike.

Swim - it wasn’t that I disliked the swim I just wasn’t as good so would end up coming out near the back.

In any of your events (CrossFit and Triathlon) did you ever encounter any difficulties or anything unexpected relating to the swimming? If so, how did you overcome it?

In one triathlon I got cramp in my calf but it was an open water swim so I just had to keep going relying more on my other leg and arms. The only way to overcome it was to remain calm and stay positive to just keep moving.

Something you are really good at it seems! Thanks so much for your time Sam, and wishing you all the best with the 2021 season of competing. You are a true inspiration to so many.