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Come Fan with UsSaturday, June 20, 2026

Kitchen swimming is a VERY painful-looking quarantine sport

Please don’t try this at home.

Screenshot from video of Russian swimmer Yuliya Yefimova “swimming” off her kitchen island, with her torso hanging off a ledge over her floor.
Screenshot from video of Russian swimmer Yuliya Yefimova “swimming” off her kitchen island, with her torso hanging off a ledge over her floor.

There are some quarantine sports(-adjacent) videos that fill one’s soul with joy. There are some that remind you of the intense and ridiculous power of human ingenuity. And there are some that make every single muscle in your body tense up in sheer horror.

Here is one from that last category, from Russian swimmer Yuliya Yefimova:

I have to admit I’d never considered how one might practice swimming without a pool before. Now that I have, I regret it, for this knowledge is going to make my abs ache for days. The core strength required here is obscene.

We should mention that Yefimova was suspended for 16 months and stripped of her 2013 European Championships medals after a failed drug test in 2014, and she was also involved in the more general Russian doping scandal at the 2016 Olympics. But given that kitchen swimming is, as far as we know, strictly non-competitive, we shall allow her participation regardless.

Anyway, don’t try this at home, because unless you’re an Olympic-calibre athlete you will fail, and you will be in pain for a while.

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