How to Train Like an America’s Cup Athlete

(Bloomberg) -- When you sign up for the “America's Cup workout” at Bermuda's Hamilton Princess hotel, the home base for Oracle Team USA leading up to the sailing competition this month, don't fool yourself. You are not going to come close to emulating the physical superiority of these athletes.

Take Ky Hurst, one of the newest members of Oracle's team. At 15, he was the youngest person ever to qualify for the professional Ironman circuit. At 17, he won his first Ironman series. Shortly after that, he won a silver medal at the World Open Water Swimming Championships, then went on to represent Australia at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and again in London in 2012. He was recently inducted into the Ironman Australia Hall of Fame. “My religion is the ocean,” he says.

Hurst joined Oracle this year as a grinder, his first official gig in professional sailing. In a very basic sense, it entails cranking a heavy winch, or a spinning wheel, in a forward motion at ferocious speed. Technically speaking, the grinders pressurize the hydraulic system that moves the wing sail and the dagger boards. The 48-foot, twin-hulled catamarans have a 77-foot wing sail that rises out of the water on hydrofoils and can reach speeds of more than 50 miles per hour.

As the pressure builds, it becomes harder to grind. “We spin these pedestals to make energy, because there's no motor or batteries on these boats,” Hurst says. “To transfer oil, it takes a lot of turning, spinning those pedestals, trying to produce as much oil as possible.” There are six guys on board, and everyone will spin the handles at some point. Once the hydraulic pressure builds and is stored in the accumulator, the helmsman, or “wingtrimmer,” uses it to move the wing sail and foil that makes the catamaran fly.

It's the hardest type of grunt work, according to Martina Carstairs, an Exhale personal trainer who teaches the America's Cup-inspired workout at the Hamilton Princess. She compares it to pedaling a bicycle uphill—“with your arms.” To get the same effect at the gym, you would have to turn the resistance on an arm bike, such as the Technogym Excite machines, up to their maximum and then push as hard as you can, as fast as you can, for as long as you can.

Hurst and his teammates focus on a well-rounded workout to prepare for the grueling, full-body experience of professional sailing. His warm-up consists of about 1.5 miles of swimming, solid stretching, and a spin on the grinder for 30 minutes. According to Hurst, this little workout is just to warm up the lungs. The main workout entails two and half hours of more swimming, three hours of sailing, and then a full CrossFit workout back on land at the gym.

In addition to the cardio sessions, daily training also includes a mix and match of the following: running a couple miles on the treadmill, lifting, calisthenics, exercises that involve holding one's breath under water for as long as possible, kayaking, stand-up paddle boarding, and yoga.

At the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, fresh off a $100-million renovation and the official host hotel of the competition, the America's Cup-inspired workouts occur just once a week at the private beach club through the end of June, when the race ends. The classes costs $25 per person.

Think of this one-hour-long workout as a very light version of Hurst's. It combines intense cardio with intense water exercises, but it's also custom-tailored to the fitness levels of each class member. (Like me, a formerly fit, now physically spent, new mom.)

I met Carstairs at the resort's private beach club down a long, winding hill, seemingly far removed from the rest of the world. It's got hammocks (yes) and cocktails (later) and even a small playground for the little ones. To set the scene, a stylish Instagram influencer was doing a bikini shoot to the side as we began our session.

The class begins with a 5-minute warm-up on a steep cove overlooking the sea. Then there's 20 minutes of sprints around the beach and up and down sandy hills. Carstairs says the primary focus of the workout is to get full ROM (range of motion) in the shoulders similar to what the sailors do when they are grinding. Next came a 20-minute circuit, on land, targeting arms, thighs, buttocks, and core. Otherwise known as grinder central.

At the end is a 15-minute water option in the ocean. For guests who are more fit, Carstairs had them balance, standing, on water boards. “The sailors know their center of gravity pretty well simply by the hours spent out on the water maundering back and forth from one side of the boat to the other,” she says, so she likes to play off that.

Carstairs says clients get the most pleasure, with the right amount of burn, from paddling face down on a paddle board. That does sound like fun. But I skipped that part of the workout because I did something Ky Hurst would never do: I forgot my bathing suit.

To contact the author of this story: Alyssa Shelasky in New York at alyssa@apronanxiety.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gaddy at jgaddy@bloomberg.net.