‘More Than a Fitness Challenge’: SilverPeak Performance Enjoying Fitness Series

SilverPeak Performance Executive Director Kris McPeak found a great way to bring her swimmers together.

Her club participated in the SmartyPants Vitamins U.S. Masters Swimming Summer Fitness Challenge in July, with four relays each doing the 2K . The relays were split based on how far people wanted to swim, and the winning team received a prize of a free private lesson.

“Some people you don’t know as well because they swim in the faster lane, and you might swim in the slower lane,” McPeak says. “It’s great for people who don’t normally swim together. For us, it was more than a fitness challenge. It was a really great team-building activity.”

The Los Angeles-based SilverPeak Performance started two years ago and has grown to more than 40 members by increasing its size organically. The club practices at a pool that also has lap swimming at the same time. Lap swimmers notice the organized workouts and speak with Charles McPeak, Kris’s husband and the coach, before deciding to join.

“On the challenge day, it was a lot more animated because we were hooting and hollering and having a good ol’ time,” Kris says. “It was more evidence to people who were just there to do lap swim that there’s a group over there and they’re enjoying themselves. I know they paid attention and were very aware of the fact that here’s this group of nearly 40 people that are just having a blast.”

McPeak is appreciative that the Summer Fitness Challenge, the second swim in the SmartyPants Vitamins USMS Fitness Series, served as a fundraiser for the USMS Swimming Saves Lives Foundation. (The first two fitness series events raised nearly $13,000 for the foundation, with more donations coming as a result of the SmartyPants Vitamins USMS Fall Fitness Challenge, which runs between Nov. 15-30.)

SilverPeak Performance received a grant for 2019 from SSLF, which the club plans to use to start an Adult Learn-to-Swim program. Because of the grant, McPeak says, the stakes are raised for their Fall Fitness Challenge, a 1-mile swim.

“I think we’re going to require everybody to register to do the 1-mile challenge,” McPeak says. “We want them to register early, so they can get their fun cap and be able to say this is a fundraising event for this foundation, this is what it’s important to us, this is why we want to support it. That’s a meaningful cause and important to us.”

Having already seen how participating in a Fitness Series event can help build camaraderie, McPeak plans to have her club continue participating going forward.

“We approached the [Summer Fitness Challenge] as an opportunity to build community,” she says. “When we do a workout, you’re doing your workout and you’re getting out and going to work or going back home. But to be able to watch other people swim and encourage them is a different way to approach the workout, so I think that was special for our group.

“I hope [the Fitness Series events] continue into next year and the year after that and the year after that. We will participate in all of them.”